Three Sheep resumed streaming without its star — the peak never came back

After the fake-Meicheng-mooncake scandal of September 2024, Three Sheep paid its ¥68.9495 million fine in full on October 11, 2024, compensated consumers ¥27.7785 million under a refund-one-compensate-three standard, and worked through 89 rectification items. On March 23, 2025, Hefei's market regulator declared it fit to resume operations. The first comeback try had already failed: a January 2025 test on WeChat's channels under 'Xiaoyang Zhenxuan', with no anchor on camera, drew 140,000 heat points and a little over a thousand orders before stopping after four days.

The real resumption came on the night of September 15, 2025 — no announcement, several streamers going live at once. Zuige, 8.47 million followers, peaked at 110,000 concurrent viewers; Qiaomei drew 1.23 million views; Lao K wore sleeves over his tattoos and stuck to product talk. The style was professional, the entertainment gone. On sale were three self-brand items — garbage bags, toothbrushes, dental floss — and the combined take for the session was roughly ¥250,000 to ¥500,000, against a history of single sessions that once cleared ¥100 million. The founder remained absent throughout.

His Douyin following fell from a peak of about 122 million to 112 million within 120 days of the shutdown — more than 40,000 a day — and had slipped below 100 million by September 2025. Three Sheep is now rebuilding around the 'Xiaoyang Zhenxuan' private label, supply chain, and overseas expansion, with more than 20 local streamers signed in Singapore and Malaysia. The industry had moved meanwhile: influencer-driven sales fell to about 30% of Douyin commerce in 2024 as shop livestreaming took over. The comeback is real; the business it returns to is not the one that left.

Kept the founder off camera to avoid scandal coverage, but the audience came for his entertainment, so the product lectures drew only ¥250-500K per session.

When the founder is the brand, the scandal is the business — the audience came for the brothers' entertainment, and the comeback offered them product lectures instead.

The star stayed absent to avoid reopening the scandal's news cycle, so the streams ran without their only draw: ¥250-500K a session against ¥100M+ peaks.

The market moved during the silence: influencer-driven sales fell to ~30% of Douyin commerce as shop livestreaming took over.

A personal-IP business suspends. Three Sheep paid the fine, passed the 89 rectifications and came back — to sessions worth a few hundred thousand yuan, because the crowd had come for one man.

The company pushes private label, supply chain and an overseas franchise of the model — Singapore, Malaysia, a TikTok account building toward the 'clipped livestream' playbook at home. Whether Xiaoyang Zhenxuan can become a brand customers buy without the Yang brothers is the question the comeback answers nightly. The regulator's stamp restored the license; nothing has restored the traffic.