Dewu employees who received the letter and asked not to be named because they are not authorized to comment on the matter said the layoffs would affect about 500 of the total 10,000 positions. Dewu – which began in 2015 as an online community for sharing data on sports, shoes and fashion – has decided to cut jobs as it seeks to stop or reduce funding for “low-return” projects in a gloomy market environment, the letter said.
Dewu confirmed the layoffs in a statement to the Post on Thursday. The company announced individual meetings with the affected employees and offered them severance packages.
Dewu, founded by young Chinese billionaire Yang Bing, may not be one of the top-grossing e-commerce apps in China, but it has a lot of influence in courting Chinese Generation Z consumers who are more willing to pay higher prices for certain types of goods.
According to the company’s 2023 promotional materials, about 70 percent of Dewu users were born after 1995, and about 70 percent of the 260 million people in that demographic in China have used the app.
After Dewu first enabled trading between users and merchants in 2017, it quickly developed into a platform for bidding wars. In particular, it became the go-to place for China’s young sneaker fans looking to bid on limited edition shoes.
In 2021, the prices of some shoes made by Li Ning and Anta Sports on Dewu rose eightfold. This year, a pair of Li Ning shoes named after former National Basketball Association star Dwyane Wade was sold on Dewu for as much as 48,889 yuan (worth about $7,500 at the time) — 33 times the recommended retail price. A pair of Anta shoes with a special print of the Japanese cartoon character Doraemon, which retailed for 499 yuan, was sold on the platform for 3,999 yuan.
The extent to which the company itself has benefited from hype cycles remains a mystery. As a private company, it is not required to disclose its finances.
Yang, the founder, was ranked 32nd on the Hurun Global U40 list of self-made billionaires last year with a net worth of $1.5 billion. Yang attracted media attention in 2023 when he spent 158 million yuan to buy a villa in Shanghai, local media outlet The Paper reported.
