Based on the two pieces of information provided in the headline, readers familiar with Hong Kong’s entertainment industry should soon be able to figure out that the protagonist of our report is Zhou Jiawei.
So for friends who are not familiar with the Hong Kong entertainment industry, who is Zhou Jiawei?
In 2006, Zhou Jiawei was elected as the runner-up of Miss Hong Kong, and the following year represented TVB in Hunan Satellite TV’s "Dancing Miracle";
In 2009, Zhou Jiawei officially started working as an actress at TVB. She did not have the position of airborne heroine. Although she has acted in key dramas such as "Iron Horse Seeking Bridge", "Heart War", "Forensic Pioneer III" and "Love Crossing the Coast", the scenes are not heavy. In 2011, Zhou Jiawei married Hong Jinbao’s eldest son, Hong Tianming, and then acted in several dramas before gradually fading out of the actor’s position.
Entertainment StudioNoticing her originated from a report in 2016. At that time, the hottest business news in mainland China was "Tan Xiaohuan sells fish eggs". Few people noticed that it was also in that year that Zhou Jiawei told the media that she had invested in the mainland’s micro-business business, making millions of dollars a year, and planned to go public.
Image from Weibo
After three years, we found Zhou Jiawei to chat about her business.
A classic section of the "Miss Hong Kong" competition is a swimsuit appearance, and each candidate is required to introduce herself with a personal statement. Zhou Jiawei, 23, said: "I want to be a successful entrepreneur."
This sentence is not made for the competition.
At the age of seven, Zhou Jiawei’s parents separated, and her mother took her from Hong Kong to Toronto, Canada. She graduated from the economics department of the University of Toronto in Canada, and went to night classes to learn makeup and skin care, including how to make and market products. She also participated in makeup work for some fashion shows. At that time, Zhou Jiawei’s dream was to become a makeup artist with her own brand.
But the encounter pushed her away like this.
In 2004, Zhou Jiawei’s mother and aunt gave Zhou Jiawei’s profile to the "Miss Chinese Toronto" organizing committee, which did not give Zhou Jiawei a ranking, but it prompted her to return to Hong Kong to participate in the "Miss Hong Kong" selection. When the judges announced Zhou Jiawei as "Miss Most Photogenic" in 2006, she knew that she had to stay on TVB. As the awards continued to be announced, she also won the runner-up of "Miss Hong Kong" and became a double winner.
In this way, Zhou Jiawei began his life as a public figure.
Zhou Jiawei old photo, picture source Weibo see watermark
In the first year of being elected, the top three "Miss Hong Kong" have to attend public welfare activities and maintain a positive image, which means that many things cannot be done.
The neckline is too low? No, you have to wear an extra one inside. On the streets of Hong Kong, Zhou Jiawei will be stopped by the agent immediately while eating fish eggs, and it is not allowed to buy orange juice to drink, but it is OK to hold coffee. This puts a lot of pressure on Zhou Jiawei: "Because I grew up in Canada, a lot of things are very casual."
Zhou Jiawei also doesn’t like the competition in this line of work.
When choosing Sister Hong Kong, take promotional photos, and Zhou Jiawei will be pushed around, because everyone wants to stand in the middle, so she simply stands on the edge.
Many "Miss Hong Kong" will sign up to TVB to film after fulfilling their duties, but not everyone will have good development opportunities.
A TVB producer once approached Zhou Jiawei and asked her if she liked filming. She replied, "I haven’t tried it, so how can I tell you if I like it or not? If I tell you that I like it because I want to make money, I want a lot of people to know it, and I want to shoot commercials, do I really like it?"
Later, Zhou Jiawei went to Hunan Satellite TV on behalf of TVB to participate in "Dancing Miracle", and talked to Xie Tianhua about this matter. Xie Tianhua said bluntly: "Are you crazy? Of course people won’t use you anymore."
Zhou Jiawei
In 2009, Zhou Jiawei started filming at TVB, and at that time, her fellow champion Chen Yinjin had already won TVB’s Leap Progress Female Artist Award.
After entering the industry for a few years, more and more people joined the company, getting younger and younger, and the agents also changed. Zhou Jiawei still did not play the main role. A senior asked her, "Why didn’t you come to see me?" Zhou Jiawei was a little confused and said directly to the senior: "I won’t."
"I think not pushing work is fighting for work," Zhou Jiawei said. "At that time, I thought it was okay to be obedient, but when I grew up, I realized that this was not the case at all."
Once, sitting on the set, a girl seemed to be talking to herself, and seemed to want her to respond. She complained there, "Why is there an advertisement to shoot, but I don’t?" Zhou Jiawei had a headache, so she sat silently on the other side.
Years later, the girl achieved some success. But Zhou Jiawei didn’t care about the gains and losses: "I don’t like to blame others, because I know how much I gave. I got more than I gave, and I think it’s going well."
2006 Hong Kong sister group photo: Zhou Jiawei (runner-up), Chen Yinbi (champion), Lv Huiyi (third place)
On November 11, 2011, Zhou Jiawei and Hong Tianming, the eldest son of Hong Jinbao, registered their marriage, and Hong Jinbao selected the wine for them in March of the following year.
Two months before the wedding banquet, Zhou Jiawei found out that she was pregnant, but a month later, she checked and found that it was an empty fetus, and cried for a long time. After getting married, Hong Tianming accompanied Zhou Jiawei to Singapore to relax, and the two succeeded in "making a man" again.
Zhou Jiawei, who is pregnant with a child, can only attend some business events.
"I think it’s also good to attend the event, you can have more time. You receive a TV drama, you have to give it for two or three months, you have to stop making money, and then you have to go out to work and ask the crew to go to you. If the crew doesn’t let you go, you can’t help it."
On the other hand, Zhou Jiawei has no obsession with filming, and she has stayed in Canada for too long, so she is relatively slow to read Chinese, and it is relatively difficult to read the script.
Gradually, Zhou Jiawei faded out of his acting position.
Zhou Jiawei and her husband Hong Tianming
In January 2013, the eldest son Hong Daren was born. The following year, Zhou Jiawei participated in the TVB program "I want to be the boss" and received 100,000 yuan in start-up capital provided by the program team. She rented a 1000-foot room in Causeway Bay (About 93 square metersThe store is used for selling children’s clothing.
The store was rented to Zhou Jiawei at a low price by the mall, and the replacement condition was that she would play a promotional role, so Zhou Jiawei had to go to work every day and always visited the store. After such a period of time, Zhou Jiawei’s focus of exposure was not "Miss Hong Kong", not Hong Tianming, but because of making children’s clothing.
In the second half of 2014, Zhou Jiawei became pregnant with her second child. The whole process was much harder than the first child, and she kept vomiting. Zhou Jiawei’s state was no longer able to operate the store, so she closed the store and donated the remaining clothes.
In 2016, when Hong Tianming was working in the mainland, Zhou Jiawei went to a meeting in his place and found a business that suited him.
Zhou Jiawei learned that it is a milk tea that claims to contain antioxidants, which can fade pigmentation, beauty and beauty, and distribute it to customers through Moments. It seems that with a WeChat account, anyone can start their own business platform.
At that time, Hong Kong also had the concept of Internet celebrity products, which was to take photos or videos of things that were easy to use and share them on social platforms. Zhou Jiawei’s Moments had many people selling things.
Zhou Jiawei
Zhou Jiawei thinks this is a good business. She has heard many legendary micro-business stories, such as a micro-business product that was claimed to be effective for many gynecological diseases at that time.
"Every time I make a different product, I am slowly learning because there are a lot of new things happening." Zhou Jiawei said that when she first came into contact with the mainland micro-business team, her overall impression of them was that they were young. They called her "Sister Wei" when they first came up, and they were all entrepreneurs born in the 1990s.
She described running a micro-business business as "making quick money", and some products are "paid first, then given", that is to say, collect the money first, then go to the factory to produce, and then distribute the goods. You don’t need to take out too much money yourself. For the operator, it is very safe, but the time should be calculated well.
Zhou Jiawei first became a star shareholder of milk tea products, attending two or three events every month to maintain communication with the sales team.
But after working together like this for a while, the other party didn’t give them the share, "They are right about the factory, and they also receive the money. In the end, they don’t give it to you, or they don’t sell so much, what can you do?"
Zhou Jiawei
After making some micro-business products, Zhou Jiawei knew more and more micro-business teams, and she saw some excellent teams and a lot of chaos.
Sometimes the factory does not ship their products, but other companies can get the goods. Zhou Jiawei once met a micro-business who wanted to take his products to other factories to make fakes;
Some people will take a lot of products and distribute them to the following. The agency is divided into several levels. A team can have hundreds of people, but the team does not have a contract.
Once, Zhou Jiawei heard that the milk tea business had privately put Yang Mi’s name on the brand’s box, and Yang Mi sued for infringement. "It’s really excessive. We also know Yang Mi’s agent, and he said he would sue the milk tea."
Users speak out for Yang Mi and Zhao Liying being abused by micro-businesses
During the period of investing in WeChat, Zhou Jiawei sued many unreliable partners, and some people directly told her: "I’m just a bad life, you can get it", which made Zhou Jiawei unable to resist. Some lawsuits were won, but because it was difficult to execute, almost no money was recovered.
She knows that the identity of an artist is a double-edged sword for doing business. On the one hand, "people’s knowledge of you is an insurance for him, because they think you will not lie to him"; on the other hand, if the product goes wrong, it will have a great impact on her reputation. "Especially my whole family is in front of the screen, you can imagine how serious it is."
Zhou Jiawei with her husband Hong Tianming, her father-in-law Hong Jinbao, and her mother-in-law Gao Lihong
After less than a year in the world of micro-business, Zhou Jiawei quickly got out of it. Later, she took a stake in the company founded by Lin Dan and Xie Xingfang to sell maternity and baby products on e-commerce platforms.
Two years ago, Zhou Jiawei’s skin developed eczema, so she went to learn how to prepare skin care products. After that, she established a skin care brand, with more than 70 products from face to body. At present, these products are only sold in Hong Kong. Zhou Jiawei bluntly said that her income is not as much as the "fast money" of WeChat, but it gives her a sense of achievement.
Some time ago, Hong Tianming pushed Zhou Jiawei to a Hong Kong MCN company. The other party asked her to sign for three years, but they did not help her cut the film or even provide subtitles. Zhou Jiawei felt that there was no need for cooperation.
Her friend Yao Leyi contacted a mainland MCN company, and the other party asked for 70% of the revenue. Yao Leyi felt that it was a bit too much and asked Zhou Jiawei to discuss it. Zhou Jiawei told Yao Leyi that she might open an MCN company because she had a business partner in Guangzhou who had a running team on all three major short video platforms.
Zhou Jiawei said that because she was busy with the enrollment procedures of her youngest son some time ago, her studies have not fully started. Recently, she plans to go to Guangzhou to participate in the live broadcast festival first, and then devote herself to learning and producing short videos.
From the original intention of becoming a makeup artist in the backstage of the Canadian fashion show, to one person propping up a thousand-foot store in Causeway Bay, to joining the mainland micro-business business, to picking up the original dream and exploring the video wave, Zhou Jiawei has changed multiple runways. Maybe today’s career is no longer hot money, Zhou Jiawei is no longer as high-profile as three years ago to announce to the media the plan of starting a business listing, but she said: "I do business not for money, but for satisfaction."
Zhou Jiawei
