The Heiress's Game

Four days after Bai Tianyi left, Bai Junze was also returning to Yunjing.

For the past three days, he has been applying medicine to Gu Yunjin twice a day, morning and evening, and his movements have become increasingly skillful.

Every morning, he would take Gu Yunjin to Xingyao Media to handle her work, have the housekeeper deliver her lunch to her office at noon, and then pick her up in the evening.

By the time he was able to leave with peace of mind, Gu Yunjin had already recovered.

On the morning he left, Gu Yunjin took him to the airport.

Bai Junze bent down and kissed her forehead, saying "See you at the wedding." He didn't turn around, afraid that if he did, he wouldn't want to leave.

Suiyuan Garden fell silent again, but Gu Yunjin didn't have much time to savor the peace.

The wedding is set for a month from now, and before that, her schedule is already packed.

Filming for "Countdown to Love" got back on track after the incident in the woods.

The effect of making an example of someone was immediate; all the celebrity guests behaved themselves, and no one dared to mention bringing their own screenwriter and makeup artist anymore.

The subsequent recording proceeded smoothly. When Director Wu reported on the progress at the weekly meeting, he smiled and said, "The artists these days are very cooperative." He couldn't help but laugh out loud after saying that.

However, the dating reality show was ultimately just a trial project, not the main battlefield for Star Glory.

Gu Yunjin focused more on the follow-up business loop of the second season of "Walking with Brilliance" - this was a plan she had been laying out from the beginning.

Content marketing, brand building, and apparel monetization were achieved step by step, and many senior executives at Xingyao followed Gu Yunjin on business trips.

She revised her project proposal on the plane, touched up her lipstick in the car, and looked at fabric samples sent by suppliers on her tablet in the waiting area. She was so busy that she could only send messages to Bai Junze late at night.

With the wedding just around the corner, once this marriage is finalized and the costume system for "Walking with Brilliance" is running smoothly, she'll probably really have to consider moving Xingyao to Yunjing.

After all, the Bai family has more resources, and living apart in two different places is not a long-term solution.

Xingyao Media's apparel division was established after the first season of "Walking with Brilliance" aired, and it took only three months to go from zero to one.

The two people Gu Yunjin personally recruited—Design Director Lu Man and Supply Chain Director Fang Jin—had a surprisingly consistent reaction when headhunters approached them: they were not optimistic about their prospects.

Lu Man worked in Milan for ten years designing women's clothing, rising from head designer for a luxury brand to creative director of an independent studio. She won two international design awards, and after returning to China, several leading apparel groups were eager to hire her.

She was at a fashion show when the headhunter first called. Upon hearing the name "Starry Media," she laughed: "What's a variety show company doing with clothing? Just some rich kid throwing money around again, right?"

She originally wanted to hang up the phone directly, but Gu Yunjin was giving her way too much.

She was offered double her salary, ample stock options, and a promise that there would be no KPIs in the first year, allowing her to focus on building her team.

She signed the contract with the mindset that "I'm a rich kid who'll just play around, make some quick money in two years and then leave."

Fang Jin's experience is similar.

He spent fifteen years working his way up in the garment supply chain in the Pearl River Delta, rising from fabric procurement to operations director of his own factory.

At its peak, it managed three contract factories and more than 2,000 workers, and did OEM for several international fast fashion brands.

When Xingyao approached him, he was working with a friend on his own small brand. After hearing the terms they offered, he retorted, "Does your boss have some kind of misunderstanding about the apparel industry? Do you know how much money it takes to start a brand from scratch?"

The other party said they knew, the budget had been approved, and the initial investment was a full zero higher than he had expected. He signed the contract without saying a word.

On their first day at work, Gu Yunjin called them into her office and got straight to the point: "The second season of 'Walking with Brilliance' will premiere in three months, and I want to launch a co-branded clothing brand on the same day it premieres."

Design, production, supply chain, e-commerce operations—everything is starting from scratch. The money is in place; you can control the pace yourselves. I just want results.

After Lu Man and Fang Jin came out of the office, they looked at each other and read the same thing in each other's eyes: This boss is crazy.

But none of them mentioned quitting, because the madman was paying them too much money.

For the next three months, the two of them were extremely busy.

Lu Man and her design team worked countless sleepless nights, breaking down the personal styles of each of Chen Cui's six family members and designing an independent style line for each of them.

Chen Cui has a cool and aloof urban style, her brother Chen Shuo has a trendy street style, her three sisters each have their own sweetness and liveliness, and even their mother has her own unique intellectual and mature style.

There are over a hundred items in total, and each one needs to balance looking good in photos and being practical for everyday wear.

Fang Jin fared even worse. In order to meet the broadcast date, he stayed in a budget hotel next to the supply chain factory and personally oversaw every step, from fabric procurement to production scheduling, from quality inspection standards to logistics and warehousing.

At his most intense period, he received nearly a hundred phone calls a day, and his phone battery would get so hot while it was charging.

But he was willing to do so because Gu Yunjin had provided the full budget he promised, giving him whatever amount of money and resources he needed.

Having worked in this industry for over a decade, he understands one principle all too well: when the money is right, efficiency is not an issue.

On the day the second season of "Walking with Brilliance" premiered, Xingyao Apparel's co-branded products were launched simultaneously.

The result was unexpected—the smoky gray oversized suit that Chen Cui wore on the show sold out within forty minutes of going online.

Chen Shuo's graffiti hoodie was followed by fans from the sales page to the Weibo super topic, who were asking for restocks everywhere.

In less than a week, the first batch of inventory was completely sold out, and the e-commerce operations team had to start the pre-sale mode, with pre-sale orders scheduled for the following month.

Lu Man was woken up by a call from operations at two in the morning, saying that another dress had sold out.

Looking at the ever-increasing sales figures on her phone screen, she suddenly felt that the ten years she spent in Milan might have been wasted.

Winning numerous awards at Fashion Week is less valuable than having Chen Cui wear the outfit for ten minutes on a TV show.

A month later, the two met at Xingyao's quarterly review meeting.

Lu Man has lost weight, and Fang Jin has gotten quite tanned.

Two seasoned professionals who once mistook each other for "outsiders who had wandered into the wrong building" are now sitting on the same sofa waiting for a meeting, both thinking about the same thing:

These past few months of intense work have been exhausting, but it was all worth it.

The sense of accomplishment from building a brand from scratch and witnessing its overnight success is stronger than spending ten years in a traditional apparel group.

"From design to production to sales, the money never stopped flowing, and the pace was ridiculously fast."

Lu Man leaned back on the sofa armrest, "With the help of the traffic from being associated with Brilliant, brand awareness skipped the cold start stage."

How can you make a GG at this speed? Even spending tens of millions on prime time on CCTV can't compare to Chen Cui wearing it for ten minutes.

I used to think that people who did variety shows crossing over into the fashion industry were just dabbling, but now I realize how narrow-minded I was.

"Who says otherwise?" Fang Jin said, leaning back in his chair with his coffee in hand.

"Just like you, when I first came here I thought that rich kids could do whatever they wanted, but the boss gave me a budget, delegated authority, and didn't delay or owe any money. He was much more straightforward than the brands we had worked with before."

If the brand continues to develop like this, and we follow suit, our future is bright. I heard from General Manager Nan that General Manager Gu's next step is to expand into jewelry.