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Zhang is her brand’s face, design inspiration, marketing department, and much more. She and other web celebs find their customers on social media. The companies that run the back end are small, often no more than one or two hundred people, supporting over a dozen brands like LIN’s. They only sell online; they keep little to no inventory and own no factories. Yet they do a rousing business. In the first four months of 2015, LIN had 80 million RMB in sales (about US$11 million), keeping nearly 30 percent as pure profit.8 LIN and other web-celeb companies have evolved quickly since 2015 and can show readers from traditional industries a new approach to operations, marketing, and data-driven strategy.
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Ming Zeng (Smart Business: What Alibaba's Success Reveals about the Future of Strategy)