China’s Biggest Wine Influencer Is Calling it Quits

On October 8, China’s most famous wine influencer, Wang Shenghan—known to millions as Lady Penguin—took to social media with an announcement that shocked millions of her fans.  

In a heartfelt video, Wang revealed that her company will be discontinuing several of its self-owned wine and sweet wine brands, signaling a major shift in direction. She also hinted that the popular Lady Penguin brand itself would take a backseat in future operations.

This bold move comes at a time when China’s wine consumption is facing headwinds, and Lady Penguin’s decision to “scale back” may well be an effort to reduce operating costs amid a challenging market.

In the emotional video, Wang didn’t hold back and shared her personal struggle with burnout and emotional exhaustion. Wang shared that her life in recent years has been “painful most of the time, with only occasional relief.” She expressed frustration over working tirelessly but still failing to make the company profitable, while also seeing a drop in engagement and traffic.

“Life has been really tough for me these past few years,” she admitted, who was navigating her company through the pandemic while being a new mother of two. She described her feelings of being “trapped,” no longer finding joy in her work, and even experiencing physical illness while filming. She candidly expressed how maintaining her influencer status had drained her energy, leading to sleepless nights, anxiety, and deep emotional distress.

“It feels like fate is leading the company to an inevitable end—shutdown. It’s just another case of an influencer-led business losing momentum and failing after the wave of success passes,” she confessed.

As part of the transformation, Wang announced a series of changes for the company, emphasizing downsizing rather than expansion. She revealed plans to phase out self-owned brands like Niao Jiu (Flamenco Paradiso), along with various sweet and fruit wines. The company’s upcoming self-produced wines from within China will be stripped of the “Lady Penguin” label entirely.

THE RISE OF FAME

Wang’s rise to prominence began in 2014 when she burst onto the scene with her fun, engaging wine content. She quickly built a massive following of young Chinese wine enthusiasts. Capitalizing on her fame, she began selling wines across various platforms. According to her own accounts, her company amassed millions of fans and billions of views. Over the years, she sold tens of millions of bottles of affordable wines, while cultivating a loyal membership of tens of thousands for her premium wine offerings.

Today, her Lady Penguin account on Douyin (China’s TikTok) boasts 3.33 million followers, and her official Lady Penguin flagship store has moved over 2.46 million bottles. On Taobao, the country’s largest e-commerce platform, her flagship wine store has more than 900,000 followers, while on Weibo, she commands the attention of 1.47 million fans. According to venture capital investment news platform 36Kr, in 2017, she secured RMB 15 million (US$2.12 million) in funding from QingCong Capital, and by 2021, she received another multi-million yuan investment from Fintrek Capital (Hong Kong) Co. Ltd.

In 2020, 36Kr reported that Lady Penguin’s sales had surpassed RMB 350 million (US$49.4 million), with both self-branded wines and agent wines. By 2023, revenues from her self-owned brands had accounted for about 70% of her company income including her popular Wine Daily and Flamenco Paradiso. Last year, she also debuted her Ningxia wine range.

As Wang shared her vision for the future, her Douyin store posted a clearance sale video, marking down all Flamenco Paradiso and sweet wine products. Vino Joy News visited her Douyin flagship store and found four Flamenco Paradiso wines, seven sweet wines, along with her own boxed wine “Wine Daily” and mulled wine—all on sale. Notably, the second-best-selling item in her store, Flamenco Paradiso, was among the products being discontinued.

WHY NOW?

The decision to scale back and enforce an operation overhaul begs the question—why now? When Vino Joy News reached out to Wang for more comment she simply replied that everything she needed to say is in the video, and that she hopes her actions will speak louder than her words going forward.

But this isn’t the first time Lady Penguin has trimmed her portfolio. She once offered a range of low-alcohol beverages, beer, and liqueurs, and even became a major seller of Jägermeister in China. However, in 2022, she revealed to me that the company had discontinued all non-wine products at the end of 2021 when I asked her about Jagermeister sales —just as trends around low-alcohol beverages in China began to fade.

Of course, with fame often comes controversy. One of the most notable incidents in Lady Penguin’s rise to prominence was a lawsuit in which her company was accused of posting malicious reviews of a competitor. The court ruled against her, ordering the company to pay RMB 120,000 (US$16,955) in damages and post a public apology on Taobao for three consecutive days.

For any company, cutting product lines is often a sign of deeper commercial challenges. Self-owned brands are costly to maintain, and Lady Penguin’s business model may have simply become too expensive to sustain. “You need significant order volumes, often thousands of cases per SKU, plus design and marketing costs,” says Jason Zhang, head of Shanghai Yunjio Warehouse, part of China’s Top 50 Wine Importers, Shanghai Nine Coast Network Technology Co Ltd. “If the product doesn’t sell, it becomes dead stock. In contrast, if you’re just reselling existing brands, you can order smaller quantities without the same risk.”

Zhang added, “Lady Penguin isn’t just a product brand—it’s also a personal and company brand. Building a brand can attract investment, but her direct-to-consumer approach leaves her with fewer distributors willing to handle her products. This means her team has to do everything themselves, likely driving her operating costs higher than other OEM brands. To make matters worse, China’s competitive market forces her to prove better value without raising prices. In this situation, cutting high-cost operations is a logical step.”

Imported sweet wines, one of Lady Penguin’s most popular lines, by rising costs and firece domestic competition. Yu Hongjie, General Manager of Qingdao Long Vision Global International, another leading sparkling wine importer included in China’s Top 50 Wine Importers report. “Overall costs have risen, so the price gap between entry-level sweet wines and premium Moscato d’Asti is shrinking. At the same time, cheaper domestic sweet wines are dominating the market, making it hard for importers to stay competitive. Many have simply abandoned the entry-level segment,” he explained.