Women's Clothing Shell Hiding Lithium Battery Dreams: Liang Feng and Ribbo Fashion's Three-Year Game

(Article by Huo Dongyang, Edited by Zhang Guangkai)

Ribao Fashion is exiting the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

On March 11, Ribao Fashion announced that the company has completed its business registration change. The company’s full name has officially changed to “Shanghai Puyuan Chemical Materials Group Co., Ltd.” Its business scope now includes “sales of specialized chemical products,” “research and development of electronic specialized materials,” “research and development of new material technologies,” and other core categories. At the same time, items such as “engaging in investment activities and investment management with own funds” have been removed.

Subsequently, Ribao Fashion’s stock abbreviation is planned to be changed to “Puyuan Materials.” But the real protagonist of this change is not Ribao Fashion itself, but an entrepreneur who has been布局 in the new energy materials field for many years: Liang Feng.

For Liang Feng, this step is highly significant. From Jinyuan Sheng New Energy Materials to Puyuan Materials, he has finally借上 a shell in the A-share market.

Liang Feng’s “hunting”: a delayed but precise “backdoor listing”

Liang Feng’s布局 in the new energy materials sector has actually been ongoing for many years.

He was once one of the few domestic fund managers managing billion-level public funds. In 2010, he founded private equity firm Yiyang Investment, and in 2012, he transitioned into industry, co-founding Putailai (which listed on the SSE in 2017).

Through controlling or actual control, he built a clear division of labor in the energy industry chain: Putailai mainly focuses on lithium battery anode materials, coated separators, etc.; Jinyuan Sheng is an upstream resource company, mainly developing cathode precursors and mineral resources like copper, cobalt, and nickel, with large overseas mineral holdings; Puyuan Materials’ core asset is its controlling subsidiary Indile, which specializes in lithium battery binders, positioned at the midstream materials level.

With the explosive growth of new energy vehicles, the power battery industry chain has rapidly become one of the hottest tracks in the capital market. But new materials industries are extremely capital-intensive. Expansion, equipment, R&D, upstream and downstream cooperation—each step requires huge funds. For many new energy materials companies, going public is almost a necessary step.

In recent years, with stricter IPO review standards, direct listings have become difficult. Thus, a more familiar path re-emerged: finding a listed company with stagnant growth, and through mergers and acquisitions, injecting new energy assets.

Liang Feng has been eyeing Ribao Fashion’s “shell” for several years.

Initially, Liang Feng wanted to give this “shell” to Jinyuan Sheng.

In May 2023, Wang Weidong and his wife sold nearly 50% control of Ribao Fashion to Liang Feng and his subsidiary Shanghai Kuoyuan at a discount of 770 million yuan. The transaction plan involved nearly simultaneous control transfer and asset swap: divesting the women’s clothing business and injecting 100% equity of Liang Feng’s Shanghai Jinyuan Sheng New Energy Materials.

This was a “snake swallowing an elephant” type of deal. The relatively small Ribao Fashion, with a total asset size of just over 1.2 billion yuan, “acquired” Jinyuan Sheng, which owned extensive mineral resources, with total assets approaching 100 billion yuan at the end of 2022.

Liang Feng’s logic is straightforward: exchange women’s clothing for lithium batteries, and use the shell to craft a new story, adding another listed company to his portfolio.

However, the first backdoor attempt failed. Jinyuan Sheng’s mineral projects in Congo (DRC) and Indonesia involved massive due diligence work, complex coordination with local governments and partners, and regulatory inquiries focused on its profitability and mineral rights. In November 2023, the deal was terminated.

Liang Feng didn’t wait long.

In October 2024, Ribao Fashion was again suspended, and a second restructuring plan was announced: acquiring a 71% stake in Sichuan Indile Materials Technology Group Co., Ltd. for 1.42 billion yuan.

Indile’s financials are clean. Its total assets are less than 1 billion, with a debt ratio of only 21.75%, and net profit of 160 million yuan. No complex overseas assets or hard-to-verify mines. In December 2025, the SSE’s merger review committee approved the deal. Soon after, a name change proposal was put forward.

By this point, Ribao Fashion has essentially become defunct, replaced by Liang Feng’s “Materials Empire” in the secondary market. Through the new shell “Puyuan Materials,” he can more flexibly conduct capital operations on cathode materials, resource end, and new battery materials.

Why women’s clothing sales are sluggish: an analysis of Ribao Fashion’s predicament

On the other side, Ribao Fashion is a clothing company that has fallen into a dead end.

Once part of China’s consumer upgrade story, Ribao Fashion’s core brand “Broadcast” was once one of the representatives of domestic designer women’s wear. Its target demographic was urban white-collar women, priced between mass brands and light luxury.

In the Chinese apparel industry around 2010, this positioning was quite popular. At that time, the industry was in a branding phase, with many mid-to-high-end women’s brands like Jiangnan Buyi and Geili Si expanding rapidly through department stores.

In an era when information was not yet fully transparent, as long as the brand’s style was established, consumers in an upward economy were often willing to spend “real money.”

Ribao Fashion went public in 2017, with revenue of 1.073 billion yuan and net profit of 84 million yuan that year, seeming to have a bright future. The following year, revenue rose to 1.132 billion yuan, a peak it never surpassed again. It struggled within the 1 billion range for five years, until 2024 when revenue fell to 866 million yuan, and net profit turned from profit to a loss of 159 million yuan.

This was due to fundamental changes in the apparel industry.

With the rise of e-commerce, consumers gained nearly unlimited choices, able to find cheaper, faster-updating clothing at any time.

Meanwhile, international fast fashion brands like ZARA and H&M entered China rapidly. Their supply chains are highly efficient, allowing them to launch new styles even faster.

In this competitive environment, traditional Chinese mid-to-high-end women’s brands gradually found themselves in an awkward position: prices not high enough to create a luxury moat; yet not low enough to compete with online brands.

As a result, the domestic consumer market experienced structural stratification: ultra-high-end luxury continued to prosper, the “replacement economy” thrived, but brands like “Broadcast” in the middle segment faced stiff headwinds.

The company’s offline stores shrank from a peak of 1,067 in 2018 to 677 in mid-2023, meaning store closures, inventory provisions, and impairment losses continued to erode profits.

Ribao Fashion also embraced live streaming, but while live e-commerce brought traffic, it also forced brands into discounting, severely damaging their style and squeezing profit margins. The company itself admitted that short-video live streaming was a significant factor in its poor performance.

In 2024, the company’s commercial and office property development was halted due to planning adjustments, resulting in an additional impairment of 72.25 million yuan. This unexpected loss completely crushed its annual profit and became the “last straw” that broke Ribao Fashion.

With only 141 million yuan in cash and a loss of 159 million yuan, Ribao Fashion, burdened by its history, industry headwinds, and occasional losses, has little room for self-rescue.

In this context, the original controller Wang Weidong sold his control at a discount in 2023—an act of rational retreat and an active choice after the company’s difficulties.

Liang Feng promised that within 36 months of gaining control or before the completion of this transaction (whichever is later), he would not actively divest major apparel assets. The “Broadcast” stores and team are still operational, but how a chemical materials listed company can effectively manage a clothing brand—ranging from corporate governance to brand operation—is an uncharted challenge.

Industry insiders believe that the dual-core business model appears to be a compromise, but in reality, it is a structural arrangement to avoid regulatory classification of “backdoor listing.” How Liang Feng will eventually exit remains only a matter of time.

A mid-to-high-end women’s clothing company, bleeding performance in the wave of consumption restructuring, has become a chess piece for fund managers transitioning into industry to布局 in new energy. This story is not particularly unique—similar “women’s wear/women’s shoes switching tracks” scripts have played out many times in A-shares, from Guirenniao’s move into grain and oil to Saturday’s transformation into YaoWang Technology.

A once celebrated story of consumption upgrade, Ribao Fashion ultimately became a capital entry point into the new energy industry. For Ribao Fashion, this may mark the end of an era narrative; for Liang Feng, it is a successful capital operation.

The A-share market is never short of such stories. But each transition reminds us: industry trends shift, and so do capital narratives.