Hong Kong’s slumping office rental market is getting a little boost from an unlikely client.
China’s top-earning influencer Zhang Qingyang, also known as Crazy Xiaoyangge, or “crazy little Brother Yang” in Chinese, has rented a 5,000 sq ft office in Wan Chai as his company Three Sheep Group sets up a branch in the city.
Hong Kong celebrities including veteran actor Eric Tsang Chi-wai and singer/actor Alan Tam Wing-lun attended Three Sheep Holdings (Hong Kong)’s opening ceremony on Wednesday, according to the company’s official Weibo account.
Zhang said in a recent video that Tsang will be in charge of the Hong Kong branch, Chinese newspaper Securities Times said on Thursday. Tsang is also the general manager of TVB, Hong Kong’s biggest broadcaster.
The move comes as the city’s office rental market is struggling with high vacancy rates and falling rents. However, agents said they have seen an increase in office-space inquiries from mainland-based companies in the past six months, in businesses ranging from electronics to finance to furniture design.
Founded by Zhang in 2021, Three Sheep is a service platform for online creators in mainland China, a type of company sometimes known as a multichannel network (MCN). Its businesses cover brand operations, live broadcasting, talent incubation, investment, supply chain services and celebrity brokerage, according to its official website.
Three Sheep’s Hong Kong company was registered on July 16, according to the Companies Registry.
It has rented a 5,570 sq ft office in the United Asia Finance Centre at a monthly rent of HK$183,000 (US$23,474) or HK$33 per square foot, according to agents familiar with the deal.
“We’ve seen inquiries from some mainland MCN companies as they want to expand their businesses, and now office rents have dropped for the past few years in Hong Kong,” said an agent from Leasing Hub, a local commercial property agency. “They tend to choose grade-B offices as rents are cheaper and they have more flexibility in renovation and modes of operation.”
As of June, an index of rental rates for grade-B offices in Hong Kong has dropped 14 per cent from a peak in September 2019, according to data from the Rating and Valuation Department.
In November 2022, he became the first influencer to reach 100 million followers on Douyin, the ByteDance-owned short video platform that is the Chinese equivalent of TikTok.
In 2023, he disclosed that his company pays out 50 million yuan in wages every month.
Three Sheep did not respond to a request for comment.