Li Gang's new business model experiment is quite aggressive.

Text / Leju Finance Yang Kaiyue

After the Lunar New Year, the annual report season begins one after another.

Based on the performance forecasts of several publicly listed home furnishing companies that have already been announced for 2025, many companies are facing declining performance. However, amid widespread complaints, some companies have achieved a slight turnaround in their performance.

Recently, reports showed that HuJia Decoration Jing’an Store, in just three months, managed to recover the store performance that had fallen over 30% in 2024, bringing it back to the same level as 2023 with slight growth. The average customer transaction value increased from 210,000 yuan to 260,000 yuan.

It is reported that starting May 1, 2025, this store became HuJia Decoration’s first pilot store for transformation, fully testing a new business model of “restructuring the integrated decoration product sales model.”

Specifically, after the Jing’an store launched its transformation, it set up a nearly 600-square-meter “Home Star Selection” showroom. All product categories involved in the design plan are available for consumers to experience at the Jing’an store. This enables a seamless experience from online virtual plans, to offline store real scene experiences, and finally to 1:1 home restoration—truly “what you see is what you get.”

In terms of marketing, Jing’an store adopts a “buy hard decoration, get soft decoration free” all-in-one pricing model for full renovation products, with a maximum contract price of 320,000 yuan and a gift of 50,000 yuan worth of furniture. Additionally, HuJia Decoration ensures that all product designers involved in serving each customer are coordinated by a comprehensive design team, and the entire renovation process only requires communication with two people: the comprehensive designer and the project supervisor.

HuJia Decoration was founded by Li Gang in 2015 in Shanghai. Li Gang is not from Shanghai; he was born in Shandong in 1973 and grew up in Anhui. After graduating from university, Li Gang first worked at a company in Anhui. After resigning, at age 26, he moved to Shanghai to start a career in cultural media and also ventured into TV shopping.

He recounts that he encountered many headaches during his own home renovation. Coupled with the decline of the TV shopping industry and the opportunities in the renovation sector, he decided to cross into the home decoration field.

In the early days of his entrepreneurship, Li Gang had access to a large amount of TV advertising resources, which helped his venture in renovation flourish. “Within a year, the share of full renovation jumped from 2% to 97.6%, and HuJia Decoration’s performance tripled,” Li Gang recalled.

In 2020, publicly available reports disclosed that HuJia Decoration’s annual sales exceeded 2.7 billion yuan in 2019. Also, in December 2020, HuJia Decoration introduced two major investment firms, Puru Investment and Qipan Investment, with Puru Investment leading the investment and Qipan Investment co-investing, totaling over 100 million yuan in strategic investment.

In October 2021, HuJia Decoration’s registered capital increased from 12.65 million yuan to 126.5 million yuan, and the company name changed from “Limited Liability Company” to “Joint Stock Company.” During this period, HuJia Decoration underwent two name changes, ultimately becoming “Shanghai HuJia Decoration Service Group Co., Ltd.”

In early 2022, HuJia Decoration launched listing counseling, aiming for an A-share IPO, and submitted a written report on the listing counseling to the China Securities Regulatory Commission. Haitong Securities Co., Ltd. served as its counseling institution. However, as of now, its listing process remains on hold.