Tech Planet (WeChat ID: tech618)
Wen | Xi Rui
Cover source | Visual China
In the past year, the once hot Internet celebrity tide play brand Bubble Mart has almost spent time in doubt.
In the capital market, bubble mart's market value once shrank by nearly half, reaching HK$59.1 billion as of January 6. As the stock price continues to fall, it is not difficult to see the doubts of the capital market about the sustainability of bubble mart development.
IP is regarded as the core competitiveness of Bubble Mart, but the revenue of head IP is declining. Bubble Mart's main backbone IP Molly's revenue in 2020 reached 350 million yuan, a decrease of 100 million yuan compared with 2019. As of the first half of last year, Molly's revenue has risen to more than 200 million, but the top revenue throne has become Dimo. This series of data raises questions about the monetization ability of IP.
As more players flock to the market to dig for gold, Bubble Mart's external competitive environment has also become more intense. Consumers are no longer as enthusiastic about blind box play as before. According to Bubble Mart's financial report data, the membership repurchase rate has dropped from 58% in the first half of 2019 to 49% in the first half of 2021. The changes in the tide play market have also raised questions about the form of Bubble Mart products.
In the face of skepticism, Bubble Mart's executives have become much more low-key, and founder Wang Ning has rarely appeared. But in fact, Bubble Mart has been constantly changing in the past year, and the movements are more frequent than ever.
From the ip cross-border joint name to the launch of the "Mega" series of large-scale handmade, Bubble Mart is constantly increasing the extensibility of the original IP and trying more business possibilities. In addition to the main business, Bubble Mart also loved investment last year, and invested around the trend consumption field to deepen the layout of the industry.
On the first day of the new year in 2022, the offline stores of the sub-brand Baoqu were launched in a low-key manner. Although Bubble Mart is not hyped up, It actually carries the arduous task of diversifying the IP ecosystem of Bubble Mart.
More importantly, the industry has reported that the bubble Mart theme park is landing. Wang Ning, who once said that he would not be Disney, still embarked on the same path as Disney.
From blind boxes to art collections, from hipster play to pan-entertainment, Bubble Mart's plates are getting bigger and bigger. Can a new story be told?
Fun to engage in art: not only to make blind boxes, no longer cute wind
At the beginning of the new year, the first store of Bubble Mart sub-brand Baoqu opened in Metro City, Shanghai.
In fact, as early as 2016, Bubble Mart launched the independent App Bao fun, which was positioned as a trendy toy e-commerce community. However, after the transformation of Huqu from online to offline, the positioning has also become an incubation platform for emerging Chinese designers.
In the nearly 300-square-meter store, more than half of the space is used for art exhibitions, equivalent to the size of a bubble Mart standard store.
The person in charge of Baoqu said that the art exhibition space of Baoqu will be provided to the artists, partners and studios who signed the contract to meet the needs of their solo exhibitions, traveling exhibitions and art signings, "in 2022, there will be 5 to 6 different exhibitions landing in the first store of Baoqu".
In fact, holding exhibitions in stores is a fun way to explore new forms of IP incubation. The person in charge of Puqu said that he hopes to let more consumers like IP first, and then associate it with IP to incubate all aspects of the product.
At present, Baoqu has signed two major IPs, KUBO and Jiaolu Cat. KUBO is known as the biggest dark horse in 2021, with more than 8,000 related notes on the Little Red Book. The first exhibition of The Fun is around KUBO.
In addition to exploring new IP incubation methods, the role of Huqu is to absorb IP that cannot be integrated into the bubble mart ecosystem.
Whether it is its own IP or cooperative IP, bubble mart IP keywords are inseparable from cute, cute and other elements. Bubble Mart related staff also said that some stylized products will be very strange to put into Bubble Mart's system. Consumers have a relatively solidified understanding of the style of Bubble Mart.
But more and more diverse IP styles have appeared in the market and are welcome. The establishment of a new IP pool will not harm the original ecology, but also further seize the market.
KUBO is a trendy, cool little boy image, and the proportion of users between men and women is not very different. On platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Weibo, there are also many male users in The Baby.
The second half of the Shop Fun store is the commodity retail area. Compared with the "artistic" atmosphere deliberately created by Baoqu, the retail section of Baoqu is more like a collection of tide play. In addition to a small number of blind box products of Bubble Mart's head IP, there are more statues, handmade, building blocks and other trendy play categories on display.
It can be seen that blind boxes are not the mainstream of the commodity of the gourd. The person in charge of Baoqu also said in an interview that the product forms of the contracted IP in the future will be more diverse, and the incubation suitable for IP will be selected.
It can be seen that Through the form of the exhibition, Huqu hopes to let IP interact with consumers at an early stage and increase the exposure of IP. Then rely on the supply chain of Bubble Mart to create IP derivatives, and finally sell them in channels such as Baoqu offline stores, mini programs and Tmall flagship stores, so as to realize the combination of exhibition and retail and establish a complete IP creation chain.
This is similar to Disney's thinking, Disney did not cling to the city with IP such as Donald Duck, but hatched new IPs such as the explosive Duffy family. The slight difference is that Bao Qu is more eager to seek speed, hoping to incubate the cutting-edge IP on the market.
In addition, compared with Bubble Mart, consumers have not yet formed a fixed price cognition of the new platform, Which has no blind box restrictions and can be more imaginative on the unit price.
The person in charge of The Fun also revealed in an interview that the Merlot City store will have a four-hand Mickey Exhibition, and the unit price of the goods has exceeded 1,000. "For some of these products, we will also do more introduction and testing, it has risen to the art category, collection category, naturally the unit price will also make some breakthroughs."
A theme park in Chaoyang Park?
Bubble Mart's theme park also made new progress last year.
In March last year, Wang Ning said at an analyst conference that the company plans to gradually develop theme parks. This is the first time Bubble Mart has revealed that it wants to create a theme park.
At that time, the official external caliber was "this is just a conceptual stage", but 5 months later, Beijing Bubble Mart Park Management Co., Ltd. has been established, the business scope includes urban park management, amusement parks, catering management, sports brokerage services, performance venue management, etc.
Interestingly, Bubble Mart was stationed at Universal Studios Beijing and Shanghai Disney last year. When Opening the first global concept store at Universal Studios, Xiao Yang, vice president of Bubble Mart in charge of offline channels, said in an interview with the media: "Bubble Mart first buys a ticket, comes in to feel it, and cooperation with Universal Studios is also a process of learning from each other. ”
While studying, my own theme park has completed the site selection.
Recently, the industry has reported the news that Bubble Mart has reached a cooperation with Beijing Chaoyang Park, and Chaoyang Park will authorize Bubble Mart to use the "European Charm" project in the park and its surrounding streets and forests.
According to Interface News, the person in charge of the Bubble Mart Park project revealed that the current project feasibility study and concept design have been completed and are in the program design stage, at the same time, the park team is establishing a cooperative relationship with excellent suppliers with experience in the construction of Universal or Disneyland. Committed to building the project into a trend cultural paradise integrating tide play IP, cultural communication, immersive experience, leisure and entertainment.
The amplification effect of offline theme parks on the value of IP is self-evident. Despite the impact of the epidemic, Disney's theme parks are closed and closed. But Disney's 2021 financial report showed that the group's revenue was $67.418 billion, and the park and derivatives business contributed nearly a quarter of the revenue.
Compared with Shanghai Disneyland, Shanghai Disneyland covers an area of 1.16 square kilometers, while the total area of Chaoyang Park is 2.887 square kilometers. According to public information, the European wind charm covers an area of about 0.03 square kilometers. The final form of Bubble Mart Theme Park is not yet known.
It is expected that after the end of the mission of Chaoyang Park as a pilot area, Bubble Mart will promote the construction of theme parks on a large scale, and the question of when to have its own "Disney" and "Universal Studios" theme parks will be answered. The asset-heavy theme park will also be a key step to push up bubble Mart's capital market imagination and run to Disney's market value of 100 billion US dollars.
Twelve years after its establishment, hesitate, or take the road of Disney?
With the gradual landing of the theme park, I can't help but make the outside world think again that Bubble Mart is still on the road to Disney.
At the end of 2019, "five years later, it will become the company that most resembles Disney in China", which is Wang Ning's expectation of Bubble Mart. But the next year, during the roadshow, Wang Ning said that Bubble Mart would not do China's Disney, but the world's Bubble Mart.
Disney's business structure includes film and television entertainment, cable TV, streaming, theme parks and merchandise retail. Disney's business model is a typical round of revenue: first launch a film and television work with IP stories as the core, make money through the box office for the first round of revenue, then earn a second round of revenue through copyright, followed by the income generation of theme parks, and finally earn a fourth round through brand licensing and chain operations.
Bubble Mart relies on contentless IP to start with derivatives and then expand backwards to the theme park section. It is different from Disney in the commercial path, but the essence is to rely on IP to attract consumers.
The biggest difference between Bubble Mart and Disney is the content. But since last year, Bubble Mart has no longer "resisted" content. Previously, Bubble Mart was extremely cautious in IP content. In Wang Ning's view, "IP without a story can allow consumers to express their understanding of the IP image more freely."
In September last year, when Bubble Mart's new IP Ono Hirano was launched, Bubble Mart created a character story for it and presented it in the form of an animated short film. Keywords include seeking, loss, powerlessness, inner, and together with Hirano, find those hidden selves under the outside. Bubble Mart began to try to give IP more specific tags.
In the same month, Bubble Mart invested in the head company in the animation field at two o'clock, and the two have begun to plan content cooperation. Prior to this, Bubble Mart also invested in two animated films, New Gods: Nezha Reborn, and Whitesnake 2: Green Snake Robbery.
The person in charge of the war investment department of Bubble Mart also said to the outside world that the role of the war investment department of Bubble Mart is to cooperate with the company's strategy and meet the resources needed by the business side in the development process, and the invested enterprises are related to the business. This means that the content has become the focus of Bubble Mart's interior.
But compared with Disney, the hesitant Bubble Mart is still in its infancy in terms of content. Whether content will be the key to its IP operation is still a question.
At this stage, Bubble Mart seems to have ambitions that are not just to become Disney.
Bubble Mart invested heavily in cat galaxy, two points and ten animation, thirteen more than thirteen, Solestage, Mumu Art Museum and other companies last year, and its tentacles extended to animation, Hanfu, tide brands, exhibitions and other fields. In September last year, Bubble Mart also established an investment company with a registered capital of 100 million.
Bubble Mart wants to consolidate its position in the trendy consumer industry through investment, rely on theme parks and IP content as a stepping stone to enter the entertainment industry, and want to rely on exhibitions, promote high-end product lines, and invest in art museums and art fields.
And taking advantage of the outlet of the meta-universe, Bubble Mart also wants to get a piece of the pie. According to the Tianyancha App, recently, Beijing Bubble Mart Cultural and Creative Co., Ltd. applied for the registration of the "Bubble Yuan Universe" trademark, the international classification includes advertising sales, fitness equipment, the current trademark status is awaiting substantive examination.
For Bubble Mart, whether it can become Disney itself needs to be a question mark. At a deeper level, Bubble Mart doesn't seem to have figured out what she wants to be. But for Bubble Mart at this stage, no matter which field it expands, it will be the new story it needs to push up its market value.
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