How easy is it to earn money for young people?
The market value of the first blind box bubble mart of more than HK$50 billion is the most direct answer - according to iResearch's estimates, the scale of China's tide play industry in 2021 is only 38.43 billion yuan.
Under one petite and cute doll after another, there is hidden the "dark" careful thoughts of the bubble maters; under the enthusiastic purchase of one player after another, it is an upgraded blind box trick. Archaeological blind box, do not be surprised to receive a piece of soil; fast food blind box, some people only smoke not to eat.
In 1895, Charlie Fei invented the slot machine that would later become popular in countless bars and casinos, and people became addicted to this small game in which it was possible to win a big prize by investing change. In the new era, "sudden wealth" is no longer just people's material pursuit, but also spiritual pursuit. Bubble Mart and a group of merchants who are familiar with the blind box trick are also setting up and manipulating like a casino.
Heavy sustenance
"Is it reasonable for two staple foods to give three glasses of Coke?"
When seeing the joint package of KFC and Bubble Mart, Xiao Han after 00 could not help but secretly complain about the food combination of the package: "This form is somewhat forced to buy and sell." ”
Even if it is her favorite Dimoo image IP, Xiaohan did not pay for it, in the face of the brand's next operation, Xiaohan felt very disappointed, so she directly drew this set of joint blind boxes into the "not worthwhile" partition.
As a sophomore student party, Xiaohan is slightly sensitive to the daily price of a blind box of one hundred, but even if she feels that the price is high, she is still willing to pay for the IP of "Heart Water", because in Xiaohan's eyes, it is worth buying happy.
She used a paragraph on Weibo to describe her mood when she bought a blind box: "I think it is still necessary to spend money on hobbies, even if it is not practical, it does not matter, because this is not a waste of money, but psychological treatment." 」 ”
Even if he has not yet entered the society, but the heavy academic work has made Xiao Han feel pressured, because the school landscape architecture major courses are full, homework is more, Xiao Han because of the study of things to stay up until the early morning is a common thing: "Students in other majors read my class schedule and said that their weekly classes are not as much as our three days. ”
And young people like Xiao Han who are "Alexander" are actually not in the minority.
Guangming Network once did a survey on the pressure of young people in Beijing, and of the 4143 respondents, more than 90% of them could feel the pressure, and 20% of them thought that the pressure was too great to bear.
Under the multiple pressures of study, work, life and other aspects, the consumption habits of young people are changing with it, and at present, goods with added value have become the favorite of more young consumers.
Japanese social observer Shigeru Miura mentioned in the book "The 4th Consumption Era" that in the period from 2005 to 2034, society has entered the 4th consumption era, goods are no longer the center of consumption, consumers began to pay attention to the connection between things and people, and pursue to establish interactive relationships between people.
In a sense, when an object is given the value of healing emotions, the connection between people and things is naturally formed, so can a small blind box meet the needs of another spirit?
| Image source: Star Video
The "2021 Tide Play Consumption Report" shows that in addition to emotional sustenance, another reason why young people are keen on blind boxes stems from social needs, blind box consumers like to share on social media, and blind box enthusiasts in the same city will also gather together to form a more relaxed way of socializing.
A blind box enthusiast who went into the pit with a friend said that his blind box is meaningful: "Basically my blind boxes are the kind of one with my friends, and I pay more attention to who I buy with, and what I value is the memory." ”
In addition to maintaining intimate relationships, blind box socialization can also play a role in "breaking the ice".
Under the Weibo topic of "blind box becomes a new way for young people to socialize", some netizens even posted that she and her boyfriend came together because "two people like an IP", it can be said that in addition to the basic role of decoration, blind boxes have been given more and more other meanings.
Some people use blind boxes to decompress, some people use blind boxes to socialize, and under the blessing of added value, the blind boxes contain more things.
Manipulation tricks
Too many choices, entanglements are difficult to determine; too few choices, limited numbers.
"Difficulty in choosing" is the most common difficult disease for contemporary young people, and the blind box has become a good medicine. In a vegetable market in Nanjing's Xuanwu District, the post-90s stall owner launched a blind box of vegetables, "I made this blind box in the vegetable market to solve the problem that everyone doesn't know what to eat every day!" ”
In this era of information overload, there are many choices, and the blind box pinches the characteristics of the user's psychological entanglement, rendering the results of random allocation into the results of free choice. At the same time, the pleasure of "demolition" is magnified, and in the end, even if you do not smoke your favorite style, you will only sigh: bad luck, next time you will smoke.
Solving the problem of multiple choices, the blind box also wants to "accurately pinch" the user. As the short story "The Babylon Lottery" writes, Babylonians have the freedom to participate in the lottery, and lottery companies have the right to design rules. When people are easily manipulated, they think it's just bad luck.
KFC and Bubble Mart launched a blind box package set of 6 models, plus a hidden version. Dimoo is one of the six hottest IPs under Bubble Mart, enthusiasts want to fully assemble, must buy a certain number of KFC family barrel packages, according to netizens calculated that the probability of rare hidden models appearing is 1:72.
In order to get KFC's hidden money, some people spent tens of thousands. According to incomplete statistics, on a second-hand platform, more than 100 sellers are selling KFC blind boxes, and some directly break the "opaque" principle, posting a whole box of blind box pictures, the price is of course not 69 yuan - 99 yuan, but 600 yuan - 800 yuan, hidden price is even 8 times the original package.
| Image source: Idle Fish APP
The blind box business has to give people a thumbs up, it evokes the desire of consumers by replacing choice, and then detonates consumer behavior through rare hidden models. As a result, some unremarkable products are free to navigate the market at high prices and high quantities, and consumers are like puppets, manipulated and played.
In fact, before the domestic blind box fire, the kindergarten teacher VV had paid attention to the Japanese blind box brand Sonny Angel, which was founded in 2004 and can be described as the "originator" of the blind box industry, but why did the predecessors not become popular, as the bubble Mart and 52TOYS of the back wave were on fire?
"Sonny Angel's shape is indeed very cute, but this is also its biggest drawback," VV combined with his own observations and feelings of analysis, "a box of dolls look the same good, when the box is unpacking is not so exciting, it is not like most of the blind boxes in China will have a few bad looks." ”
Sonny Angel, which can no longer be stable, is difficult to touch the nerves of consumers who suffer from gain and loss, and VV even has doubts that some blind box brands will deliberately design thunder models.
Some people are equally well versed in the tricks.
When talking to "A Little Finance" about the state of mind of buying a blind box, Cat Sister couldn't help but raise her own decibel: "If I hadn't been to satisfy the little farts in the family, I wouldn't have bought it." ”
Her own store also sells blind boxes, and she knows this marketing method, but her 8-year-old son Xiaoyu is deeply trapped in blind boxes and will exchange them for purchase opportunities such as "good performance", "grade progress" and "participation in extracurricular activities".
Xiaoyu's favorite is the "Harry Potter" series, the series of blind boxes is "12 +1", in order to "1" hidden models, Xiaoyu has bought 20, still has not drawn hidden models.
"Before this final exam, he said that if I was in the top three, you would buy me two blind boxes." Cat Sister said with a helpless look, "He did take the second place, don't I buy it?" One is 89 yuan, and this alone is now almost two thousand, which is equivalent to the eldest son's one-month living expenses. ”
On the blind box, a chain of control has been derived.
A chain of blood suckers
Luck is at the head, and a box is hard to find.
On the eve of the Spring Festival in 2022, Bubble Mart, which seized the Spring Festival point, launched the Tiger Leap New Year series blind box where 15 classic IPs gathered, and many offline stores sold out due to the market being too hot. "At that time, The Tiger Leap New Year was all removed from the shelves in the box pumping machine, and the store did not have it, and the price was very high."
Muzi, who has collected 14 models, is still close to "good luck" to get together a whole set, so he turned his attention to a second-hand blind box trading APP called "Thousand Island Tide Playboy", but what he did not expect was that this experience of collecting babies would be so tortuous.
The original price of 69 yuan of Hongyun when the first blind box, in the scarcity of the next all the way soared, later, in addition to paying the price of the blind box hundreds of pieces, but also to buy other distribution styles.
"If you want to buy Hongyun, you have to buy other dolls together, like a second-hand platform that sells ten yuan of Dalei, the seller will be out of the original price of 59, 69, 89 yuan," Muzi added: "Some of them build two blind boxes, and some of them build six." ”
The usual distribution method of luxury goods, Muzi met in the blind box circle: "There must be a team fried behind it."
"Once out of print, there are still many people who want, the price is naturally fried, there are a lot of scalpers on the Little Red Book," Muzi was not surprised: "Like last year's Labubu series of strawberry shortbread cakes, it was about 60 to 80 yuan at the time, and after the out-of-print, it can already sell for 300 yuan." ”
But in fact, a few hundred yuan is far from reaching the ceiling of the price of blind boxes. It is understood that the hidden "deer shadow" of the Bubble Mart Dimo series has been speculated to a minimum of 10,000 on the second-hand trading platform, and the value has increased by a hundred times compared with the original price.
Under the temptation of such profits, scalpers who make differences by speculating in boxes have quietly slipped into the blind box market. Offline stores, many people through the shaking box, weighing and other ways to "invisible through the box", find out the hot or hidden model and then increase the price to hang on the second-hand platform; online channels, there are also scalpers rush to buy and hoard goods, to out of stock to rely on the price increase to sell.
Although many consumers said that it is "not interesting" to buy a box on a second-hand platform, there are many people who take the initiative to buy like Muzi, there is a market for demand, scarce blind boxes produce a high premium, and there are unlimited business opportunities behind the benefits.
With the great heat of the blind box economy, the downstream of its industrial chain has begun to derive a number of second-hand trading platforms in recent years, such as qiandao tide playboys, enchantment, blind box planet, egg fun, etc. Users will show the style of the box after sampling the blind box on such a platform, and there are also a large number of users who have sold the "open box" that has been drawn here.
| Image source: Qi Cha Cha - The financing process of the Qiandao Tide Play family
In the market environment with the high market value of the blind box head player Bubble Mart, the second-hand trading platform downstream of the blind box industry chain has also obtained capital bets. At the end of 2021, Qiandao Chaoju announced the completion of a Series B financing led by Sequoia China and Gaorong Capital, with a scale of nearly 100 million US dollars.
A small blind box has created tens of billions of economic benefits, and it is no longer stuck to the "self-made blind box" spoon, and has taken the stage as a "middleman".
epilogue
The prosperity of the blind box economy is inseparable from the three-way joint construction. Standing in three perspectives to observe, buyers and sellers and middlemen have their own ideas, consumers buy blind boxes in order to obtain spiritual satisfaction, blind box companies seek to "pinch" consumers by creating psychological gaps and other tricks, and the derived third-party platforms fan the flames in the melee.
Under the intensification of the "chaos fight", and see what kind of future the blind box economy can create.