The "blind box culture" is being accepted by young and middle-aged people, it represents fashion, trends, and the target group is concentrated in women aged 18-35. Speaking of the pioneers and main promoters of China's trendy toy culture, we have to mention Bubble Mart, Bubble Mart with its designers, retail channels and industrial chain competitive advantages out of the circle, its well-known IP is Molly, Dimoo and so on. Click to start the independent station operation tour
According to Molly, as of now, Bubble Mart has undergone 9 financings with a financing amount of more than $100 million, and was listed in Hong Kong on December 11, 2020. Bubble Mart's overseas sales mainly relied on Amazon in the early days, and later made its own independent station, and the cross-border e-commerce sales model is actually more mature. Click to consult the standalone website builder service
Domestic business tightened, and it was urgent to expand internationally
In the 2020 financial report, Molly can clearly feel that the overall revenue growth rate of Bubble Mart has declined. In 2019, the revenue of Bubble Mart was 1.683 billion yuan, up 226.79% month-on-month; in 2020, due to the impact of the new crown epidemic, although the revenue maintained growth, the momentum was not as rapid as in 2019, and the revenue in 2020 was 2.513 billion yuan, up 49.31% month-on-month. Click to see more big sell earnings updates
From the financial report, the revenue of the bubble mart channel comes from: 1, retail stores; 2, robot stores; 3, online channels; 4, wholesale channels and others. Retail stores and online channels are a large part of its revenue.
Bubble Mart's online revenue includes Tmall flagship store, Bubble Mart box drawer, JD.com flagship store and other online channels. The growth of online channels is mainly due to the increase in brand influence and membership, including the addition of other e-commerce channels, such as Amazon, AliExpress, and independent sites. (Click to consult the global store opening service)
In fact, Bubble Mart officially launched its overseas business in 2018 and has spread to more than 20 countries and regions, including China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia, North America and Europe.
Overseas platforms include official stores, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, France, AliExpress, Shrimp Skin, and Amazon US sites.
In the early days, Bubble Mart's online channels mainly relied on third-party platforms such as Amazon, and with the all-round transformation of the business, a strategic layout of third-party platforms and independent stations has been formed, and the products are sold to 52 countries and regions around the world.
Although the offline business of Bubble Mart occupies 80% of the head, the establishment of online channels is an important link between Bubble Mart to transmit brand value and connect members and brands, it opens up offline and online, forming a complete closed loop, offline member information, offline purchase points and online are interoperable, breaking the consumer's shopping restrictions, whether online or online can use points synchronously.
As the first stock of domestic blind box fun, why Bubble Mart expanded internationally, Justin Moon, vice president of Bubble Mart's overseas department, mentioned 3 reasons in an interview:
The first reason is based on the successful experience gained in the domestic market, they believe that through the capabilities of the domestic market, a solid foothold can be established in overseas markets;
The second reason is to find and integrate resources or business models that are not available in the local market overseas to enhance the competitive advantage in the local market;
The third reason is that the potential for artists to develop overseas is huge, and there is a great demand for art toys from global consumers.
In addition to the above three reasons, in Molly's view, the intensification of competition in the domestic market, the tightening of regulatory policies, the decline in stock prices, the slowdown in revenue growth and other issues are also the reasons that trigger bubble mart to expand into overseas markets.
Localized operations, targeting North American and European markets
It is understood that for the overseas marketing layout, Bubble Mart attaches great importance to localization, and they believe that the localization of a brand includes the localization of management methods, the localization of manpower and the localization of products.
They have several social media platforms run by local teams that create favorite content based on the preferences of local audiences.
In addition, they develop more exclusive product versions for specific countries or regions to connect more with local audiences. In the future, they will adapt their product portfolio in each country or region to better adapt to the preferences of each target consumer. At present, the total number of website visits to its official store "global.popmart.com" in the past three months is 515.6K, which is 5.06% lower than that of November and December, to 172.8K.
Image source: similarweb
The country with the most push traffic to global.popmart.com in December was the United States, accounting for 49.91%, followed by Canada, accounting for 13.34%.
Bubble Mart selects the main target countries and regions based on income level and consumer behavior. In 2020, about 80% of Bubble Mart's overseas sales will come from Asia and Southeast Asia, while North America and Europe have a large proportion of Asian consumers, and based on their successful experience in Asia and Southeast Asia, they have developed a strategy to enter the North American and European markets.
According to the analysis, global.popmart.com audiences are interested in computer electronics and technology > social networks and online communities and shopping.
The layout of its website marketing channels, a large part of the traffic comes from keyword search advertising, accounting for up to 59.75%, of which keywords that generate organic traffic account for up to 86.22%, and paid keywords generate traffic account for only 13.78%; direct access brings 28.36% of the traffic, which shows that most of its websites are generated by organic traffic. Social media accounted for 7% of the traffic.
The layout of social media is dominated by YouTube and Facebook, accounting for 50.22% and 30.41% respectively.
According to Molly's query, its YouTube account was registered on April 2, 2019, and the current number of followers is 3370, which has generated 1.9 million views.
Source: POP MART YouTube account
One of the most viewed videos was the Bunny Christmas Christmas series, which showcased 10 sets of shapes, including rabbits, Christmas trees, snowmen, elk and other shapes.
It is worth mentioning that at the beginning of the new year, POP MART has planned a new blind unboxing program on YouTube, they will invite different guests to participate in this show, let the guests play blind unboxing games in the program, through touch, guess what the characters in the blind box are, until they open the box to know the specific toys inside, the game process is full of suspense and excitement, making people look forward to the chemical reaction between the guests and the blind box during the game.
On February 2, 2022, the first episode premiered, a total of 10 minutes, invited the guest Shay Marie to unbox, from the current viewing data, the number of views is 350, the data is not too ideal, but for blind box lovers is obviously a particularly good experience, from the screen can feel the pleasure of opening the blind box.
In April of the same year, POP MART also signed up for Twitter, which currently has 4270 followers and a total of 1021 tweets. The update cycle is 1-2 articles per day, or 2-3 days to release an update, there is no obvious law, and the release content is mostly its peripheral products.