Bao Fan in conversation with Wang Ning: Deconstructing the tide to play "truth"

Although people have tried to explain the development path of "tide play" by tracing back to the source, its image has always been foggy and too niche - until the emergence of Bubble Mart. Based on "continuous IP productivity + new gameplay + strong channels", Bubble Mart has made "tide play" become the hot trend cultural faction most favored by young people after clothing and sneakers almost overnight.

We prefer to deduce the reasons for the success of Bubble Mart in the context of the times. At present, we are in the historical leap period of cultural upgrading, and the huge consumer market that has sprouted behind the exploration of the spiritual core and self-symbol by the younger generation of consumers is a new proposition that every entrepreneur and investment institution needs to rethink.

Bao Fan:

In just a few years, China's tide play market has rapidly exceeded 100 billion yuan, what do you think are the reasons for the market outbreak?

Wang Ning:

First of all, Tide Play is not a new market, Art Toy in Hong Kong has a history of at least 20 years, in Japan or Europe and the United States, the history of "big kids handmade" is even longer. It's just that for a long time in the past, people have the impression that Art Toy is very niche, subcultural, and more focused on boys.

If Bubble Mart hopes to break through these dimensional walls, it must make some changes: First, expand the consumer population, increase the female consumer group, and increase the frequency of consumption. Judging from the current consumer portrait, 75% of Bubble Mart's customer base is female, which is different from the previous tide play market - when there are more female consumers, it is possible to form a larger and more valuable industry.

Secondly, with the post-80s and post-90s, including the post-00s gradually becoming the mainstream consumer group of society, many so-called subcultures have gradually become new mainstream cultures, which is also one of the backgrounds of market outbreaks. With the development of information dissemination methods and speeds, through social platforms, exhibitions and other ways, we can continue to expand the core consumer circle layer and help them find more sense of identity.

Third, we have innovated the channel and supply chain to create a complete industry ecology, so that our products can form a scale effect more quickly.

In the past, everyone bought hands and bought the story behind it, such as Marvel, Disney and other evergreen IP, there is a grand world view driving consumers to pay. But Molly is different, it doesn't have a story, it's just an image, it has a lot of blank space. Where do you think Molly's vitality comes from?

Just like stars, some people may become stars by making movies, and some people may become stars by singing or by walking on the Victoria's Secret catwalk. The logic behind Molly's ability to become a beloved image is more like 100 Hamlets in 100 people's hearts, it hollows out its soul, you can put your soul in it. I think this is a charm of tide play.

In the universal sense, there is a distinction between light and heavy content, but there is no distinction between high and low. Some people will think that IP must have a narrative story and a communication carrier to be called content, but this idea is too absolute. Just like we can't say Rodin's sculpture, Kusama Yayoi's pumpkin, because it hasn't been made in a movie or a manga, so it has no content. Secondly, after the time of young people is fragmented in large quantities, there is not necessarily so much complete time to understand a new IP with a grand world view, and if you can't grasp the fragmentation time of consumers, your values will be difficult to affect consumers.

It sounds like a work of art.

Every era has the carrier of art and culture of each era, and now young people let him paint ink paintings and do such artistic carriers with rich Chinese heritage as purple sand pots, and everyone is prohibitive. Sensual things have always been there, but the sensibility of this generation of young people may be placed in rap, in graffiti or tattoos. These are the ways that belong to this era, the cooler and more interesting ways that young people see, and these labels can stimulate their desire to express themselves.

When we talk about Art Toy, I think there will be a little less toy in it, and a lot of times Art has a little more ingredient. Everyone calls it a toy because the material that created it is the material of the toy, but the lines and colors given to it by the artist behind it make it a combination of painting and sculpture, which is a work of art, and (tide play) is a more commercial work of art.

Some of the artists I've just met, they're already doing limited, very expensive handmade, they're going to some art fairs or art fairs, and there's a lot of people lining up to buy them, and it's already a semi-commercial state. One of the things Bubble Mart did was to fully commercialize it: dig out these "kings who are still singing in bars", record their music on CD, and sell it all over the world at a great price.

Do you think classic IP like Molly can be industrially copied?

I think there are all kinds of possibilities in this industry, and the most talented artists and the most talented designs must be scarce. I especially like to compare this industry with the music industry, jay Chou, Faye Wong such superstars must be a scarce resource, the two industries have a common charm is that you can not use money to recreate a Jay Chou, in other words, it is impossible to use money to recreate a moly this most head of the classic image out, it must be the result of the combination of time and place.

However, in every era there will be a lot of industrialized things. As far as IP is concerned, in the future, I believe that there will be more and more Internet celebrity players, according to public preferences, more in line with business rules to create some images. But I personally think the most valuable thing is the scarcer things, more genius design.

How do you ensure that scarce resources such as "Jay Chou and Faye Wong" are willing to cooperate with Bubble Mart?

This year is the tenth year of Bubble Mart, as early as 2016 we discovered the huge commercial potential and value of the tide play industry, at that time we signed the excellent IP that has been precipitated in this industry for many years. At that time, we needed to think about how to continue to tap new and potential IP and incorporate them into the ecology of Bubble Mart.

Our twice-yearly toy show is an important part of our company's strategy in recent years. Every year, hundreds of artists come to this fair with their latest works, and from here we find many potential artists. This platform is the scene of the artist's audition, and some new IPs are also born here.

In addition to mining our own IP, we have now begun to do a lot of IP cooperation in the global vision, such as cooperation with Disney and Universal, cooperation with some well-known two-dimensional IP and so on. Nowadays, in bubble mart's platform, you will see more head-of-the-head IP products with international labels, which means that bubble mart's business model today is more inclusive - we can not only create our own IP to compete with other IP, but also carry a more diversified cooperation model, and our influence is expanding.

The tide played over the past few decades with a peak of its own and is now at a high point. Now there is a voice saying that tide play is a kind of fast fashion, and it may not be popular for a while in the future, and there will be more fashionable things to replace it. Are you worried about this?

IP has its life cycle, and I can't deny that. Some people can fire for a year, some people may fire for five years, and some people whose design is classic enough, or with their own creative ability, they can continue to provide high-quality content for 20 years.

But I think the focus is not whether a single IP can be evergreen, but the length of life of the entire industry ecology. In the case of Molly, it has been born this year for 14 years, which is not a very new thing, and the industry is not a new industry. The difference between Bubble Mart and Bubble Mart is that we have spent more energy to build a healthy platform and industry ecology.

Now Bubble Mart has formed a platform-based ecological closed loop: from the upstream design end, such as the trend toy exhibition that can dig out excellent artists and works, to the construction of supply chain systems such as midstream sales channels, and the downstream tide play cultural community, these things are very valuable. What we do is a platform for artists, where new artists are here every year to present themselves, and to transform their creations as a whole.

From the perspective of the terminal, the blind box is a carrier that has largely driven the development speed and activity of the entire market, how important do you think this model is to today's bubble mart?

It can be said that it is important, or it can be said that it is not so important. Blind box this kind of play is not invented by us, from the time we ate small raccoon noodles when we were young, we began to set cards, to the Japanese gacha, the game of the blind box has been around for many years, it is not a very complex business model itself, it is easy to be copied.

People feel that the blind box is important, mainly because when we were promoting the tide play culture to the public, the blind box can strengthen the shopping experience very well, use an entertaining way to do retail, let people re-examine the universality of the industry, and verify the success of this game.

But we don't think Bubble's results today are just because of the blind box as a carrier. The core element of the rapid growth of Bubble Mart is the IP itself. Most of our users are adults, and what really attracts them is not only the sense of surprise brought about by opening the blind box, but more importantly, the contents of the box.

I have always believed that a good consumer brand must achieve mental communication and communication with consumers to ensure that consumers can get a great sense of satisfaction and pleasure from it. What do you think is the "tacit understanding" between Bubble Mart and consumers?

The sense of satisfaction that Bao said is a very typical need. Many people will ask me a question, as a non-rigid product, why everyone has such a passion for tide play. On the contrary, I think that what makes people satisfied in modern society must be non-rigid products.

For example, eating a full meal now will not make us have a particularly strong sense of satisfaction, but it is possible that a restaurant with a better environment will increase the satisfaction a little, for example, if you eat with the person you like, the satisfaction may be a little higher. None of this has anything to do with being fed, but rather a sense of spiritual satisfaction — passing on the good, which is what Bubble Mart is doing.

I asked you a question before, classic trend play and sneakers have a strong collectible value. We see platforms like things (poisons) more often as a social currency. From the perspective of bubble saying to do industry ecology, have you considered building your own second-hand trading platform?

Once any industry is on fire, especially after the consumer goods industry has 1% of super users, it will generate a second-hand market.

On the one hand, we are not the same as dewu, when dewu is second-hand, it is mainly to do the sale of nike and Adi's limited edition shoes, and we ourselves are Nike and Adi in the field of fashion play. Most of the explosive models or IPs that everyone likes on the market are under bubble mart, so we pay more attention to its first-hand market rather than its second-hand market. But the social attributes in the second-hand market are very attractive to us, and we believe that there will be greater commercial (brand) value.

If you start from the perspective of business model, how do you define Bubble Mart?

The question I've been thinking about the most lately is what Bubble Mart is doing. Some people may think that we are doing retail because we have opened many, many stores; some people think that we are selling toys because we are selling hands; some people think that we are doing IP because we sign a lot of IP; and some people say that we do exhibitions. These are all aspects of Bubble Mart, but we don't spin off a business to summarize ourselves. What Bubble is doing now, including what we want to do in the future, we all strive to have a balance between art and business, or find a balance between sensibility and reason.

Different industries have different characteristics, each entrepreneur also has their own different pursuits and ideas, some entrepreneurs want to do is the ultimate commercialization of products, the pursuit of ultra-high cost performance, through China's strong manufacturing industry and relatively low labor cost advantages to achieve, and then win a place in the industry. There are many such companies. But some industries or entrepreneurs are just the opposite, for example, I meet a lot of artists, they will look for the ultimate in art, thinking that commercialization will make art impure.

But I still communicate with them a lot, because I believe that classic design must be well integrated with business. I think that in the process of Consumption Upgrading in China in the future, a lot of commercial iterations are to find balance, and for us, we don't want to be too commercial and we don't want to be too idealistic. What we want to do is to help these emotional artists to do rational thinking and judgment, to help rational people find some emotional outlets, and to pursue the balance of business and art is what bubble Mart did before, now and in the future.

Talking about the future, what kind of business do you think Bubble Mart will be ten years from now?

I've been thinking about a problem lately, that there are outlets, or cycles, in business. Group buying, social networking and e-commerce all have their own best years, in fact, art also has the so-called cycle and outlet, or there is a golden age that belongs to them. How to judge that the opportunity for the industry outbreak has arrived? I believe that the strong needs of society, a complete industry ecology, a positive profit model, and mature leading enterprises are indispensable.

For art, tide play has given many artists a new platform or a new way of expression, and it is the high peak of the industry at present. The question we need to think about is whether we can let this high position stay longer, whether we can do more. For example, when more artists create more classic IP images, these images can be used in other content forms in addition to making toys? For example, it is combined with the industry to make a theme park.

Sounds a lot like Disney.

I often say that maybe give us another five years, everyone looks back at Bubble Mart, will think that we are the most like Disney company in China, we may not make so many movies like Disney, but we may be like Disney, have a lot of very valuable super IP, we will use their own different ways to incubate IP, to dig and commercialize IP.

Bubble Mart has been ten years this year, look back at the most difficult and proud thing in the decade?

The most difficult time is definitely the beginning. We often joke now that when we started a business, we wanted to do A, we did it and made it B, and suddenly one day we somehow succeeded in C, and maybe one day we will become great in D. Bubble Mart is now in C, and there are certainly still many difficulties waiting for us on the road to greatness, but the most difficult period of exploration has passed.

In the past ten years of entrepreneurship, we have made a lot of firm decisions, such as in the early days, we were determined to go offline. Offline stores are a very difficult thing, when we opened the first store, completely from scratch, the worst neighbors are also some chain clothing brands. At that time, it was difficult to build a team that could satisfy you from top to bottom, and even the most basic clerks were difficult to recruit. Including how you, as a new brand, how to make the mall recognize your value and let you drive in, these are all very difficult processes. In particular, the iteration of offline stores is still very slow. Only when you save enough money to open the next store can you solve some of the problems encountered in the previous store.

There were three or four years in between, and every time I went into the store, I had an urge to do it all over again, because there were so many details that bothered me. But these years have been much better, through ten years of iteration, a little bit of optimization on the details, online and offline styles are also slowly merging.

When I was interviewed by the media in the early years, I said that my ideal was to be an entrepreneur rather than a businessman, a businessman is equivalent to a person fighting, and an entrepreneur is leading a group of people to fight. Bubble Mart in this decade, the most proud of me is the team, these core executives have followed me for more than seven years, this is the team I built, although it is difficult to start a business, but these people are a core motivation for you to persevere.

What is bubble mart's corporate culture?

I have always told the team that the entrepreneurial concept we believe in, can also be said to be the company culture on the eight words "respect for time, respect for management". We know a lot of entrepreneurial friends, but also saw a lot of entrepreneurial stories, most of the failure is not respect for time, the original ten years to do things must be done in two years, three years to do, or do not respect the operation, rapid expansion, lack of team management.

I've always believed that any industry or business model, back to the end, is the person doing it. People can't escape chai rice oil salt sauce vinegar tea when they do it, it takes time, and every detail needs to be run-in to ensure that the team's pace is uniform. I don't believe that as long as you have money to do something, you can build a team of a thousand people a year, and you can make everyone work together to achieve one thing. We only believe in the accumulation of time and respect for the business, and entrepreneurs need to understand the importance of these details.

Perhaps in the eyes of the public, Bubble Mart suddenly jumped out like a new species, and Tide Play also stood on the cusp overnight, but in fact Bubble Mart has been rooted in this industry for ten years. Over the past decade, we have not emphasized the need to brush up on the sense of existence in the public sphere from time to time, we have just been accumulating and hibernating to ensure that when there is such an opportunity as today, the first person to stand up is Bubble Mart, not someone else.

When people suddenly turn around and want to participate, they will find that our commercial moat has become very deep, we have done so many direct stores, done the entire industry exhibition, done the community, signed so many artists, made the transformation of the industry's supply chain, these are very "heavy" things, and these decisions are the bets made in the early days based on our understanding of business, from this point of view, sometimes slow is fast.

Questions:

How does Bubble Mart choose artists to work with?

In the early days, we didn't choose artists in a particular way, and many artists from all over the world went around attending art exhibitions or toy fairs and selling their works. At that time, the standard was particularly simple, and which exhibitions were in line was the first target we signed. We were also lucky enough to sign a lot of top artists and IPs at that time, including Molly, Labubu and so on.

Now Bubble Mart slowly began to become an artist's creative platform, just like variety shows, in the early days, it would take the initiative to invite excellent stars to participate in the show, but when this variety show became more and more popular, this rhythm became whoever came to participate would become a star. Bubble Mart is now slowly becoming Hunan Satellite TV and "Running Man", and we have begun to have a certain star-making ability.

What do you think of the traffic dividend?

Every era has a traffic dividend of each era, and the traffic scene has always been changing iteratively. For Bubble Mart, the question is how to capture core customers through traffic, and which channel is the most effective way to reach more new customers.

Bubble Mart will always do a little more of its own card slot dimension, covering all available sales channels. For example, directly operated stores are the traffic of the card slot offline, we have nearly a thousand vending machines scattered in different scenarios, online channels we have Tmall, JD.com, WeChat Mini Programs and so on. Last year's Tmall Double Eleven, Bubble Mart's sales surpassed Lego and became the first seller in the toy category. Including WeChat Mini Programs, many people do not know that the sales of our Mini Programs are the same volume as Tmall. We also have our own small programs on Douyin, and we can also buy our products on Douyin, and in the future, we will become more diversified in channel sales.

Just now you mentioned that the layout and operation offline is the moat of Bubble Mart, if one day Luckin-style competitor companies parachute in, how do you cope with the challenge?

Cost performance is not the core competitiveness of all consumer brands. I will tell you a very interesting story, I went to France in 2018 to attend a luxury course, the main speaker is LV executives, he asked us a question, we all know that discounts can make product inventory more optimized, profitable means of operation, but why do you not see LV discount stores in outlets, including LV stores around the world are rarely discounted?

He made a hypothesis before saying the answer: a girl spent tens of thousands of dollars to buy an LV bag, if one day you tell her that this bag was originally 50,000 yuan, and now the price is reduced to promote 500 yuan, do you think this girl will still buy? It is very likely that you suddenly don't want to buy it. Or the same designer, design, quality, why not buy it at a discount? Because the discount is not just a bag thing, but the discount is equivalent to breaking a consumer's dream - the brand is the ultimate moat of the enterprise.

Brand is a dream-making process, the brand mission is to create a dream first, and help you protect this dream. I was still very touched to hear that a good brand must be to create and then protect a dream for consumers, rather than selling things with extreme cost performance. In the future, more high-quality brands in China should not only rely on cost performance to establish their own brand image, but also have more intrinsic value attached to the brand.

Under the epidemic, how does Bubble Mart keep the team cohesive?

At the beginning of the epidemic, everyone in the company worked together, and we donated 10 million yuan to Wuhan for the first time. In addition, we made an internal commitment, no matter how hard it is, we will not lay off employees or reduce salaries, which has a certain encouragement for everyone's morale.

We have also made a lot of timely adjustments in the business. We have increased the proportion of some new products sold online, offline we opened in time to have praise, the technical team spent two weeks to develop the store's online interface, through the WeChat search bubble Mart offline mall, to the store as a unit, can flash, does not affect the performance of the store calculation, these will also let the store staff to these more suitable for this stage of the purchase method, more active to promote to fans, customers, these are the active efforts we are making.

In addition, since March, the market is also slowly picking up, and we are still more confident about the future.

How do you compare Bubble Mart and Lego?

I have always felt that Lego is a very great enterprise, Lego is like a technology company, its greatest value is to create a language and system, everyone cooperates with him to write again in his language, into its system, the value of this language and system is very large, far more than the toy itself, this is its core competitiveness accumulated over so many years, but also the most valuable thing.

That's why Bubble Mart also wanted to build our language and system in the early years. We promote blind boxes in large quantities, in fact, we are also exporting the standard of gameplay, size, and language. In the early years, we also needed to introduce you to what a blind box is, and we did not need to introduce what a blind box was in these two years. Everyone knows the blind box, knows the hidden, these derived words are becoming a set of language systems, which is the commercial value of the standard language system that we learned and practiced from Lego.

But the difference with Lego is that in addition to precipitating a set of languages and systems, Bubble Mart can also precipitate IP, which is a more interesting thing, we can precipitate super IPs like Molly, Labubu, etc., through our language system to let everyone know him.