On March 28, Bubble Mart released its 2021 annual report.
According to the annual report, Bubble Mart's revenue in 2021 was 4.49 billion yuan, an increase of 78.7% over 2.513 billion yuan in the same period of the previous year; Bubble Mart's gross profit in 2021 was 2.758 billion yuan, an increase of 73.1% over 1.594 billion yuan in the same period of the previous year.
Affected by the financial performance, on the same day, the stock price of Bubble Mart fell in response to the sound, and fell by about 8% during the session. Obviously, such performance did not impress investors.
The reason is that, first, the growth rate of Bubble Mart's performance has been weak. In 2020, Bubble Mart's revenue growth rate was 225%, while in 2021, revenue growth slowed to 78%.
The second is that the speed at which Bubble Mart makes money is slowing down. Gross margin decreased from 63.4% in 2020 to 61.4% in 2021, and adjusted net margin also decreased to 22.3% from 27.9% in 2020.
As of press time, the market value of Bubble Mart is about HK$50 billion. It is worth noting that in just one year, the market value of Bubble Mart has shrunk significantly compared with the 150 billion Hong Kong dollars at its peak.
In addition, in the consumer market, due to the high price increase, serious quality control problems, and the blind box economy named by 315, since this year, word of mouth and brand value have also been questioned by the outside world.
According to the Tianyancha App, tianjin bubble mart culture communication co., ltd. was fined 50,000 yuan by the Tianjin Binhai New Area Market Supervision and Administration Bureau for violating the "Interim Regulations on Regulating Promotional Behavior" for not announcing the probability of obtaining prizes and the number of prizes in the sales process. Shareholder information shows that the company is wholly owned by Beijing Bubble Mart Cultural and Creative Co., Ltd.
From being popular with young people to now stepping out of the black and red route, what new story can Bubble Mart tell?
De-blinding boxing
Wang Ning, the founder of Bubble Mart, has stressed on many occasions that Bubble Mart is not a blind box company, but a fashion play brand.
But it is undeniable that the fire of Bubble Mart is out of the circle because of the form of blind boxes. Consumers who are keen on blind boxes have smoked cards for more than four years and pumped Bubble Mart into the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In the prospectus, Bubble Mart mentioned that in the first half of 2020, the blind box revenue of 689 million yuan accounted for 84.2% of the company's total revenue.
But in the past year, Bubble Mart has been pushed to the forefront several times due to blind box supervision. The most recent one is the joint name of Bubble Mart and KFC.
According to the social platform netizens, some fans spent tens of thousands of yuan to buy more than 100 packages at a time in order to set up a complete set of bubble mart X KFC joint names; there are also consumers who hire people to eat for bubble mart. This incident was also named by the China Consumer Association.
Looking back at the growth process of Bubble Mart, in the initial stage of breaking the circle, Bubble Mart relied heavily on this form of "blind box card drawing" to attract fans to join. But with the establishment of bubble mart fan circle, de-blind boxing began to gradually unfold.
Starting from 2021, Bubble Mart will no longer list the gains of the blind box separately in the financial report. In Wang Ning's view, blind boxes are just a form of sales that is icing on the cake.
In terms of product sales, Bubble Mart has also begun to transition from blind boxes to tide play.
During the reporting period, Bubble Mart officially launched the high-end tide play product line "MEGA Collection Series", and the PRODUCTs of the MEGA series achieved a total revenue of 178 million yuan.
It is understood that the gameplay of the Bubble Mart MEGA Treasure Series is more similar to the Tide Play Collection. Qualify by lottery at the flagship store. In general, players are more willing to buy Bubble Mart's MEGA series with an investment eye, "when you get it, the second-hand market usually sells at a higher price, and it is not worried about selling." ”
And Bubble Mart's followers have also begun to re-examine the entire industry, "How far the blind box company can go, is still a particularly big question mark." A tide play entrepreneur said.
The dilemma of IP
In fact, Bubble Mart is not only trapped by the "blind box", but also the "single IP" is also an important factor in its development restrictions.
In the early years, Wang Ning's Bubble Mart was still just a "trend life small department store", losing 40 million yuan in the first half of 2014-2016, until the emergence of Molly, which made Wang Ning breathe a sigh of relief.
It is understood that Wang Ning especially liked to interact with fans on Weibo: "In addition to liking Sonny Angel, what else do you like to collect?" This Japanese blind box toy called Sunny Angel once contributed two-thirds of Bubble Mart's revenue in 2015, and Wang Ning urgently needed to find a more explosive IP.
A large number of netizens replied to Molly designed by Hong Kong designer Wang Xinming, so Wang Ning quickly flew to Hong Kong to find Wang Xinming to cooperate. In July 2016, Bubble Mart launched the first "Molly Zodiac" blind box series, and the company began to turn a profit.
It is said that Wang Ning's Weibo was called "worth 100 million" by an executive of Bubble Mart, and 7 years later, Bubble Mart carried the IP, or Molly.
From the financial report, Bubble Mart intends to support new IP, and its own IP income has further increased, rising from 980 million yuan in 2020 to 2.587 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 164% at the same time.
This was helped by the outbreak of SKULLPANDA in 2021, and skullpanda's contribution to revenue increased from 0.3 billion in 2020 to 595 million in 2021. The proportion of revenue of the old IP Molly and Dimoo in the full year of 2021 increased by only 1.5% and 0.1% year-on-year.
PUCKY, which was once considered to be the second largest IP of Bubble Mart, reduced its revenue contribution from 11.9% in 2020 to 4.1% in 2021.
This also points out to a certain extent that even if SKULLPANDA has a long life cycle, it is difficult to offset the aging problems of bubble mart's other IP.
Obviously, the new IP of Bubble Mart has not yet been hatched, and the life cycle of the old IP is gradually being eaten by the user's likes and dislikes.
This can also be seen in the member repurchase rate of Bubble Mart. In 2021, Bubble Mart added 12.18 million new registered members, but the membership repurchase rate has dropped from 58% in 2019 to 56.5% in 2021.
In the field of new consumption, the incubation of new products in new tea, cosmetics and other categories is more inclined to the industrialization process; while the tide play category is different, creating mature IP is more inclined to the accident of artistic creation and the luck of the explosive circle.
Therefore, Wang Ning is searching for the next "Molly", full of uncertainty.
Go to sea to save the city
Since 2021, in addition to internal worries, Bubble Mart has added strong competitors to the external environment and is no longer thriving.
For example, the collector's toy brand 52TOYS received a 400 million series C financing from Congu Capital in 2021, and the store opening strategy also chose to be around Bubble Mart; F.UN also received equity financing from Sequoia China in April 2021.
Although TOP TOY, a chao play brand under Mingchuang Premium, entered the market late, relying on the supply chain advantages of the parent company Mingchuang Premium, it quickly expanded its stores to 89 in 2021, and according to the 2021 annual report of Mingchuang Premium, TOP TOY online channel has about 3 million users and nearly 1.5 million members.
Therefore, although Bubble Mart is still in the first echelon, the threat to it is increasing due to the tide play brand in the second echelon.
Seeking new room for growth is a top priority for Bubble Mart.
It is worth noting that last year, The wholesale and other income of Bubble Mart outside the Chinese mainland increased from 74.2 million yuan in 2020 to 137.4 million yuan in 2021, an increase of 85.2% year-on-year, mainly due to the expansion of overseas markets and brand promotion in different overseas countries.
In the conference call, Bubble Mart executives said that it is expected that this year's overseas revenue will reach 2-3 times that of last year, and two styles of stores will be opened overseas, one of which is to open stores according to the domestic style. The second is to create a differentiated style according to the local flagship store.
Wang Ning also said that he hopes that overseas income can reach 50% of the overall income in the future.
However, whether the sea rescue can support the second growth space of bubble Mart is still unknown.
(Source|.) AI Blue Media Collection Author| Yang Lei)