Cheng also blind box defeat also blind box, bubble mart can not become China Disney

Bubble Mart CEO Wang Ning often mentions two sentences.

One sentence is "to pursue the balance between business and art", and the other sentence is "Bubble Mart is doing a fashion business, and the blind box is only a form of sales".

Before and after the listing, Bubble Mart conveyed a strong desire to fade the blind box label; now listed for more than 1 year, Bubble Mart is still doing both IP business and blind box business.

Blind box, the starting point of the popularity of the tide play

Founded in 2010 as a popular supermarket, Bubble Mart learned from Retailers like Loft in Japan that sell cultural creations, toys and groceries, and the English name "POP MART" is derived from this.

In 2014, Bubble Mart began distributing The Japanese blind box toy Sonny Angel, a bare-butt, round-eyed, small-bellied angel boy with different looks, who by 2015 had accounted for nearly 50% of Bubble Mart's sales.

▲ Sonny Angel.

Inspired by this, Bubble Mart began to do subtraction, all the way down to only doing tide play.

In 2016, the copyright of Sonny Angel expired, and Bubble Mart urgently needed a new "pillar". Molly, which was introduced in December 2015, became the hottest answer in the Weibo comment section of "What else do you like to collect besides Sonny Angel?"

▲ Molly. Image credit: Bubble Mart

The word "collected" used here just cuts to the lifeblood of "blind box + tide play".

The unknown momentary pleasure when opening the box, the sense of achievement of collecting the whole set, and the sense of possession of the European emperor who draws the hidden model are all the reasons why the blind box is despised by some people and deeply fascinated by some people.

While being chosen by probability, believing that it is your own choice, somewhat "three points of destiny" means.

Gacha, Lucky Bag, Little Raccoon Crisp Noodles, mobile game smoking SSR, all have the same magic as blind boxes.

With Sonny Angel's experience, Bubble Mart decided to buy out Molly's exclusive licensing on the mainland and emulate Sonny Angel's blind box approach.

▲ Molly Zodiac Constellation Series.

In July 2016, the Molly Zodiac constellation series blind box was launched and became a hit, which is the first self-directed fashion play product series of Bubble Mart, including a hidden model with a total of 13 images, and Molly has since become the representative IP of Bubble Mart.

In addition to satisfying consumers' curiosity and collection habits, Wang Ning believes that the blind box is actually "the standard of output gameplay, size, and language". The former is psychosocial and the latter is the business model.

The main material of the blind box tide play is PVC, the early stage needs to be 3D design of the product, and after the design is determined, it is a series of processes such as mold opening, glue injection mass production, and coloring.

Artists pursue the ultimate in art, and the blind box is a standardized, fully commercial form of tide play, artistic compromise, shopping experience has been strengthened, making tide play more popular, more entertaining, better mass production, more easily reach thousands of consumers.

Southwest Securities analysis pointed out that compared with the Lego IP cooperation model or Bandai model, the price band of 29-99 yuan / blind box reduces the decision-making cost of people who try to buy blind boxes for the first time out of curiosity.

▲ Image from: LEGO

In April 2021, the price of the new blind box of bubble mart's multiple head IP was raised from 59 yuan / to 69 yuan / one, but it is still in this range.

As a large-scale standard, the gross profit margin of the blind box is not low. The 2021 financial report released by Bubble Mart on March 28 shows that although it is lower than 68.7% in 2020, the gross profit margin of Bubble Mart brand products is still 64.7%.

However, there are also drawbacks to the standardization of blind boxes, the style of tide play may be homogenized, and designers who pursue craftsmanship also need to adapt to this bias towards FMCG. In an interview with Guanchao New Consumption, 52TOYS founder Wei Chen pointed out:

The size and price of the blind box, more suitable for making cute things... For example, more hardcore styles such as mecha and deformation should also have corresponding toys.

▲ Bubble Mart and Disney co-branded.

Wang Ning has repeatedly stressed that "we don't think that Bubble Mart's achievements today are only because of the blind box as a carrier." The core element of bubble mart's rapid growth is IP itself", but bubble mart has never and could not lose the form of blind box.

In the Bubble Mart Tmall flagship store, the vast majority are blind box products, with only a few handmade, BJD dolls and plush toys. The hottest blind box series sells 10,000+ a month, the hottest handmade and plush toys sell 1000+ a month, and the hottest BJD doll sells 900+ a month, but other non-blind box products are broken, only a few hundred or dozens of monthly sales.

In 2019, the revenue of Bubble Mart blind box products was 1.3592 billion yuan; in 2021, the "Bubble Mart Box Pumping Machine" Mini Program alone had revenue of 898 million, accounting for 47.8% of revenue.

▲ Image from: Bubble Mart 2021 financial report

The IP image itself is of course important, but the blind box is also indispensable to its packaging. At the level of entering mass consumption, content and form are inseparable.

It is both a blind box company and an IP broker

Interestingly, in the 2021 financial report, only the tide play, IP, there is no blind box these two words.

The 2020 financial report only mentions the blind box once in the "Future Outlook" section: we will work on IP types, expand the IP library, launch more head series products, and broaden the tide play category other than the blind box.

Bubble Mart often says that it is "not a blind box company, but an IP-based tide play company".

The first half of the sentence is not convincing, the blind box is still closely linked to Bubble Mart; the second half of the sentence refers to Bubble Mart is an artist's agency, a company about IP incubation and operation.

▲ WANG Ning.

Bubble Mart understands IP differently from Disney, which it once wanted to benchmark. In a conversation with Black Ant Capital, Wang Ning mentioned:

Now young people's time is fragmented. Molly IPs lower the bar for time, and for a minute, you know if you like it or not... With the change of the times, it is no longer like Disney to do a very high-quality content first, and then give birth to an IP for everyone to see.

Bubble Mart's hip play IP itself has no story, no values and emotions. There is no one side, which means multi-faceted, a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand people, and a thousand Molly.

▲ Molly.

Perhaps no one can explain why Molly has big eyes, a beep, and the corners of her mouth are down, and why Sonny Angel has a bare ass, round eyes, and a small belly. It is enough for us to read from them only visually that we are happy, sad, another self, or simply captured for cuteness.

The uniqueness of each IP, in addition to its own design, is also reflected in the different themes of the series of blind boxes, including original themes such as constellations and space travel, as well as joint models with well-known IPs, such as Molly's minion version and LABUBU's version of SpongeBob SquarePants.

▲ LABUBU version of SpongeBob SquarePants.

To some extent, this is similar to the logic of operating traffic stars, which is in line with the "short and fast" characteristics of the current era.

If Molly was the first super star, Bubble Mart wanted to cultivate more.

In Bubble Mart's 2021 financial report, Molly (15.7%), SKULLPANDA (13.3%), and Dimoo (12.6%) ranked in the top three in terms of revenue from their own IP, with revenue exceeding 500 million, which is no longer the era of Molly's "unique side".

▲ Dimoo. Image from: Figureworm Creative

It is worth noting that the self-owned IP includes "acquired representative IP" and "IP developed by the in-house design team". Bubble Mart's prospectus shows that the above 3 IPs are all acquired.

Bubble Mart is also cultivating an in-house designer team, with "Little Sweet Bean" revenue of 161.5 million yuan in 2021 and "Ono" listed in October 2021 earning 0.522 billion yuan, but compared with the first three, it is "Little Witch Sees Big Witch".

In fact, abandoning the original ability, Bubble Mart Win entered the game earlier, had the opportunity to sign more high-quality IP, and also had the opportunity to occupy the advantages of supply chain, retail channels and marketing, so that the works of the signed designers could be quickly commercialized.

▲ Bubble Mart business. Image courtesy of Bubble Mart Prospectus

In the past, Bubble Mart wanted to be "China's Disney"; later the saying changed, and when it was listed in December 2020, the company's management said that "Bubble Mart no longer emphasizes the internal emphasis on becoming China's Disney, but aspires to become China's Bubble Mart".

▲ Disneyland. Image courtesy of: Disney

Disney owns content brands such as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studios, Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm, and operates "IP with a story" through theme parks, copyright publishing and games, and downstream derivatives. The "traffic password" Ling Na Belle also stands on the shoulders of these existing resources.

And Bubble Mart can't tell a story, nor does it want to tell a story, it is doing a strong channel business, building an IP commercialization platform, packaging in the form of a blind box, and Disney's IP operation method is fundamentally different.

According to "Pie Finance", the lack of background story of IP itself is still its biggest bubble; the tide play collectors contacted by "Open Pineapple Finance" also pointed out that according to the classification division of the tide play industry, the blind box is at the bottom of the pyramid, in addition to the hidden model, other blind boxes will only depreciate.

Relying too much on the blind box is repeating the fate of "water can carry a boat and can overturn a boat".

Blind box cooling

In the past two years, blind boxes have been frequently scolded for IQ tax and cutting leeks because of quality control, after-sales, hunger marketing, scalper scalping, secondary market speculation and other reasons.

On the official website of Black Cat Complaints, more than 8300 complaints about Bubble Mart can be found, and many consumers said that the blind box received was defective, but the customer service refused to change the goods and delayed the refund.

▲ Reviews under the Tmall flagship store.

For the problem of product defects, Bubble Mart gave specific defect identification criteria after sales, and stipulated that "you can initiate an application for replacement, and if the spare part is out of stock, you can return the goods for refund".

On the one hand, to prevent consumers from deliberately returning goods because of the style, on the other hand, this makes it much more difficult to sell after-sales.

In addition, Bubble Mart's 99 yuan "arbitrary door" lucky bag, because of the ugly hand, worthless, thunder money, let many netizens call "hot eyes", and was questioned as "clear inventory".

▲ Some of the "arbitrary doors" lucky bags posted by netizens.

Blind boxes are a way to "clear inventory". Now there are also special luxury blind box e-commerce to solve the problem of "overstocking of seasonal goods" that causes luxury brands a headache. Although the rules determine that "willing to gamble and lose", if the investment and income are seriously unequal, it is inevitable that there will be a suspicion of cutting leeks.

The most recent scandal was that at the beginning of the year, KFC co-branded Bubble Mart's blind box package caused a mad rush, and some consumers spent 10494 yuan to buy 106 packages at a time, and consumers purchased substitute food services. The China Consumer Association directly named Bubble Mart and KFC:

Use blind boxes to induce food overconsumption, when resisting!

▲ KFC co-branded Bubble Mart's blind box package.

On January 14, the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Market Supervision issued the "Shanghai Blind Box Business Activities Compliance Guidelines", which gave 20 compliance suggestions, covering blind box prices, extraction rules, after-sales guarantees, marketing hype, etc.

Blind box business has a red line, bubble mart is also gradually exploring the "non-blind box" route.

In June 2021, Based on Molly, Bubble Mart launched the high-end fashion play product line "MEGA Treasure Series" and sold it in limited quantities worldwide, mainly in 400% and 1000% specifications, which is commonly known as "Big Baby".

The sale price of 1000% Dawa is 4999 yuan, but it has basically been speculated to more than 15,000 yuan on the second-hand platform, which seems to have the posture of "trending wealth management products", and ordinary blind box players are discouraged.

▲ 400% Molly.

In the 2021 financial report, "Dawa" brought a total of 178.1 million yuan in revenue. But this number is not outstanding enough in the face of the blind box business.

At the same time, Bubble Mart has invested more and more frequently, not only investing in animation movies such as "Nezha Reborn" and "White Snake 2: Green Snake Robbery", but also investing in the vertical e-commerce platform "Cat Galaxy" around the second dimension, solestage, the American tide brand buyer's shop Solestage, and the animation company "Two Points and Ten", adding to the trend culture.

▲ Bubble Mart × "Nezha Reborn".

Even more surprising is that the theme park of Bubble Mart is also planned. On January 6, Bubble Mart reached a cooperation with Beijing Chaoyang Park to authorize the use of the "European Charm" project in the park and its surrounding streets and forests.

Heavy capital investment, long-term returns, the theme park road must be difficult. CITIC Construction Investment predicts that even Universal Studios Beijing's return cycle will take 4 years. In this regard, Xiao Yang, vice president of Bubble Mart, said, "It may be done first for small and medium-sized, and the theme park is too heavy."

Other trendy play brands also have a distinct trend of "non-blind boxes".

▲ Image courtesy of 52TOYS

52TOYS refers to Bubble Mart as the "first share of tide play", while 52TOYS wants to be the "first brand of collectible toys", and collecting toys include but are not limited to tide play.

TOP TOY sets the "global tide play collection" as a vision, claiming to be more like the Android system, the essence lies in open compatibility, in the category is richer, blind box is only one of the categories.

▲ TOP TOY stores.

Taste the benefits of the blind box, but also swallow its bitter fruit.

Bubble Mart's tide play mostly PVC materials, the cost is not high, the blind box as a game mechanism to operate the IP, artificial mystery and scarcity to create its value, the secondary market and reflect and circulate its value. Some are purely for collecting, others are for the sake of earning traffic and profit.

"Blind box + tide play without a story" is indeed a good way to "let the mass consumption tide play", but it also buries many worries - quality control in general, hunger marketing, scalper hype, design homogenization, weak development of IP in the later stage, and hidden worries about gameplay...

When experiencing the feeling of "asymmetry" and "being disappointed", the fresh consumers of the picture often quit. Wait until the excitement of "small gambling pleasure" has passed, or "clear price" has won the hearts of the people. And Bubble Mart wants to get rid of the blind box label, but it is still a long way forward.

▲ From: Bubble Mart official Weibo