Wen | Wang Fengzhi
Edited | Wang Xiaokun
If the tide play blind box is more of a woman's self-pleasing consumption, then the mecha model represents the male spiritual self-preservation.
With the rise of Bubble Mart, the trend of toys represented by blind boxes has become increasingly popular, and it has also driven the entire model toy (also known as collectible toys) market behind it to the public vision. Blind box dolls, mecha models, PVC handmade, GK statues and many other subdivision tracks have also emerged a number of local entrepreneurial brands.
According to the "China Collectible Toy Industry Market Insight Report 2021" released by Analysys in March, the market size of the domestic collectible toy industry will exceed 150 billion yuan in 2025, and the core consumer group will exceed 100 million people. Among them, male consumers will contribute the largest increment, mainly in the category of collectible toys such as mecha deformation and dolls, with a market size of up to 52.5 billion yuan.
"In addition to electronic products, most male users do not have much requirements for the level of life, and pay more attention to their own small spiritual world, that is, film and television works, games, and models derived from computer screens." With male users caught, the depth and viability of the brand will not be a problem. Zhang Zhe, founder of the mecha model play brand Bloomage JoyTOY, told the manager of the 36Kr brand.
It is precisely because of the growth in demand for domestic adult model toys and the maturity of the industrial chain, but the market is occupied by foreign brands, Zhang Zhe and his team founded JOYTOY in 2015, starting from the science fiction mecha category and committed to creating a Chinese model play brand with independent intellectual property rights.
JOYTOY mecha model products
In terms of business layout, ON THE ONE HAND, JOYTOY insists on creating its own IP and products based on the original comics of the team such as "Dark Source" and "BattleStar", and on the other hand, it strengthens the cooperation between the peripheral derivatives of film and television, games and animation IP, such as "Warhammer 40k", "Crossfire", "The Wandering Earth" and so on.
At the product development level, thanks to the continuous production line and the advantages of the automatic control plant, JOYTOY's model can currently achieve 1/18 and 1/25 product ratios, and the joints can be moved.
A background that needs to be added is that the proportion of mainstream dolls on the market is 1/12 and 1/6, and the size of the supporting mech is very large; while the mainstream proportion of mecha is usually 1/100 and 1/144, and the matching dolls of such mechs are very small. Although the small proportion of 1/18 dolls has long had a certain market foundation, there is still a very large market development space in the supporting mech. This ratio can take into account the interaction between the puppet and the mech, the simulation of the scene, etc., which is more conducive to the player's collection in space, so that the player also has a more significant advantage in the purchase frequency and life cycle.
JOYTOY mecha model products
According to Zhang Zhe, the actual purchase user scale of JOYTOY is currently 200,000, with a repurchase rate of 65%, of which more than 90% are men, and the brand revenue scale in 2021 has reached 100 million.
"One of the characteristics of players who buy mechs is that they are more picky about models and like to find problems with products." Zhang Zhe knows that the consumer market did not pay enough attention to male users in the past, so grasping and operating this part of the population is the brand foundation of JOYTOY, "The Chinese market is large enough, we will focus on male users, and so on to achieve 1 million purchase users, with a focused foundation, and then expand other fields and groups." ”
Deep ploughing a type of group of people to do vertical, do specialized, in the stage of brand cold start to the market can usually concentrate resource advantages, penetrate a core communication point, and at the same time establish a high loyalty of the seed user base. But relatively speaking, this style of play is often not sexy enough in terms of scale and circle-breaking growth, and it is more necessary for enterprises to sink down and find their own development rhythm.
"When I started my business, I knew that we were certainly not the first to run out. Development does not need to be particularly fast, just stable enough. For Zhang Zhe, stability means that the brand should control the production line, can clarify the purchasing power of its own users, and ensure that the balance between the product structure and the production relationship is reached, rather than blindly pursuing the concept outlet and Internet speed, ignoring the cycle that industrial development must go through."
Looking at the entire model toy industry, the development of China's independent brands is actually in its infancy, and the core content IP creation has not yet formed a systematic matrix, and behind this is the problem of industrial structure and upstream and downstream interest distribution, which can not be solved overnight.
However, many model play brands, including JOYTOY, are now continuing to invest in content production and cultivate their own IP, which is undoubtedly also a continuous preparation for the improvement of model play awareness, in order to accelerate the arrival of the industry explosion period.
Recently, the manager of the 36Kr brand talked to Zhang Zhe, the founder of JOYTOY, and talked about how local model play brands can break through the "encirclement" of overseas brands to open up the market? How to create a content IP with long-term vitality? And the future trend of the mold play industry.
The following is an excerpt from some of the dialogues (edited):
Talk about entrepreneurship: We are certainly not the first to run out, just be stable enough
Kr brand manager: In 2015, most of the domestic model toy market was still a channel as an agent, what was the opportunity to do JOYTOY at that time?
Zhang Zhe: Subjectively, I definitely like mecha, and I also want to polish a brand well.
From the objective environment, at that time, the domestic adult model toy demand was occupied by foreign brands, the industry did not have a head company, according to the volume of the Chinese market at least three local leading enterprises.
At that time, the first to do independent brands was no one to argue, the second was that the domestic production process was mature, more than 80% of the world's toys were produced in China, we would not be subject to people on the production line, and the third was that it was more difficult to do this, and the threshold barriers for me would be high.
Of course, I knew from the beginning of the business that we were certainly not the first to run out.
Kr brand manager: Seven or eight years ago, the domestic model did not have a brand concept, how to open the market in the early stage?
Zhang Zhe: Under the affordable capital operation, we insist on 36 months of development and upgrading, launch a very small amount of experimental products during the development process to let market feedback to judge the direction of development, accumulate more than 300 seed users, and so on, and gradually, when reaching 1,000 users, even if the 0 to 1 stage is completed.
Kr brand manager: Looking back, everyone knows that it is very important to do original IP, you just mentioned that it is difficult to do independent model play, so the difficulty is content?
Look at it in stages. Original stories and comics are all given to the soul of the product, and a good product also needs a good core to complement each other. Good design is always there, but good stories are not always there.
In the past few years since JOYTOY started, we have always believed that good stories can resonate with more users, so in the process of creating products, we have also been polishing stories and world views, hoping to create our own dark source universe through more plump character images.
But the product itself is the core, to overcome the relationship between product structure and production how to achieve balance or cost-effective is the most difficult, can only be overcome with time and money, there is no shortcut.
Kr brand manager: How to balance this relationship and rhythm?
Zhang Zhe: Each product should be calculated, how many models are produced a month, how much is each, how much profit is, what is the operating cost, calculate clearly, and then maintain this rhythm.
On what basis is this rhythm judged? It is based on the purchasing power of my existing users, for example, our user purchasing power is 10 million, I will do about 9 million goods. After at least three years of stability, after accumulating a certain amount of capital reserves (the amount of funds to maintain the survival of the team for half a year), you can raise the user's purchasing power expectations and increase investment to stimulate the market.
Many people do not know how much purchasing power of their users is blindly developing, especially those who have taken financing. You can't expect the model play industry to grow exponentially like an Internet company and go public for three years, which is a speculative mentality. A lot of capital says that it is optimistic about the future, in fact, it wants to quit in three years, which is not a good thing for the industry.
Kr Brand Manager: Will JOYTOY consider introducing external capital next?
Zhang Zhe: It depends on what kind of mentality the investor has. Strategic investment is OK, just financial investment.
Many capitals are short-sighted and hope to get profits quickly and quickly, but in the long run, their understanding and response to the market is insufficient, and they do not have enough time to precipitate users and lengthen the life cycle of users, but they will make the plate smaller.
If we want to be able to maximize the life of our entire brand, we control our pace. Entrepreneurship is like a long and arduous marathon, not a blind sprint.
To be honest, taking too much money in the short term disrupts our rhythm, and I can't spend so much money on the account. This is not responsible for both the brand and the capital.
Kr brand manager: But objectively the influx of capital has accelerated the popularization of the model play industry, including the continuous popularity of the two concepts of tide play and blind box in recent years, and many new brands have emerged.
Zhang Zhe: Handmade, model, puppet, statue, assembly, etc. can all be called model play, which has become popular overseas decades ago. The emerging concept of tide play is also just a branch of the hand-made class.
The category of mecha models has few competitors in the domestic category, because the production process is more complex and the product line threshold is higher. At present, our model has 12 processes, compared to the product with only 5 or 6 processes on the market, its single product value and phase value will be higher.
Kr brand manager: Having collectible value is a major feature of model play. But for local entrepreneurial model play brands, we do not have a strong original content support at this stage, how to improve the value of your products, so that it has a certain collection attribute?
Zhang Zhe: Our approach is not to produce unlimited production on a product. Unlimited production itself is a manifestation of insufficient brand innovation, and in the long run, the market value of hundreds of thousands of products will certainly not go up.
Long-term mass production and sales under the huge market base can indeed be operated as a classic widely marketed product. But for the entire brand, the new products that are updated and iterated periodically are the most needed. While users themselves are iterating on themselves, brands and products also need to be iterative.
Our strategy for new products in the season is to produce about 3,000-5,000 pieces per model. In addition to the control of quantity, to ensure product quality, the classic product itself will have a certain premium.
Of course, the premise is that our short-term phased goal is not to be a tens of billions of enterprises, and it is impossible to control the amount if it is to be popularized.
Kr brand manager: The pressure of quantity control is that the product iteration should be faster.
Zhang Zhe: Yes, there will be more SKUs. So this year we're going to keep it new every week.
Kr brand manager: How to balance the investment pressure at the product development level?
Zhang Zhe: The cheapest quality value of the mecha model is also one or two hundred. Ensure that your products match the user's psychological expectations for this pricing level, there is a lot of room to play, and in the case of a certain gross profit margin, there will be a better gross profit. Using its characteristics, you can increase the gross profit a little while controlling the cost, and then invest this part in research and development, and the SKU can be continuously updated. Let the iteration of the entire brand go in a positive cycle.
It is precisely because of this that we have always advocated investing in the self-control plant, while ensuring quality, the cost of the production line can be controlled better. Moreover, the control of production capacity in the corresponding production cycle is also more accurate.
Kr brand manager: So what about the current revenue scale and profit?
Zhang Zhe: Last year's revenue was about 100 million. It is more in line with the current strategic positioning, and at the same time, we have not deliberately retained profits, because we do not have the pressure of listed companies to make profits, and this part is used to invest in production lines.
In this field, we must control the factory, the product production line can be well controlled, and the cost will be reduced. At present, we have only played 40%-50% of the production capacity, last year for various reasons, such as the impact of the epidemic caused the SKU not to fully keep up, this year we coordinated more resources internally, the speed of research and development has risen, and the energy efficiency of factory production can be improved to about 70%.
With these foundations, at least in the field of mecha models, we have formed our own advantages, which is equivalent to forming our own brand barriers.
Kr brand manager: The audience of the mecha model is mainly male users, two years ago you announced that the proportion of users is more than 90%, is there a plan to expand the crowd and category next?
Zhang Zhe: At present, our actual purchase user scale is about 200,000, and the proportion of men is still more than 90%, and the repurchase rate is 65%.
Compared with products such as blind box dolls, the user stickiness and single product consumption power of the mecha model are higher, and they are characterized by being more picky, like to find problems for the product, and belong to iron fans with higher loyalty.
Grasp male users, the depth and survival of the brand will not be a problem, the development does not need to be particularly impatient, greedy and fast, stable enough. The Chinese market is big enough, we focus on doing a good job of male users, wait for 1 million users, have a foundation for concentration, and then look at other fields and groups.
Talk about the industry: If you want IP autonomy, let a content live for ten years
Kr brand manager: In the past few years, capital has been investing in content and investing in companies, and the domestic model toy market also has many independent brands, why has there been no self-owned IP with lasting vitality?
Zhang Zhe: It is easy to make a product line out, and it takes time cycle to give the product story soul. From the past market experience, most mature self-owned IP in the face of the market power cycle of at least 8 years, the longer the time, the greater the staying power, as long as your IP story has always existed, the stronger the future power.
Guoman has developed rapidly, but now there are very few stories that can be seen for more than a decade. At present, most of the late IP, the big problem is that the content producer has to rely on financing to live, because the income obtained by relying on platform playback is simply not enough to feed the team's labor costs, and it is not a reasonable way for the company to operate without self-hematopoiesis, so a lot of good content will come out for a year or two, so the industry will not get better.
But where content production can make their own blood, no matter how the story is at the moment, you exist for 10 years, and good IP needs time to accumulate.
Kr Brand Manager: What is the root cause of content producers' unsustainability?
Zhang Zhe: It's a structural problem. Chinese is very creative and there is no shortage of good works, but there are problems with the structure of the distribution of benefits in the entire industry. Content output is in the hands of several platforms, and it is an exclusive IP monopoly.
The same content in Europe, america and Japan will develop synchronously on cross-field platforms, including DC, Marvel and now there are comics, independent stations, and peripherals, forming a closed loop from content to related industries.
I have been in contact with many content producers, usually the platform click share of the money only meets 60%-70% of the operating costs, and the remaining gap has to be filled by the financing of the platform or capital. Can you sell some authorization to increase revenue? In fact, the story didn't grow up and no one bought it.
The entire upstream and downstream content producers make the least amount of money, one wave of people can't do it for two or three years, and then another wave of people rises up, creating a situation where they can do (content) but can't continue to do it.
Kr Brand Manager: How can we change this state?
Zhang Zhe: First, the cost of itself (content) is artificially high, the cost of labor is good, the cost of cooperation is good, and the future will slowly come down. Second, in addition to the platform share, more revenue must be found.
For example, the first content is produced through the platform to charge, and the second user is divided into fees. Many of our content production companies don't have their own user purchasing power ratings, or even their own users, because the users are on the platform. The money earned by the platform has done profits and expansion, not allocated to content production, and finally everyone is raising the platform.
When we chose the IP, there was no Chinese one, and we even thought that it was a big deal to get a team to do Journey to the West again.
Kr brand manager: JOYTOY has a very early layout in the original comic, how much energy is currently being invested in this matter?
Zhang Zhe: Because we can survive on our own, we insist on investing some costs to do it, and at the moment we have little pressure to create content. But there is no deliberate emphasis on this piece, as long as the quality of the content can be guaranteed, through time to gather more seed users, so that everyone gradually from knowing, recognizing, to loving. I also hope that after 10 years, even if it is a big wave and a large number of IPs die, we are still (won).
Toy companies must have their own core IP, either original, or mergers and acquisitions, or exclusive cooperation, no matter what form must have a long-term IP support, and there is no end to the content update. The story chain is deep enough and malleable enough for consumers to be deeply tied to you. Only one image of the IP is to make quick money and will soon pass.
Talk about the future: products go to sea, feed back to the country
Kr brand manager: Tide playing out to sea is a major trend in the industry as a whole this year, what is the layout rhythm of JOYTOY?
Zhang Zhe: Overseas and direct sales are also our key development goals. Because of the cultural foundation, the European and American markets have a very high acceptance of science fiction content, so it is very easy for mecha models to play out to sea. Coupled with the domestic supply chain advantages, our products are more refined, phased and cost-effective than foreign products. In the future, we hope to rely on overseas income to feed our development in the domestic market.
At present, our overseas revenue accounts for more than 30%, and this year it is expected to exceed 40%. The rhythm planning can be summarized as follows: 1. Independent IP leaves a different feeling first; 2. Control quantity and improve quality; 3. Iterative upgrade 4.Cooperation's heavy IP to control the quality of overseas control; 4. Release demand.
Of course, at the channel level we will not remove dealers, distribution channels are a necessary channel for sinking markets, there are many markets that we cannot reach, and distribution channels are a good solution.
Kr brand manager: In the past, domestic model play did not form a consensus brand concept overseas, so if it is a start-up brand, what preparations should be made to go to sea?
Zhang Zhe: 1. Product appearance is justice; 2. Update iteration is fast and diverse enough; 3. Do a good job of making it easy for overseas users to find your platform; 4. Cooperate with overseas well-known and long-standing IP, refer to Lego and Star Wars, DC, bandai and Dragon Ball relationship and so on.
Kr brand manager: Is the model toy industry heading for the second half?
Zhang Zhe: People over the age of 40 in China have no awareness of this thing, and when China's 1.4 billion people know more than 300 million people, the industry can be regarded as the real sense of the beginning.
The Red Sea competition is only the tide play track, in the future for a period of time, seize the opportunity to do model play enterprises can continue to eat the demographic dividend.