The blind box can't carry everything.
Wen 丨 He Xu
Whether from the level of communication or from the perspective of capital, the popularity of the once-popular brand Bubble Mart is declining.
If you're interested, open the Little Red Book, where "Jiawa" originated, type keywords such as "Bubble Mart" and "Molly", and you can find that most of the high-profile content comes from a year ago. At that time, the blog posts with dolls all over the wall were highly sought after by collectors, and various doll-altered and recreated images received a lot of praise and followed suit.
The most popular posts discussing Bubble Mart on Zhihu also generally appeared around the time of Bubble Mart's listing in December 2020. Zhihu netizens with different strengths gave their own interpretations of this company for young audiences from many perspectives such as aesthetics, sociology, and consumer psychology.
However, the brand's voice has quietly declined after the sudden rise, and the problems of its product marketing have increased.
Taking the past six months as an example, Bubble Mart has been troubled: in December 2021, the SkullPanda series of blind boxes involving false publicity was fined 200,000 yuan by the Beijing Chaoyang District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau; in January 2022, the DIMOO KFC joint blind box package was criticized by the China Consumer Association for causing consumers to over-buy; in March 2022, it was fined 50,000 yuan by the Tianjin Binhai New Area Market Supervision and Administration Bureau for not announcing the probability of winning the lottery and the number of prizes; in April 2022, He was fined 50,000 yuan by the Hangzhou Gongshu District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau for improper prize sales.
More pressure comes from the market side, especially the slowdown in revenue growth and the sluggish stock price.
According to the financial report, The annual revenue of Bubble Mart in 2021 was 4.491 billion yuan, an increase of 78.7% year-on-year. Although the absolute figure is not low, and it is still up from the growth rate of 49.31% in 2020, it is obvious that it has fallen from three digits to double digits compared with the same dimensional data of 225.49% in 2018 and 227.19% in 2019, and its gross margin and net profit margin have also shown a downward trend.
Look at the volatility of stock prices. Bubble Mart's share price has fallen from an intraday high of HK$107.418 on 17 February 2021 to HK$32.600 at the close of trading on 24 April 2022, corresponding to a market capitalization that has shrunk from more than HK$150 billion to nearly 70% to HK$45.657 billion.
The development path after a company's popularity is basically two, one is to save more energy to pave the way for long-term development, from one peak period to another peak period, behind which is a steady stream of exuberant vitality; the second is that products such as meteors, innovation can not be continued, the company gradually fell into the bottom, and then slowly faded out of the stage. Which kind of bubble mart belongs to, it depends on what needs it meets for consumers.
01
Selling is fun
A little girl who looks only a few years old, with curly blond hair, lake blue eyes, a small mole under her left eye, the most eye-catching place in appearance is her mouth, and her upper lip is slightly raised, looking both unhappy and happy, which is the characteristic of the largest IP "Molly" that Bubble Mart has been born for nearly 16 years.
According to designer Kenny Wong, Molly is hollowing herself out: when you look at her when you're happy, you must think she's happy; when you're unhappy, you must think she's unhappy.
If such a few different molds of Molly sell for 59 yuan per doll, there may not be so many patrons. This is a point that analysts are relatively close to. Walking into any bubble mart store in a first-tier city in China, you will always see young people shaking boxes in front of different stalls, they are measuring the weight and structure of the contents in this way, so as to determine which one they are picking up.
Is the consumer buying the design of the doll, or the pleasure of tearing the box, or the pleasure of collecting? Different groups, different views.
Heiko Finance randomly interviewed several young people in their early 20s who regularly bought and used to buy Bubble Mart.
Wendy works in Shenzhen and is a Molly enthusiast. Because she likes Molly's cute design, whenever she goes shopping on weekends and sees the Bubble Mart store, she will go to smoke a blind box once. Her favorite way to buy is to keep a collection in its entirety, most recently "Molly My Childhood."
"I was lucky enough to get a hit the first time." Wendy refers to Molly in this series, who sits on the ground dressed in black and holding a birdcage. In the Taobao shop that operates a certain type of unpacking box without unpacking the bag doll, this second-hand can also be sold for about 90 yuan.
Alex, who also works in Shenzhen, has little interest in Molly and Dimoo, bubble Mart's own IP, and he likes those co-branded models. "I wouldn't like dolls that I don't understand." He also said that he currently has two series on his collection, SpongeBob SquarePants and Disney Princesses.
Like Wendy, the style of the lottery is the motivation for Alex to continue to buy. In the Disney Princess series, he drew the long-awaited Moana. "It should be said that when I buy these dolls, first of all, I know their background history, and then I go to see if the design is good. For example, bubble Mart's "Friends" co-branded model I think is average, I did not buy one. Alex said.
Sophia, who works in Beijing, also loves Bubble Mart's designs. She started buying a few individual blind boxes randomly in 2019. In her opinion, there is no need to put together a series, "what you buy is the fun of the lottery, and a series is only drawn once or twice to be more exciting." ”
Sophia has bought nearly 20 dolls and bought them acrylic collection boxes. But she said she might be backing out. "The quality feels not as good as before, and the price has gone up." She was referring to a price increase made by Bubble Mart in April 2021 for a new blind box, in which her favorite SkullPanda series rose from 59 yuan to 69 yuan, which made her feel more enthusiastic about the new product.
In the second-hand idle goods trading platform idle fish, turning around and all kinds of local baby swapping groups in China, there is a large-scale fried baby army that cannot be underestimated. For these consumers, the most important thing about Bubble Mart's products is the collectible value.
Beginner speculators often target hidden models in the series of blind boxes. Due to the low probability of winning, their price will be speculated to three or four times the original price. For example, the hidden money in "One Day of Molly", which originally cost 59 yuan, was sold for more than 200 yuan on idle fish. The high-end MEGA version launched by Bubble Mart in 2021 has also become the object of pursuit for doll collectors, and this type of doll was first launched at a high price ranging from 10,000 to 90,000 yuan on idle fish.
The proportion of buyers who buy tide play to add value in the overall consumer is very small, and although the market formed by these products through their means in the second-hand market mark-up circulation will be more or less transmitted to regular sales, the value-added income of these buyers is theoretically irrelevant to the brand side, and the real market of Bubble Mart can only come from the recognition of ordinary consumers for their products and designs.
This form of blind box plays a big role in this.
For many young people, the process of opening the blind box is a process of discovering surprises, and in this real world where pressure is omnipresent, dozens of dollars can get a small blessing in a dull life, and this experience is worth paying.
Unlike many other blind box products, Bubble Mart pays more attention to the design of the product. According to Wang Ning, the founder of Bubble Mart, what they do is to commercialize art, carry out industrial mass production, and find a balance between them.
When opening blind boxes around IP becomes a trend, it will quickly heat up among young people. In this regard, the purchase of blind boxes is no different from the consumption of new teas such as hi tea, Naisher's tea, tea color, etc., which can bring sweetness and happiness to the daily life of young people.
At present, the industry's doubts about Bubble Mart mainly focus on the following four points: first, whether it can continue to develop successful IP like Molly; second, whether the blind box economy will be a gust of wind; third, how long the life cycle of dolls without story support can be; fourth, how big the story of Bubble Mart can tell.
Now, these questions are still difficult to answer.
02
Infiltration is far from enough
Harry is a handmade enthusiast, and the family has a large and small collection, including a considerable proportion of blind boxes.
Before the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, Harry had gone to Tokyo, Japan, to buy handmade, and in Akihabara and other places, buyers and blind boxes are not popular phenomena, but have long been part of the lives of young people.
"There are gacha machines everywhere on the street, and you can twist it once for one or twenty yuan or even less, and every store sells it." Of course, this price is expensive. Harry felt that the most worthwhile thing to visit was the second floor of this type of hand-made shop, where rows of doll machines were often densely stacked, and blind box machines were also among them, unattended.
As a member of the consumer, Harry said when sharing his feelings with Heiko Finance that he believes that if the domestic tide play industry wants to achieve further development, it is difficult to rely on one company, and the most important thing is to form an industrial cluster and build a culture. "There are actually many people who like to play with the blind box, but not everyone likes the style of Bubble Mart, and they will feel that its price is still expensive."
Bubble Mart once played the role of a pioneer in this field, introducing the popular handmade and fashionable culture in Japan, Hong Kong and other places to Chinese mainland, and it captured the adult toy market.
In a speech in April 2019, Wang Ning mentioned Bubble Mart's user base, saying that Bubble Mart consumers are up to 26 years old, that is, 75% of the people born after 1993 are girls.
This has something in common with the adult anime big movie market.
In March 2018, B Station was listed in the United States, and the second dimension began to be known to more people. In 2019, the animated film "Nezha's Devil Boy Descending" for the adult market became the box office champion of the year with a box office of more than 5 billion yuan, and this is the first time that a domestic animation film has achieved this result.
Bubble Mart is by no means a world, it is one of the many cases of animation and two-dimensional culture gradually infiltrating mainstream Chinese culture. When talking about the strategy of opening a store in Bubble Mart, Wang Ning said that it is necessary to find the most prosperous shopping mall in the north, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen to pull the subculture in front of the mainstream culture.
According to this logic, Bubble Mart will continue to deepen its cultivation in core cities such as the first-tier and new first-tier cities in China, develop more of its own IP, and deeply promote the tide play culture, so that Bubble Mart will always be on top of the social heat.
But the general environment has changed, especially the repeated epidemics, economic downturn, and sluggish consumption, all of which are disrupting the scheduled rhythm of Bubble Mart.
From the demand side, when the economy is booming, the lowest price of 59 yuan once a doll may not be much for many young people; when the economy is sluggish, the satisfaction of spiritual needs may give way to a more recent just need, and blind box consumption will naturally decrease.
Pressure from upstream is also increasing.
In response to the price increase of a number of new blind boxes in April 2021, Bubble Mart once responded to the public, saying that the reason for the price increase was the increase in the price of raw materials in the supply chain, the increase in labor costs, and the increase in costs due to fine design and complex process. A year later, on March 28, 2022, in the 2021 full-year earnings call, Bubble Mart management once again used this to explain the reason for the decline in gross margin, and clearly mentioned that raw materials rose by 15% and labor costs by 10% in 2021.
A temporary increase in source costs can make the price of new products of Bubble Mart terminals rise sharply by 17%, which at least partially shows that Bubble Mart is not large enough, and its ability to control the supply chain is far from strong enough to resist such risks.
The effect of Bubble Mart's own traffic to attract consumers to actively buy is weakening.
We might as well add a little more Yokobi new tea.
Although their positioning is different, they all have certain characteristics that young people are happy to follow, so they have become representatives of this emerging market, and together they have become a part of the daily life of young people.
Although there are also 52TOYS, Rolife Ruolai, ToyCity and other cutting-edge competitions in the tide play market, there has been no peer who can match the Bubble Mart brand and have a similar scale, and the strong and powerful forces of many parties cannot be talked about.
03
Continue to touch the stones
China's generalized tide play, including the tide play blind box, is still growing in exploration.
According to the "2021 China Trend Toy Market Development Report" released at the end of December 2021 by the National Situation Survey and Big Data Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as a representative of the surprise economy, the tide play is becoming an important carrier for the leisure exchanges of a new generation of young people, and its market size is expected to reach 47.8 billion yuan in 2022.
The report also mentioned that in the category of tide play blind boxes, 46.78% of consumers believe that surprise is an important reason for their purchases, 38.95% of consumers are because it has its favorite labels, and 21.64% of consumers are because they are interesting to buy with relatives and friends.
The tide play industry has not stopped, and Bubble Mart is looking for more possibilities, especially to go to sea and open up high-end markets.
Following the opening of the first overseas direct store in Seoul, South Korea in September 2020, the speed of Bubble Mart's online and offline overseas layout has accelerated significantly.
At present, Bubble Mart's overseas business has entered more than 20 countries and regions such as China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, New Zealand and other channels through retail stores, robot vending machines, online platforms and other channels, of which there are more than ten offline stores; at the same time, Bubble Mart has also continuously increased the overseas dissemination of its brand by participating in global trend art events, such as Dubai World Expo, London MCM Animation Exhibition, And DesignerCon in the United States.
In terms of retail stores alone, according to the officially disclosed plan, Bubble Mart may open 50 directly operated stores outside Chinese mainland by the end of 2022. Wang Ning mentioned in the March 2022 earnings conference call that Bubble Mart's future goal is to reach 50% of overseas revenue. Bubble Mart's overseas business was not listed separately in the financial report for the same period, and explained that the current main market of Bubble Mart is Chinese mainland, and its sales contribution to overseas customers is less than 10% of the total revenue.
From less than 10%, the plan to pull up to the next 50%, Bubble Mart undoubtedly has a long way to go.
In addition to continuing to promote IP diversification, Bubble Mart officially launched the MEGA Collection in June 2021, mainly promoting 400% (28 cm) and 1000% (70 cm) of dawa, which is sold in limited quantities worldwide, and consumers sign up for purchase, with a retail price of up to 4999 yuan. According to official data, starting with the MEGA Collection SPACE MOLLY x SpongeBob SquarePants co-brand, Bubble Mart has sold a total of 9 1000% SPACE MOLLY Collection products, attracting more than 8.7 million people to participate in the lottery.
Bubble Mart extends the tentacles of its products to the high end, which is obviously not only to meet the specific needs of today's senior collectors, but also a necessary exploration in its non-blind box business. According to the financial report, in the whole year of 2021, the revenue of the MEGA Collection Series was 178 million yuan, which accounted for about 3.97% of the total revenue. Although the current scale is not large, it seems to have potential.
Bubble Mart is increasingly intent on tearing off its blind box label. In a previous interview with the media, Wang Ning said more than once that he did not agree with the other party's statement that Bubble Mart was equated with a blind box company, saying that it was an IP-based tide play company.
This is not unrelated to the negative public evaluation that blind boxes are currently suffering.
According to a market questionnaire made by the research agency Ai Media Consulting a few days ago, 63% of consumers believe that the blind box has the problem of not being able to draw the goods they want, 53.9% of the consumers believe that the blind box has the problem of speculation and industry chaos, and 44.6% of the consumers believe that the blind box has problems such as excessive marketing of merchants and consumers' addiction.
In addition to the aforementioned regulatory penalties, industry regulations are also pointing directly to the blind box problem.
Take Shanghai, for example. At the beginning of 2022, the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Market Supervision formulated and issued the Shanghai Blind Box Business Activity Compliance Guidelines. The document puts forward requirements for the blind box price system, extraction rules, guarantee mechanism, after-sales guarantee, marketing hype, and juvenile protection mechanism, and draws a red line. This is the first relevant regulation of the blind box industry in China, which has reference significance for the introduction of local measures.
In addition to public scrutiny and regulatory pressure, more importantly, too much reliance on the blind box economy for listed companies Bubble Mart, the imagination space is not large enough, the risk is like a shadow, and it is reasonable to make a plan in a timely manner.
So, where does bubble Mart, which started from the IP+ blind box, ultimately want to go?
Disney, Lego, bandai, are all Wang Ning's ideal bubble Mart look.
At the beginning of 2022, the cooperation between Bubble Mart and Beijing Chaoyang Park was once very hot, and it is said that the former will use the "European Charm" project in the latter park and its surrounding streets and forests to create a trend cultural paradise that integrates tide play IP, cultural dissemination, immersive experience, leisure and entertainment.
In recent years, there have been many domestic cultural and entertainment companies that have drawn a blueprint for the development of Disney, including the construction of theme parks based on it, but the actual results of the landing are thousands of miles. IP does not have a story core of bubble Mart in this direction to test the waters, the probability of success will only be lower.
The tide play track is still squeezing in new players, IP and mode or are already brewing greater changes, whether it can be built on the basis of the blind box to achieve a second leap, Bubble Mart needs to be faster in pace.