Wen | e-commerce online, the author | Yang Niwa, editor | Si asked
"In Yiwu, there is no business during the holidays."
From the Mid-Autumn Festival to the eve of the eleventh holiday, Wang Xuwei's factory was really busy to "smoke". The sound of cutting and polishing molds is incessant, the room is filled with white smoke from grinding debris, outside the compartment is a row of long tables, full of colorful dolls, workers are using paint to color the freshly baked model, repeated actions to practice sharp hand speed, but still can't catch up with the speed of the boxer next to it...
This is a typical blind box factory in Yiwu: most of them produce resin dolls, and unlike pvc dolls that come out of modern assembly lines, resin still relies on manual coloring. But these doll shapes are not made by trend designers, and even some "déjà vu" looks such as Bubble Mart and 52toys can always be seen. Because of the lack of unique value of branding and design, handmade products do not mean expensive, and the retail price is only half that of Bubble Mart's trendy play stores.
With the popularity of Bubble Mart, the blind box business has moved from niche culture to public vision, and the young population likes to use fashionable words such as "hanging card" and "pit" to talk about blind boxes, and even brings out the new business of "everything can be blind boxes". But that's not all of the blind box market.
In addition to the trendy play shops such as Bubble Mart that are entrenched in the business circles of first- and second-tier cities, there is also a folding world: night markets and stalls in the sinking market, blind box machines in playgrounds, enrollment gifts from training institutions... The blind box replaces the original plush toys and crystal balls and becomes a representative of a new toy, but the kernel is still a commodity, in contrast, those design-filled tide play blind boxes are more like a carrier of operational IP.
In the Yiwu factory, we see another ecological circle of blind boxes.
Wang Xuwei started from the floor stall to become a factory owner. Looking back on his business path, it seems to represent a kind of consumption change: from selling pirated discs, to selling gyros at the park gate, to star peripherals, to today's blind boxes.
In 2019, Wang Xuwei saw the blind box for the first time at the exhibition, and this year, Bubble Mart has surpassed Bandai and Lego International Toy Brands to become the sales champion of Tmall Double 11 in the toy category. But at that time, not many people made blind boxes in Yiwu, and this new and peculiar product even felt that it was a bit "perverse".
"Normal to the store are to pick a good like and then buy, this can not be selected, the buyer draws what is what, customers can be happy?"
As everyone knows, it is this kind of play that does not play cards according to the routine, which cuts the psychology of blind box lovers. At that time, Wang Xuwei was buried in taking goods from Yiwu Trade City, and wholesaled plastic dolls, crystal balls and other home furnishings and crafts online. He found that the upstream manufacturers he cooperated with successively launched blind boxes, and he hoarded 3,000 boxes of unicorn blind boxes, which seemed risky at the time, but helped him earn the first bucket of gold to open the factory. Since last year, he has opened 3 factories in a row, and 70% of the goods are producing blind boxes.
"My experience is that when you encounter a good blockbuster, you must dare to hoard goods." Wang Xuwei said in an interview with E-commerce Online.
In fact, the production cycle is a constraint on the blind box industry chain, because from the design to the mold to mass production, the ordinary factory also takes 30-45 days, if it is a brand blind box such as Bubble Mart, the production cycle may be 90 days, in this gap period, who has the goods is the winner.
But hoarding is a double-edged sword, even if Wang Xuwei is a factory in the blind box business, it is also necessary to consider whether the design and style are in line with the tastes of consumers and whether they can make a blockbuster. He calculated that the sales of a blind box for three months would reach more than 2,000 to make money. Now his factory has to send out 100 boxes of about 9600 blind boxes a day, the wholesale price is 10 yuan / one, but if the sales of goods are generally reduced to 7 yuan / one, if it becomes inventory goods, the factory price is even as low as 3 cents / one.
"With so many series, the explosion rate is 10%, but this number is not low."
Wang Xuwei's explosive models are actually more or less designed to cater to the tastes of the public in the context of the times, such as unicorns and flamingos a few years ago, the national wind girl with bubbles, the q version of Van Gogh and the girl with pearl earrings, this year because of the launch of Shenzhou Twelfth, the astronaut series has become a hit.
In a way, blind boxes and crystal balls, which are also resin ornaments, have become two kinds of business. The blind box needs to keep up with the trend to do a small single fast anti-hit explosion, the gross profit is not necessarily very high, but the bet on the explosive model is a million profits. The unit price of the crystal ball can be sold to more than 30 yuan, which is a representative of high gross profit, but it may not be able to make a hit.
In Yiwu, there are more than 10 factories like Wang Xuwei that produce resin blind boxes, most of them do not have brand labels, and rarely give oem to the head brand, mainly some manufacturers who make resin dolls and handicrafts have transformed into the game. The blind box brands represented by Bubble Mart and so on, most of them choose to oem in Dongguan, Shantou area of the factory, where is the main production place of PVC dolls, because PVC material dolls can better restore details, such as expressions, finger gaps, etc., which is more in line with the brand blind box requirements for IP design refinement, but because the mold opening and design costs are higher, PVC blind boxes are also more expensive than resin.
Nowadays, walking in the gift area of Yiwu Trade City, you can always see the blind box stalls with the label of "original IP", the little girl with the color of the macaron and the cute pet shape, which is the mainstream style, but it is difficult for you to remember their real IP names.
Wang Xuwei is facing another folding world of blind boxes.
He said that his customers are mainly wholesale of stall night markets, agents of blind box machines, Taobao sellers and training institutions to do enrollment, enterprises and other gifts.
These blind boxes with a wholesale price of no more than 10 yuan have a new world in the sinking market. Compared with brands such as Bubble Mart priced at 59 and 69 yuan, the retail price of blind boxes of these brands is mostly no more than 25 yuan, from the shape to the design, it also basically meets the basic elements of "cuteness", which is the best choice for children or small town girls to enjoy themselves.
On social platforms, there are a number of accounts that advocate the use of blind boxes to set up stalls, they either interview or personally practice selling blind boxes in the night market, and the purchase price of 10 yuan can earn more than 300 yuan a night.
In the short video platform, the business form around the blind box is more diverse, and the blind box live broadcast is one of the hottest forms.
Among them, one is to cooperate with manufacturers to sell blind boxes to earn commissions, the anchor's blind boxes are provided by manufacturers, the anchor sells in the live broadcast room, and the commission returned by the merchants is taken; one is to attract a large number of people to watch through the randomness and irritation of the blind box; there is also a kind of anchor who drives the sales of other products in the small shop by dismantling the blind box gimmick.
No matter which form, the main goods sold in the blind box live broadcast room are these brand blind boxes with a unit price of about 25 yuan. After all, most of the brand blind boxes choose the direct operation model, the channel control is very strict, even the anchor of the live broadcast room may have to pay for the original price from his own pocket, use it as a drainage model, and then make money by selling the brand blind box.
The level of the price is only the appearance of the difference between the brand blind box and the brand blind box, which is actually two kinds of business.
In Wang Xuwei's eyes, the bubble marts with higher prices mean that they will "take pictures" and operate more. In his experience, taking a good photo is one of the necessary conditions for launching a blockbuster, and a product photo with a unit price of more than 200 is something that brand merchants have more strength to do.
But the seemingly "simple" blind box business is not definable by a few photos, and there is a set of business logic behind it.
For many fashion studios and brand merchants, they will not operate the blind box category alone, and at the same time operate large dolls (handmade), dolls and so on. From the perspective of selling price, the blind box is generally priced at 29-59 yuan, while the price of large dolls and dolls will be much higher, ranging from hundreds to thousands of yuan, and even some large dolls can be fried to a price of more than 10,000 yuan.
Therefore, how the brand positions and plans the IP in its hand determines whether the IP will be used to produce blind boxes or big dolls.
The high price of Dawa also means that the number of sales is limited, and this "limited" determines the value of Dawa in the later stage, so the value of Dawa lies in branding, and the subsequent transformation lies in whether the brand can create value from other ways. But the logic of the blind box is that once it sells out, the follow-up can be added around this IP to add new products, the cost will gradually dilute, and the blind box itself can create revenue.
In other words, the blind box is only a carrier of the brand business operation IP, through the blind box can make the IP break the circle faster, precipitate a certain fan base, and then sell the big baby to make money. For Wang Xuwei, the blind box really means a commodity, in fact, it is the same logic as he sells crystal balls or other toys, but the form of the blind box is more likely to produce explosive models, and this large-scale style is popular with manufacturers.
It is not difficult to understand that Bubble Mart has been positioning its identity as an "IP operation platform".
Repurchase has become the fundamental difference between brand blind boxes and brand blind boxes.
Most of the blind boxes for the sinking market are a hammer deal, consumers passing through the night market or stalls out of interest and curiosity, will buy one to please themselves, blind box factories do not pursue the effect of repurchase, but pay more attention to whether they can bet on the explosion under every trend outlet. However, IPs with mature operations, such as molly and pucky, will continue to launch new series to maintain the popularity of consumption.
"With copyright, there is a repurchase rate." A person in charge of a blind box factory in Dongguan told E-commerce Online.
In fact, "blind box does not sink the market", such a concept may now seem to be a little biased, if you look at the blind box from the perspective of tide play, there is indeed no sinking market, hundreds of thousands of dollars of trend toys are a niche toy for first- and second-line young people, but if the blind box is expanded to the entire toy market, it is just a new and strange commodity than the traditional ornaments, both beautiful and interesting, under the cost performance, the sinking market will also be popular.
The folding blind box business is also two consumer worlds.