Who is still buying Bubble Mart?

It is difficult to appear in a super IP in a short time

As "the first share of the tide", Bubble Mart is experiencing pain. Recently, Bubble Mart released the financial report in the first half of 2022. The net profit ushered in negative growth for the first time, and the income increase was not increasing.

Two years ago, the bubble Mate landed on Hong Kong stocks, with a market value of 150 billion Hong Kong dollars. After widening this niche business as an imaginative track, Bubble Mate was sought after by capital and consumers, and the situation is now changing. On the one hand, the business model of the blind box is frustrated and the market value shrinks. On the other hand, it has been exposed many times such as returns, overlord clauses, and quality.

From the outside perspective, the tide game industry has been exploded rapidly. Many players have entered the bureau successively and are squeezing the living space of Bubble Matt. From the inside, Bubble Mate is the first "crab eating" company. After grabbing the opportunity, we are facing construction pressure from IP and channels. How does Bubble Mart advance to the trendy toys to a real trend culture?

Figure/Figure insect creativity

"Bubble" broke?

At the end of August, Bubble Mate ushered in a happy and sad financial report.

The performance report in the first half of 2022 showed that the revenue of Bubble Mart in the first half of the year reached 2.359 billion yuan, an increase of 33.1%year -on -year. In the economic downturn, it is not easy to increase the growth of blind box tide playable as an optional consumer category. However, in terms of profits, the bubble Mate ushered in the first negative growth after listing. The financial report shows that the company's holders should accounted for 333 million yuan in the first half of the year, a decrease of 7.2%year -on -year, and the net profit after adjustment was 376 million yuan, a year -on -year decrease of 13.5%.

Obviously, the increasing increasing increasing income in the first half of 2022 is very different from the high growth performance of Bubble Mart in the past two years. In 2021, Mart's revenue reached 4.49 billion yuan, an increase of 78.7%year -on -year. It was 590 million yuan, a year -on -year increase of 25.95. According to the financial report before the bubble Mart listed, from 2017 to 2019, its compound operating income and net profit compound growth rates were as high as 226.37%and 1578.91%, respectively.

According to the analysis of the information of the tide game industry, in the first half of 2022, the cost of the upstream of the market in the market was soaring in the market, and the work of factories was difficult, and the performance of Bubble Matt was naturally affected. The financial report shows that at the cost side, the cost, labor cost and advertising marketing are a large increase in expenditure. According to Bubble Mart's financial report, due to the complex product process, rising raw material prices, and rising processing costs of each process of foundries, commodity costs increased by 67.42%year -on -year to about 868 million yuan; in order to support expanding offline retail stores and robot malls On the Internet, employees increased by 465, with labor costs increased by 44.09%year -on -year to about 402 million yuan; while the promotion costs of bubble Mart online and offline rose up to 100.88%to 114 million yuan.

However, the most deepest reason for the increasing increasing increasing income from Bubble Mart is that in recent years, the tide game industry has accelerated its development trend. At present, the industry has returned to rationality and is not so crazy. CICF Tide Playing the owner Yihui said, "The development of tide in China has been developing in China for a long time, but it was originally circulated among niche artists. Tide play was originally a model made by artist. Even if the market has increased, artists are often produced in small quantities. When companies such as Bubble Mart and other companies influx, by reducing costs, the price is reduced to 69 yuan and 79 yuan. It broke out. "

Figure/Figure insect creativity

According to public data, the scale of China's trendy toys market reached about 36.6 billion yuan in 2021. It is expected that the compound growth rate of three years in the future will reach 20%to 30%, and it will exceed 70 billion yuan in 2024. On the whole, the domestic trendy market is in a rapid development stage, and the scale has expanded accordingly. According to the company's investigation data, there are 5,380 related companies in China. In the first half of 2022, China ’s new tide increased enterprises had 1,661 related companies, an increase of 138.31%year -on -year. In this case, Bubble Mart is still facing huge competitive pressure.

"Bubble Matt initially used the concept of a blind box to make a head -up. Compared with the domestic" fresh ', it has eaten early bonus in the market and is logical. "This market", Zhang Shule, a senior observer of the Internet, pointed out that in fierce competition, Bubble Mart naturally needs to invest a lot of costs for iterative upgrades to improve quality and maintain their own position.

From the perspective of market value, capital's belief in Bubble Mart has also been empty. The bubble Mart, which is "peak", reached the highest market value in early 2021, about HK $ 150 billion, and the current market value is only 26.893 billion Hong Kong dollars. Zhu Ruixiao, the founder of Shanghai Yizhi Culture, told China News Weekly that the blind box tide to play these products to solve mental demand, not just need in people's lives. Therefore, the stock price and performance of the economic environment will fluctuate.

Core IP uncertainty

Different from traditional toys, consumers favors tide playing. The main reason is that it meets the spiritual needs of their emotions, social, and collection. These spiritual needs have promoted the outbreak of the IP industry. In the tide game, IP often represents "who am I." According to incomplete statistics, there are about 40 provisions about Tide Play in the hot search of Weibo in the first half of this year, which has a high degree of discussion on the emerging social media platform. Bubble Mart found that the "New World" is based on IP -based energy. In 2015, Bubble Mart sold a blind box tide player named "SONNYANGEL", which sold more than 600,000 pieces throughout the year, accounting for 30%of the year. At this time, the bubble Mate also insight into the future trend, and high -quality original IP will attract a large number of fans to pay attention and transform the purchase.

In 2016, the Molly Constellation series of image posters launched by Bubble Mart became popular on the Internet. The first "Molly Zodiac" blind box series was launched on Tmall flagship store, which was sold out after 4 seconds. The IP+Blind Box became popular in China for a while. At that time, IP was used to push the tide to play in the blue ocean. In the following years, the sales of Bubble Mart's blind boxes increased in index.

On the eve of the launch of Bubble Mart in 2020, Molly's sales accounted for a decrease in the previous 89.4%to 32.9%. At that time, the sound of "Molly dependence" on the market with "Molly dependence" on the market. In fact, Bubble Mart has been working hard to build IP. On the eve of listing, 93 IPs have been operated, including 12 own IP, 25 exclusive IPs and 56 non -exclusive IPs.

In the first half of 2022, the financial report showed that the bubble Mart's own IP revenue reached 1.528 billion yuan, an increase of 69.77%year -on -year, accounting for 64.8%of the total revenue; non -exclusive IP revenue was about 300 million yuan, an increase of 4.51%year -on -year; Exclusive IP revenue was about 327 million yuan, a year -on -year decrease of 17.12%. Among their own IPs, Skullpanda, Molly, and DIMOO's revenue in the first half of the year were 462 million yuan, 404 million yuan, and 298 million yuan, accounting for nearly half of the total camp. It is worth noting that this is the first time Molly has fallen to the second place.

But does this mean that Bubble Mart gets rid of "molly dependence"? Judging from the performance of Bubble Mart, the slowdown in revenue and the decline in gross profit margin are actually affected by the weak performance of Molly. From 2019 to 2020, Molly's revenue accounted for from 27.1%to 14.2%, and the overall revenue growth rate of Bubble Matt slowed down in 2020. In 2021, Molly's revenue increased, and the overall revenue of Bubble Mart also achieved high growth. In other words, the Molly IP is the cornerstone of the bubble Matt's performance.

Bubble Mart is committed to looking for the next Molly, but in fact, consumers are relatively strange to other IPs except Molly. "New Sales Champion" SKULLPANDA, the year -on -year growth rate of revenue has dropped significantly from 1423.76%in 2021 to 152.27%. Exclusive IP Pucky and the Monsters are not ideal. The deeper problem is that the three major IPs of Bubble Mart are not autonomous IP of Mart's independent IP, which means that the bubble Mate is likely to lack dominance or even lose its dominance in the development of IP.

"In the past few years, the industry has developed too fast. When the designer and the company signed a contract, they were willing to cooperate, because everyone wanted to find a way out. Later, everyone found that this road can be connected, so the original terms may not make the designer designer Satisfied. Designers often sign with the company for 8 or 10 years. As soon as the time arrives, it may not continue to cooperate and choose to do it. "Yihui believes that the bubble Mate may face a long -term IP risk: if it is lost, if it is lost The blessing of the core IP, the new IP in the future fails to take over, will make its development prospects uncertain.

"Many IP dependence on artists is very heavy, and it is inevitable to be limited in the process of commercialization. Therefore, Bubble Mart is also introducing independent design IPs, such as Ono and Kobaya. In this process, the decision -making power of the company will Extinguishing, 'launching newcomers' is also a manifestation of corporate capabilities and business value. "Zhu Ruixiao analyzed that these actions were critical to the development of Bubble Mart.

Beginning with a blind box, trapped in a blind box?

With the development of Bubble Mart, the questioning of "hype" is like a shadow, and the "blind box" has changed from being sought after to being criticized. Earlier this year, KFC's joint blind boxes with Bubble Mart were robbed. After buying a designated package, it was randomly attached to toys. A toy was fired to thousands of yuan. This marketing triggered a snap -up. , Criticized by the China Consumer Association. Subsequently, Bubble Mart stopped the joint blind box business.

On the black cat complaint platform, there are more than 27,000 complaints about the blind box, and the relevant complaints related to the bubble Mate have reached nearly 10,000, involving problems such as quality defects, unclear pumping mechanisms, and cannot be returned. "As soon as I entered the blind box, it was like the sea, and it turned into a" grievance ", which was reflecting the chaos of the market.

Recently, the General Administration of Market Supervision issued the "Guidelines for Blind Box Business Activities (Trial)" (draft for comments). This is the first time that the regulatory department gives a clear guidance for the industry unity: blind boxes must not be sold to children under the age of 8, encouraging the blind box operations to operate Establish a guarantee mechanism to publicize the key information such as hidden models and other probability ... The blind box "does not blind" is the general trend, and the bubble Mate is facing the pressure of transformation. Many years ago, the Japanese businessman Chongtian Ryomoda established Bandai Nangmeng Palace Company to imitate the dwarf candy machine, developed well -known anime IP development such as "Dragon Ball" and "One Piece" to launch Gacha toys. The type of the capsule machine is randomly extraction, which is exactly the same as the underlying design logic of the blind box.

"Blind box design will surprise consumers and addiction. The essence of this marketing is actually a kind of showing off, and the scarcity of human be artificially created is sold." Zhang Shule believes that such a blind box mode is actually "no book. "Wood" lacks the value of collection, so Bubble Mart tried to strengthen artistic construction in the later period and improve recognition.

Recently, Bubble Mart officially launched the MEGA collection series, which priced at the highest price of 6999 yuan. Yihui also pointed out that "the blind box mode contains hunger marketing methods, which has stimulated consumers' desire to buy and repurchase. However, most consumers of blind box products are actually minors or college students. This marketing method It is greatly controversial at the social level, and it is not easy for the bubble Mart to gain the right to speak in mainstream culture. In public cognition, blind boxes are low -end consumption categories, and high -end products with collecting value are impressed by consumption capacity The collectors have some difficulty. "

Zhang Shule observed that Bubble Mate now wants to complete the commercial leap from the blind box to the tide play, and then lead the trend culture from the tide. This is something that other companies can do for decades. Mate is extremely difficult. "Throughout the world's famous anime IP, most of them first shape the image through the story, and then make derivatives to enhance the vitality of IP. Start the price and scarcity of the product first, and then increase the added value of the product. It is a practice of inverted cultural value. "

The bubble Matt who wanted to upgrade, had previously been engaged in the construction of theme parks. Some people in the industry revealed that Bubble Mart has begun to recruit soldiers to build games. Wei Xiang, director of the Financial Strategy Center of the Academy of Social Sciences, said, "The new product R & D investment in Bubble Mart is not much. The competitive advantage is on marketing innovation and sales channels. Therefore, it is the best way to establish a paradise sales scenario and other methods. "

"This is not a simple re -engraving for the original content. From horizontal speaking, we must have creativity and deepen cultural heritage and technological content. From a vertical perspective, it is necessary to become three -dimensional and lively from the paper image. Keeping strong vitality ", Zhang Shule added. But no matter what path development, Mart may face an ultimate problem: a super IP is difficult to appear in a short time.

Author: Meng Qian ([email protected])

Edit: Li Zhiquan

Operation editor: Wang Lin

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