How can cards become a mental massage for young people?

If you walk into a KaiYou flagship store in Beijing on a weekend, you might discover a brand-new world that belongs to the new generation and that you previously had little understanding of.

Many young people in the store are holding thick card albums containing cards of different IPs. The "work" they are going to do is to exchange the cards they own with others to continuously collect the combinations they want. This is the basic gameplay of trading card games.

When it comes to cards, many people's memories still remain in the Pokémon cards, Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, and Magic: The Gathering cards from the 1990s. Of course, the Shuihu Hero Cards launched by Xiaohuanxiong Instant Noodles, with the IP influence of "Water Margin", swept through the campuses.

Over the years, the consumer market for cards in China has not disappeared but has become even more fertile. And the new generation of young people has their own new-generation card culture, such as Ultraman cards, My Little Pony cards, and KaiYou Three Kingdoms cards.

Data shows that the browsing volumes of topics such as #MyLittlePony, #MyLittlePonyCard, and #MyLittlePonyCardSale on Xiaohongshu are as high as 10.75 billion times, 2.05 billion times, and 1.05 billion times respectively, even far exceeding the most popular LABUBU of the leading trendy toy brand Pop Mart this year.

A Generation Has Its Own "Junk"

Playing cards is a very popular entertainment method among young people nowadays. A survey by "Post-Wave Research Institute" shows that 36.15% of young people have collected cards, second only to book collectors and trendy toy figurine players.

The "2023 China Collectible Card Market Research Report" summarizes the five major reasons for the popularity of cards: a wide fan base, high emotional value, a strong entertainment attribute, the improvement of the public's consumption ability, and the value-added effect brought by the "card-drawing" mechanism.

In simple terms, cards have multiple levels of play value. They can be collected, used for socializing, and for competitive play. Different gameplay methods meet the diverse needs of consumers.

More importantly, the audience of cards is not just young people. IPs never age. The post-90s who used to play "Shuihu Cards" are still attracted by classic IP cards after they grow up.

Cai Cai is a typical example. Cai Cai, a post-90s, started collecting cards in junior high school. At that time, he mainly played competitive cards such as Yu-Gi-Oh!. Now, more than ten years have passed, and he has been in the workplace for several years, but his love for cards remains unchanged. He told 36Kr that during his lunch break at work now, he would go to a nearby store to buy two packs of cards.

Cai Cai's collection of My Little Pony IP cards

Another aspect can also serve as evidence. When Cai Cai participated in an offline card exhibition, he found that many parents accompanied their children to the event, and both parties were card enthusiasts. Scenes of two generations collecting and exchanging cards together were very common.

"A generation has its own 'junk'. The post-80s and post-90s had a love for cards when they were children. After becoming parents, they will share this hobby with the next generation, which can be regarded as a kind of inheritance." Cai Cai laments that the social atmosphere in the card circle is very harmonious.

Thus, while cards carry the function of communication and entertainment for the fan group, they also enhance the emotional value that the cards themselves bring to consumers in this process.

IPs Never Age

The content on the card surface is the basic element of cards and also the key to attracting consumers to purchase. From the perspective of the source of the card surface content, there are many fans and cultural circles involved in trading card games, but they can be generally divided into IP cards and real-person celebrity cards.

According to data from iResearch, the domestic card market is still dominated by IP cards. In 2022, the market size of the IP card industry in China reached 8.67 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 34.9%, which is more than four times that of the real-person celebrity card market.

In essence, consumers who buy cards are buying the IP of the cards, and classic IPs can stand the test of time. Therefore, many IP cards can break through the age barrier.

For example, among the IP cards that Cai Cai likes to collect, My Little Pony, One Piece, Digimon, and Pokémon are all well-established global IPs. "Classic works are worth remembering." Cai Cai said that this is one of the reasons why he has been a card fan for more than ten years.

Cai Cai's collection of One Piece IP cards

It is worth noting that the recent popularity of the "Guzi" of the secondary and anime IPs has further boosted the popularity of IP cards.

Data from Jumei Data shows that this year, the search popularity for the keyword "Guzi" has increased by 39.04% year-on-year. During the National Day holiday, the related topics of "Guzi" once again ushered in a wave of search enthusiasm. The search index increased by 370.55% year-on-year and 169.85% month-on-month. "Eating Guzi" has become a tourist check-in project for many young people.

Data shows that buying peripheral products has become the most frequent consumption behavior of "pan-secondary" users, and 56.2% of people will buy peripheral products.

Cai Cai and his "card circle" are also for this reason. "Cards are one of the 'Guzi' I collect. As long as it is an IP I like, I will want to get its peripheral products. My friends around me also have the same mentality."

For "pan-secondary" users, "Guzi" is a social currency, as well as a connection of interests and emotions. And as a vertical category of "Guzi", cards have naturally become a consumption choice for many "pan-secondary" users.

Under this major trend, the IP lineup of the card industry has expanded rapidly in recent years. Card brands such as KaiYou actively transform more anime IPs into card products to meet consumer needs, almost making "everything can be a card".

Take My Little Pony as an example. Although the animation "My Little Pony" was released in China in 2013, for many years, the influence of this animation has still been limited to children and has not really become popular outside this group.

It was not until KaiYou, based on its own keen judgment of IPs, turned My Little Pony into a card product for operation in 2020 that the popularity of this classic IP rose sharply and continuously broke through the audience of multiple age groups.

Cai Cai told 36Kr that the cards he played with when he was a child were basically limited to some IPs dedicated to cards, such as Yu-Gi-Oh!. But in today's environment, the IPs of cards have become much richer. Not only some old anime have been introduced, but even some new anime that have just been broadcast will have corresponding card products available in just a few weeks.

It can be seen that under the promotion of card manufacturers such as KaiYou, the industry chain of the industry has matured rapidly and well met the market demand.

After years of accumulation, among the top 20 IPs with the highest number of followers in the card category on Qiandao APP, in addition to Ultraman and My Little Pony, a total of 12 IP card products including Naruto, Crayon Shin-chan, Hero Duel, Identity V, Jujutsu Kaisen, The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, and SpongeBob SquarePants are produced by KaiYou.

According to KaiYou's prospectus, in terms of sales, its market share in the domestic trading card game market in 2022 was as high as 71%, ranking first with an absolute advantage. The combined market share of the second to fifth card companies is 5.70%, less than one-twelfth of KaiYou's.

The current card market is like the blind box figurine market four years ago, standing at the starting point of a scale explosion.

According to a report released by Hua Jing Industrial Research Institute, the global trading card game market size reached 11.13 billion US dollars in 2020. It is expected that the market size will expand to 31.26 billion US dollars in 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 15.9% from 2021 to 2027.

The New Favorite for Going Global

As the pioneer of trendy toys going global, Pop Mart is an important reference for the trendy toy industry.

Data shows that Pop Mart has "recreated another Pop Mart" through going global. In the first half of this year, its revenue from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and overseas businesses was 1.35 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 259.6%, and the income proportion increased to 29.7%. In addition, toy companies such as 52TOYS, TNTSPACE, and JOTOYS are also laying out the overseas market.

The enlightenment brought by Pop Mart's amazing achievements is that both China's fine product craftsmanship and professional IP operation are indispensable. In the first half of 2024, the seven IPs (MOLLY, THE MONSTERS, SKULLPANDA, DIMOO, CRYBABY, Hirono the Wild, and Zsiga) with over 100 million yuan in revenue for Pop Mart are all exclusively signed or purchased, or designed by the internal original studio PDC (Pop Design Center).

And KaiYou is striving to become a new benchmark for the export of card products. On October 17, KaiYou officially announced a deep cooperation with Hasbro, obtaining the global authorization of the "My Little Pony" series. At the same time, the "Pinkie Pie's Party" My Little Pony pop-up store jointly held by the two sides opened in Shanghai Jing'an Joy City. The English and Japanese versions of My Little Pony card products also made their debut and will be first launched in Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea, and other regions. This is KaiYou's first step in going global and also the first step of its globalization strategy.

In fact, before officially going global, many Chinese manufacturers' cards have already reached the hands of overseas consumers through word-of-mouth, through purchasing agents and overseas e-commerce and other channels.

For example, on platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok, a large number of users have given high praise to products such as KaiYou and KaKaWo. There are already many card-opening videos of KaiYou's Naruto cards by card-opening anchors that have received thousands or even tens of thousands of likes.

Compared to the domestic market, cards have a history of more than a hundred years in North America and Japan, with a mature industrial chain, and a wider age distribution and card-collecting time for players. This means that the quality of domestic cards has already become competitive in the mature overseas market.

The excellent product quality behind this is the key to conquering the global market. It should be known that cultural IP products cannot rely solely on IP fans to be successful once and for all. The manufacturing industry also needs to innovate in technology and craftsmanship.

It is reported that currently, KaiYou has set up 5 production bases in Zhejiang and Guangdong, and built a smart industrial park for cards and stationery in Zhejiang. It has introduced several globally advanced German Manroland fully automatic printing production lines, combined with double-sided printing on KaiYou's exclusive paper, and independently developed cutting-edge technologies such as cold stamping, dazzling color, and 3D.

For example, for the Transformers series cards, the four-grid grating SHR card specially selects the gold stamping process, thereby presenting a shocking visual effect of Transformers shining.

Cards are also an important carrier for the export of the national trend culture. In addition to cooperating with overseas IPs, KaiYou has already delivered many domestic IPs carrying Chinese culture to overseas. Previously, KaiYou Three Kingdoms cards have been showcased at the Paris International Expo, and KaiYou's original domestic anime "Hero Duel - Breaking the Void" has also been serialized in China and Japan.

In front of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France in July this year, this scene might surprise many Chinese people: Chinese volunteers were holding "Baduanjin" cards and randomly inviting passing French people and tourists from various countries to participate in the challenge, introducing this traditional Chinese fitness exercise that originated in the Northern Song Dynasty. Many French invitees, together with the volunteers, posed in various positions of Baduanjin on the cards.

From the preferences of young people overseas, the popularity of Chinese culture cannot be underestimated. And as a communication carrier, cards obviously process Chinese culture into a more interesting and fun product, allowing overseas consumers not only to see Chinese culture, but also to see Chinese craftsmanship and Chinese design.

A small card is setting sail.