Behind the 1.4 billion yuan box office of "The Monster and the Gods," the 500-yuan plush toys are selling like hotcakes.

Author | Lan Jie

Editor | Qiao Qian

Another plush brand is emerging.

Recently, "The Little Monsters of Langlang Mountain" has won the hearts of countless office workers, and at the same time, a brand under the water has surfaced, which is Wen Tongzi.

Within just three days after the release, the co - branded peripherals of Wen Tongzi and "The Little Monsters of Langlang Mountain" have sold more than 10,000 pieces. Now, consumers who place new orders need to wait until the middle or late October to receive their goods. The relevant products have sold nearly 100,000 pieces in total, and the number is still increasing. "We don't have a single piece of stock on hand," said Shen Ze, the founder of Wen Tongzi.

(Co-branded products of Wen Tongzi and "The Little Monsters of Langlang Mountain")

Quality and high price are the topics that run through the development of this brand.

People who like Wen Tongzi praise its products as "no need to pick the face, each one looks the same as the picture on the official website", while those who don't like it think it is "ripping off consumers" under the guise of national fashion and the prices are too high. Take the co-branded products this time as an example, the prices range from 165 yuan to 500 yuan. In the brand's official Taobao flagship store, there are also many products priced at over a thousand yuan.

Many people also compare Wen Tongzi with the previous plush brand JellyCat that caused a rush to buy, and talk about the similarities and differences in their design, quality and pricing.

People in the industry still remember how JellyCat stirred up a storm with its unremarkable dolls. On the Taobao platform, the 999 - yuan Bonnie Rabbit attracted more than 20,000 people to pay; in Kerry Center in Jing'an, Shanghai, the JellyCat - themed café made young people willing to queue for one or two hours.

Now, will Wen Tongzi be another rising star in the wave of emotional consumption?

How to make high - end plush toys?

Wen Tongzi does have many similarities with JellyCat, including but not limited to positioning as high - end plush toys and emphasizing quality.

In terms of product categories, Shen Ze shared that the reason for targeting the plush category is that compared with some flat printed patterns, plush products can carry cultural expressions more richly and three - dimensionally. Moreover, plush toys have a wide range of usage scenarios. They can be placed for viewing or hugged for companionship, which makes them closer to people.

For further marketization, Wen Tongzi will not limit the possibilities of plush toys. Instead, it will use plush as a carrier to seek more possibilities and expressions and carry more meanings.

The difference is that compared with JellyCat's design style that focuses on cuteness and healing, Wen Tongzi emphasizes more on the extraction and expression of traditional Chinese culture.

In Wen Tongzi's product matrix, there are not only dolls like "The Big Boss" and "Benbo'erba" that meet the current aesthetics and expressions of young consumers, but also large - scale dolls for space decoration that cost hundreds of thousands of yuan and are created using the concepts of the origin of all things and the image of scholars in traditional Chinese culture. The target audience is mainly people aged 18 - 35 who pay attention to self - expression and quality of life.

The "new favorite" of Mr. Yang, who loves trendy toys, is the flower series products of Wen Tongzi. Mr. Yang is a young white - collar worker living in a first - tier city. He said that the first time he bought related products was because of the differentiation of Wen Tongzi's products: "There are basically no alternatives. Only their brand makes this type of products."

The design of this series of products is based on restoring the state of Chinese flower arrangement. The design inspiration comes from Shen Ze and his design team's thinking about the lifestyle of young people. Decorating homes with porcelain and plants to show taste has a long history in China. However, for contemporary young people, porcelain that is easy to break and plants that need careful care can be a burden. Therefore, Wen Tongzi chose to use plush fabrics that will never break or wither and are more approachable to make vases and flowers.

(Flower series products of Wen Tongzi)

This differentiated development path has attracted consumers who like national fashion and also enabled the brand to avoid the edge of the currently popular Pop Mart and JellyCat and grow rapidly.

Mr. Yang has bought products worth more than 700 yuan each three times, with a total expenditure of about 2,000 yuan. He told 36Kr that he repurchased because the product quality was good enough. In contrast, two products he bought from JellyCat have been put up for sale on Xianyu because they shed hair seriously.

Quality is the support for Wen Tongzi to build its brand and also the user perception it has formed at this stage.

Zhuang Yinping, who has nearly 20 years of work experience, said that the technical threshold for producing plush products is not high. What is more challenging is how to minimize the gap between the sample and the final delivered product in the many processes.

Compared with other brands that mainly play the role of platform and distribution, Wen Tongzi has a more centralized process from design to production. Specifically, the production of a plush product needs to go through processes such as design, sampling, production, delivery and sales. Wen Tongzi only outsources the production process, and other links are controlled by its own team.

Taking sampling as an example, Wen Tongzi's design team will produce samples by themselves, which allows them to have a good grasp of product material selection and design. They can also specify production requirements before contacting the production factory. In contrast, in the industry, many other plush brands often rely on the factory for both sampling and production.

In this process, if there is a problem in any link or consumers have opinions, Wen Tongzi can correct them in time and even terminate the original production and sales process.

"If there is a product that takes three months to complete, but we are not satisfied after three months, we may postpone the whole project indefinitely or even pay a greater price to correct it," Shen Ze told 36Kr.

Behind the products with a sense of design is the investment in talents and resources. For factories, to undertake the production of these innovative products, they need to purchase new machines or transform existing equipment. Some complex designs require repeated trials and errors to achieve the final effect. These are all costs.

"With Wen Tongzi's current popularity, many factories are willing to cooperate with us, provided that they haven't cooperated with us before," Shen Ze said.

To control the quality, Wen Tongzi often needs the factories it cooperates with to make adjustments in terms of personnel and technology, and even requires the factories to invest money to upgrade production capacity, which is often difficult to achieve.

Shen Ze believes that the first impression of liking from users is the most important and the most direct emotional connection, regardless of the story behind the product. To achieve this "love at first sight", when transitioning to high - end plush toys in 2019, Wen Tongzi determined a development path centered on product strength. "We believe that in a few years, people's pursuit of a higher quality of life and products will definitely be a trend. So at that time, we cut off those very market - oriented businesses, including marketing and distribution channels, and focused on this matter."

High - end plush toys are a good business. Zhuang Yinping told 36Kr that the profit margin of ordinary plush products is only 10% - 20%. In contrast, the profit margin of high - end plush products can reach 50% or more. However, the high premium of the latter places high requirements on "brand power".

After more than five years, many consumers are willing to pay hundreds or thousands of yuan for a non - essential product that they can neither eat nor drink, but it doesn't mean that consumers don't care about the price.

Mr. Yang's three purchases all took place during the discount promotions of the relevant products, which could save him dozens of yuan. The consumers' willingness and the brand's pricing have set up a tightrope between a cliff. Wen Tongzi chooses to use product strength as the balancing pole in its hand.

This delicate balance can still be maintained at present. Many consumers who have bought Wen Tongzi's products will choose to repurchase. In the second - hand market, Wen Tongzi's products are still relatively well - preserved in value. "You can buy a product at a 30% discount and then sell it at a 20% discount, which is similar to JellyCat," Mr. Yang said.

Going offline

For Wen Tongzi, which has already attracted much attention, the more important thing is how to move forward after accelerating the commercialization process?

Now, Wen Tongzi has passed the small and beautiful stage and needs to face the challenge of large - scale production. High quality, design sense and large - scale production are naturally in conflict. Therefore, how to convert consumers who are hesitant because of the price and how to increase the production capacity that lags behind due to large orders are urgent problems to be solved.

The brand's current sales channels are mainly online, and among various e - commerce platforms, its Taobao flagship store is the main one, which has accumulated nearly 700,000 fans. Since this year, Wen Tongzi has increased its efforts to expand on other e - commerce platforms and has also started to go offline.

Shen Ze said that since this year, "the core of our commercialization is to go offline."

In fact, as early as the transformation in 2019, Shen Ze had considered setting up offline stores, but it was postponed due to the pandemic. He believes that unlike other products, plush toys need to be seen, felt and touched by consumers to determine their quality. The online presentation of pictures and texts is extremely limited.

Wen Tongzi currently has about 300 SKUs (Stock Keeping Units). If the shelves are to be fully stocked without repetition, a store of 40 to 50 square meters is needed. If they are sold in the traditional way of plush toy stores, an area of hundreds of square meters or even larger is required.

Since this year, Wen Tongzi has successively reached cooperation agreements with toy retail brands including Hamleys and will also open some pop - up stores. Next year, it will open its own brand stores one after another, mainly located in the core business districts of first - tier cities. The product selection will be different from that online, emphasizing experience and display.

(Advertising for the brand's offline store launch)

For Wen Tongzi, which lacks offline experience, it is a big challenge to rent a store of about a hundred square meters in the core business district of a first - tier city and do a good job in display. However, this is also a necessary thing to do. Just like Pop Mart, which is constantly upgrading its stores and opening new super stores at home and abroad, physical stores are an important part to support the brand.

In terms of the product matrix, Wen Tongzi's products can be simply divided into two categories: brand - oriented and market - oriented. The former products attract relatively niche consumers who pursue more self - expression and can ensure the brand's tone; the latter will extract well - known traditional cultural stories for design to win the love of more people.

While expanding, Wen Tongzi hopes to maintain product strength as its core competitiveness. As for creating an IP to tell the story of the product and the brand, it is still something that Wen Tongzi is exploring.