Guanyunyan is breaking through the low repurchase rate bottleneck in the new consumption sector with its Eastern cultural IP ecosystem, and is seeking pre-angel financing.
Currently, the new consumption track is stuck in the industry dilemma of homogenization and vicious low-price involution. Traditional ceramic cultural and creative products generally face the pain points of only having utensil symbols, lacking complete cultural core, having a repurchase cycle as long as two to three years, and low user stickiness. The Oriental cultural IP ecological operation platform created by Guanyunyan Cultural Creativity takes the original world view as the foundation, high-end ceramics from Jingdezhen as the entry point, and user network co-creation as the core mechanism. It has completed cold start verification in Lingang, Shanghai, and is currently in the pre-seed round financing stage.
Three-layer Architecture and Networked Co-creation Solve the Industry's Dead End of Low Repurchase Rate
The core logic of the Guanyunyan project originates from the long-term observation of the consumer goods industry by founder Yang Kaiwen. Pure physical consumer goods are extremely prone to fall into homogenized involution, and the asset-heavy model has extremely high risks. The ultimate competition of consumer goods will eventually fall to the level of emotional value and identity belonging. Cultural and creative products on the market generally lack stories, and pure IP projects lack physical cash flow. This industry gap has become the entry point for the Guanyunyan model.
The project adopts a unique three-layer distributed architecture at the bottom: the Great Yun Dynasty serves as a unified world view operating system, with self-built territory of 9 prefectures and 24 counties, a supervision system of three provincial departments and six ministries plus the Censorate, a military system of five armies plus the military inspection hall, a secret guard system of 12 town guards in the capital, three major folk academies and six major chambers of commerce, supporting six local ideological theories such as kingly power and justice, abiding by etiquette and kindness, and striving for self-improvement for practical application; each IP character is an independent narrative account that carries user emotional connection; each ceramic utensil is a content entry and interactive application. This architecture fundamentally solves the pain points of the cultural and creative industry, such as exhausted inspiration, chaotic new product launch, and difficulty in scaling up. After the system is formed, it can be horizontally replicated to other consumer categories such as clothing, beauty, and trendy toys, without being limited by a single utensil carrier.
With the seasonal broadcast snowball IP growth mechanism, six brand new characters are launched every season, sharing the same timeline, previous characters never leave the stage, and the character relationship grows exponentially with the number of seasons. The first season has launched six complete characters: Yuhua Fairy, Yang Qian, Li Yasu, Li Shouyi, Su Sanming and Wu Yuexi. The main story is set in Yumeng Prefecture, and the plot at the end of the season extends to Taining County to pave the way for subsequent series. Theoretically, it can support the perpetual operation of IP, solving the industry problem of exhausted IP life cycle.
The most differentiated networked narrative user co-construction mechanism of the project compresses the repurchase cycle of the ceramic industry from two to three years to 30 to 90 days. Users will get exclusive clues after purchasing the corresponding character utensils, and can deliver clues to the characters to interfere with the subsequent plot trend, upgrading from passive bystanders to co-builders of the world view. The co-creation permission is designed in layers: holding only one single utensil can deliver supplementary content for the private story of the corresponding character, and holding two or more utensils unlocks cross-character clue transmission; at the same time, a risk control mechanism is set up, user co-creation only affects the private details of characters and the trend of individual stories, the overall main villain layout and core reversal of the first season are fully controlled by the official, to prevent plot loss of control and early spoiler. As the first IP character launched by the project, the character design of Dai Qingyu, the Yuhua Fairy, has also aroused the emotional resonance of many users: in the world view of the Great Yun Dynasty, Dai Qingyu was originally a swordsman with a poor background. After recognizing the rising predicament of women under the background of the times, she retreated to a secluded island to make porcelain after her lover sacrificed, reinterpreting the local ideology of "striving for self-improvement for practical application", proving that a complete personality itself is a kind of value. The first Qingyan Pink Master Bowl is the concrete carrier of her spirit, the changing pink glaze color corresponds to the change of her state of mind in half her life. The product delivery is equipped with a wax seal letter and a prequel picture album. Users who buy the utensils get the entry to the world view of the Great Yun Dynasty, can deliver letters to Dai Qingyu and become narrative co-creators, which opens up the complete link of "character spirit - utensil craft - user emotional projection". This is also the first landing practice of the project's three-layer architecture.
Lingang Cold Start Verification and Core Barrier Construction
The project was officially established in July 2026, and settled in the third phase of Lingang Innovation Magic Workshop in Shanghai at the same time, enjoying the supporting policies for Lingang cultural and creative industry and digital cultural export, deeply integrating into the Lingang Dishui Lake science and innovation ecosystem, and carrying out local cultural IP incubation relying on the local digital cultural export policy. On July 22, the cold start of Xiaohongshu content was launched, and on August 8, the product link was mounted to complete the commercialization of the first product. During the cold start period, the platform gave significant commercial traffic tilt, and users had strong willingness to convert through grass-planting. At present, more than 1,000 high-intent seed users have been accumulated, completing the initial market verification.
The core founding team currently consists of two people: founder Yang Kaiwen, a 24-year-old graduate of the Department of Business Administration of Hanyang University, a serial entrepreneur, who has explored in the fields of clothing, self-media, biotechnology, trade, etc., and has accumulated mature commercial risk control capabilities. In this project, he coordinates the overall strategy, and independently builds the complete world view and top-level mechanism of the Great Yun Dynasty; Luo Sijie, the supply chain head, graduated from the Department of Communication Engineering of Shaoyang University, has 4 years of B-end sales and fragile goods delivery experience, and is fully responsible for the full-link production and delivery in Jingdezhen, compressing the cycle from idea to mass production to less than 30 days. At this stage, the project is actively expanding the core founding team, and has locked in key position candidates including former Alibaba operation personnel, technical personnel from the Department of Software Engineering of Hanyang University, and former literary practitioners from Yuewen Group. The core team will be built after the financing is in place.
Since the project was launched, the layout of intellectual property rights has been advanced simultaneously. Three text copyright certificates for the world view of the Great Yun Dynasty have been obtained, and three other text copyrights for IP stories are being applied for simultaneously. The appearance patent and trademark registration of the first product are also being advanced simultaneously. The complete fictional dynasty territory, official system, character design, seasonal narrative framework, and full set of main and side plots are all protected by copyright law, forming a non-replicable content legal barrier. At the supply chain level, the project breaks through the technological bottleneck of Jingdezhen, and realizes the exclusive glaze-picking high-temperature gold tracing process. After investigation, nearly ten Jingdezhen studios cannot achieve it under the same price and process standards, and only one partner with mass production capacity is locked, so it is difficult for competitors to replicate the same quality and process barrier at the same price. The design end adopts the mode of founder leading plus AI-assisted original creation, without relying on external design teams. At present, more than 20 utensil drafts have been reserved, and the rhythm of new products is completely independent and controllable. The project has run through the spot plus pre-sale model with very low start-up capital, achieved positive cash flow verification at the MVP stage, and established a full set of standardized SOP for the three sectors of IP creation, global operation and supply chain, laying a foundation for large-scale expansion.
Early seed user feedback shows that some users said they have never seen a brand that combines ceramic utensils and stories so deeply, the texture of the bowl far exceeds expectations, and the experience of following the plot and writing letters to the characters is very fresh; gift-giving users mentioned that giving such a master bowl with a story is more thoughtful than giving ordinary porcelain, and the recipient is deeply impressed.
Trillion-level Track Space and Pre-seed Round Financing Plan
According to the relevant report of iResearch, the market size of China's national style new consumption has exceeded one trillion yuan in 2025, and it still maintains an annual growth rate of more than 15%. Among them, the original IP track with complete content core and strong sense of participation still has obvious gaps. The national policy orientation of promoting cultural confidence and Chinese cultural export also brings broad growth space for original Oriental cultural IP. Guanyunyan accurately targets core customer groups aged 25 to 40, including urban light luxury white-collar workers, niche gift-giving crowds, Chinese culture lovers, utensil collectors, as well as homestay owners, national style aesthetic bloggers, etc. In the cold start stage, it focuses on cultivating a single vertical platform of Xiaohongshu, and plants grass in advance through three types of content: world view plot, process popularization, and user co-creation, to reduce customer acquisition investment.
The project has a clear growth path. In the short term, as an Oriental utensil narrative IP brand, it relies on ceramic sales to guarantee cash flow; in the medium term, it is upgraded to an Oriental narrative operating system, opening IP co-branding authorization, and the model can be horizontally replicated to other consumer categories such as clothing, beauty, and trendy toys; in the long term, it will become the infrastructure of the Oriental cultural universe, exporting the world view content base externally, with a ceiling far higher than that of traditional ceramic brands.
The project belongs to the cultural and creative track among the eight supporting business formats in Lingang. In the medium term, it can horizontally extend to cover the other seven supporting business formats in Lingang. At the same time, in the medium and long term, it will implement technical capabilities such as AI character interaction and VR immersive world view, which can connect with local AI technology enterprises in Lingang to export scenario cooperation entrances, realizing two-way empowerment between the cultural and creative IP industry and Lingang AI technology industry. At this stage, the business model of the project has been verified by public domain content. The core pain point is the phased shortage of manpower. The energy of the existing core team is heavily occupied, and it cannot undertake key tasks such as private domain operation and clue delivery, resulting in a gap in the complete commercial conversion funnel. This round plans to raise 2 million yuan, with 20% equity transferred. The funds will be used for batch confirmation of intellectual property rights, expansion of the core team, deep binding of the Jingdezhen supply chain, brand upgrading and user operation, to open up the full-link conversion closed loop and release the core value of the project. To deal with potential risks, the project adheres to the dual insurance of content plus entity. Even if the popularity of IP content is lower than expected, the exclusive craft ceramics can still be sold independently; the spot plus pre-sale model fundamentally controls the inventory risk; at the intellectual property level, batch confirmation will be completed to establish an infringement monitoring mechanism; long-term technologies such as AI and VR will be gradually implemented after the user scale and cash flow reach the standard, which will not affect short-term profitability.
In the future, Guanyunyan will evolve steadily according to the three-level path from consumer goods to IP platform and then to cultural infrastructure. It will land the complete IP matrix of the first season within 12 months in the short term, and run through the full-link business closed loop; complete the IP matrix construction within 1 to 2 years, launch AI character interaction, and carry out IP authorization business; open the Great Yun Dynasty world view to the public within 2 to 5 years, implement VR immersive experience, rely on Lingang cultural and creative and AI industrial resources to promote the export of original Oriental cultural IP, and finally build an Oriental cultural IP ecological infrastructure with cross-industry linkage.