Focusing on original Oriental IP and driving traffic with 49.9-yuan picture albums, Guanyunyan has closed its seed round of financing.
Guanyunyan Cultural and Creative completed its seed round financing on November 11, 2026. The capital raised in this round will be used for the launch of low-threshold IP prequel picture albums, improving the full conversion link from public domain content marketing to private domain user retention, accelerating the circulation and in-depth operation of more than 3,500 highly interested users, and laying a foundation for the subsequent construction of the seasonal broadcast IP matrix and the underlying data precipitation of the privatized model.
In the early stage, the project takes original high-barrier cultural artifacts as a lightweight and low-risk entry, and takes the self-developed Eastern worldview, virtual IP character system and sub-IP matrix as long-term core assets, positioning itself as an ecological operation platform for Eastern cultural IPs.
From product thinking to ecological thinking, solving deep connection challenges through co-creation
Yang Kaiwen, founder of Guanyunyan, admitted frankly that the starting point of the project stemmed from a change in way of thinking, and what really made him lock in the direction was a specific experience from confusion to clarity. The turning point happened when he participated in the HSG YUE Entrepreneurship Accelerator for the last time. At that time, he was still a typical product thinker, failed to be selected, and once fell into confusion. "Products themselves are bound to be iterated. No matter the technology or functions, they are in the process of being caught up with and surpassed. Long-term competitiveness cannot be established solely by products."
But some accumulations had actually sown seeds long ago. Yang Kaiwen's family runs development business in a third- or fourth-tier small city, where the environment relies more on the game of resources, human nature and interests, which gave him a more delicate perception of people and relationships, and also developed his habit of writing novels about history and power struggles. The real opportunity came from his last relationship - his ex-girlfriend was admitted to the School of Cultural and Creative Industries of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which prompted him to study the cultural and creative industry seriously for the first time, and found that culture does not have to stay in feelings, and can be fully combined with business.
Behind this choice is also his sober judgment on industrial trends. His experience of being taught by Professor Lu Ming made him convinced that China's economic structure will shift from being dominated by manufacturing to where the service industry accounts for more than 70% of the total, and the future service industry will take offline scenarios and spiritual consumption as the core, among which the cultural industry is the segment with the most imagination space. By integrating co-creation, clue collection and multi-IP mechanism, Guanyunyan essentially takes a position in advance before this structural change comes, and lays the groundwork for subsequent offline immersive experiences, social currency and the international communication of Chinese culture. In the end, he combined his understanding of human nature, the accumulation of story writing, the cognition of the cultural and creative industry and the judgment of macro trends, decided to turn to an ecological thinking that can be friends with time and gets thicker as it precipitates, and settled the answer on Eastern culture.
In his view, there is generally a lack of deep connection between products and users at present - transactions are often one-time, users leave immediately after purchase, with no emotional connection or participation path, which brings problems such as weak stickiness, low repurchase rate and poor premium capability. Guanyunyan's solution is to build a complete and self-consistent Eastern worldview, and through the co-creation mechanism of "clue delivery, character reply, plot intervention", turn users from passive buyers to co-builders of content. After purchasing products of different characters, users can obtain exclusive clues, write to virtual characters and influence subsequent plots, so as to build a continuously growing emotional bond.
In order to make content production sustainable, Guanyunyan has also designed a seasonal broadcast snowball IP growth engine: new core characters are launched every season, multiple IPs run in parallel, previous characters do not exit, and the character relationships expand in a snowball way. Users' co-creation content also becomes the source of inspiration for the brand, so that it no longer relies solely on the founder's personal inspiration. At present, the project has obtained 6 text copyright certificates, building a legal barrier for the underlying IP assets. Its core target group is a group of users who have aesthetic pursuit, consumption power, and are willing to pay for cultural content, emotional value and design. They value spiritual resonance and identity belonging rather than simple function price comparison.
Double-layer product matrix, realizing positive cash flow and healthy operation model
In terms of business model, Guanyunyan adopts a double-layer product structure with high and low collocation. The upper layer is the core artifact priced at 899 yuan, which undertakes core profits and is bound to deep co-creation rights such as character autograph letters, clue delivery and plot intervention; the lower layer is the IP prequel picture album priced at 49.9 yuan, with content including stories, character posters, scene settings and postcards, allowing users to enter the worldview with a very low threshold, build trust, and then naturally turn to high-unit-price products. The rights and interests boundary between the two layers is clear, and the deep co-creation rights are only bound to the core artifacts, without diluting downwards.
In terms of operation mode, the project adheres to asset-light, pre-sale system, small batch, zero inventory and production based on sales, with extremely low starting investment, no pressure of large stock preparation and long-term liabilities. According to the data provided by the project party, the first batch of products were sold out quickly after launch and pre-sales were opened synchronously. At present, more than 3500 highly interested users have been accumulated; the picture album has not been officially launched and is only in the preview stage, but the number of reservations has exceeded 80. The feedback from users who have placed orders is quite consistent - they initially just wanted to buy the product, but were "received beyond expectations" by the autograph letters and co-creation mechanism behind it.
The warm-up feedback from different public domain platforms also brought unexpected surprises. On Douyin, the team deliberately kept restrained, only posted IP images with a small amount of copywriting, without mentioning the picture album at all, but received a large number of active messages asking "what is the story of this character", which confirmed that a solid character image itself will arouse curiosity. On Xiaohongshu, the most concentrated discussions among users are about aesthetic feeling and content depth, especially the female power carried by the first character Dai Qingyu and the situation of women in the old era, which triggered a lot of high-quality resonance and extended discussions.
In terms of finance, the project maintains a "small and healthy" state: there are real C-end transactions, there is a clear and sustainable gross profit margin between product cost and selling price, and it does not rely on burning money for subsidies, and the overall positive gross profit logic has been realized; supported by asset-light, pre-sale system and zero inventory, the cash flow is stable and there is no risk of capital chain rupture. But Yang Kaiwen also admitted that the current absolute revenue and profit scale are still small, and the project is in the verification stage. The picture album is the first key action in the new stage - it allows more interested people to participate with a low threshold, making up for the shortcomings of long high-unit-price decision-making cycle and slow conversion.
Highly fragmented track, no fully overlapping competitors for the time being
According to the judgment of the BP, there is currently no competitor whose business, product and operation logic completely overlap with Guanyunyan, and the real benchmarks are the top players in the three surrounding circles.
The first circle is trendy toys and IP derivatives, which is the most direct contest in emotional consumption. In 2025, the market size was about 87.5 billion yuan, and the top five companies only accounted for 32.5% in total. The market is highly fragmented, and nearly 70% of the share is divided by tens of thousands of small players. Leading player Pop Mart accounts for 21.8%, with advantages in IP matrix, mature global channels and supply chain, and rapid overseas growth, while its shortcomings are that its IPs are mostly image-driven, lack in-depth long-form narratives, and user co-creation is relatively shallow; the second-ranked TOP TOY accounts for 4.8%, which expanded rapidly through collective retail, with strengths in channel integration and weaknesses in weak self-owned IPs and low content moat.
The second circle is IP licensing and content operation. In 2025, the licensing market size exceeded 86 billion yuan, and the top players accounted for more than 65%. China Literature, Alpha Group, Huace Film & TV, and Enlight Media are in the first tier, among which Alpha Group's brand licensing accounts for about 9.6%. Their strengths lie in rich content reserves, strong copyright and full-link operation capabilities, while their weaknesses are that monetization mainly relies on external licensing, there is no cash flow support from self-owned entities, and there is no in-depth user co-creation mechanism.
The third circle is museums and national-style cultural and creative products. The single store of the Palace Museum has more than 10 million fans, followed by the National Museum of China, Dunhuang Museum, and Suzhou Museum. Their strengths are cultural authority and natural trust, while their weaknesses are that their products are biased towards traditional souvenirs, lack original long-form worldview and plot co-creation mechanism, and the gameplay is relatively traditional.
The three circles are strong in "scale and channels", "content copyright" and "cultural authority" respectively, but none of them combine the complete worldview, physical products, user co-creation and private model together, which is exactly the vacant position Guanyunyan tries to occupy; its current gap is not in the model, but that the volume and resources are still far behind the top players.
From cultural IP to cultural technology, laying out the ecological platform in the medium and long term
Guanyunyan is not satisfied with being just a product brand. It judges that with the development of AI, a new group of middle-class and high-net-worth people will emerge, whose consumption concept is more inclined to emotional connection and emotional guidance. Based on this, the project has planned a private model and data middle platform in the medium and long term, using the continuously accumulated worldview corpus to train exclusive models, to feed back the full-link efficiency of content production, user operation and decision-making, and plans to access immersive technologies, so that users can truly "walk into" this world.
According to the 3-5 year roadmap, Guanyunyan will gradually open up its worldview, promote film and television IP cooperation with platforms such as iQiyi and Tencent Video, as well as authorization for games and various industries, complete multi-category extension, and eventually become the infrastructure for Eastern cultural IPs, carrying the value of international communication of Chinese culture.
In terms of the team, 24-year-old Yang Kaiwen graduated from the Department of Business Administration of Hanyang University, and is a serial entrepreneur: the failure of his early clothing entrepreneurship made him accumulate risk control experience in channels, operation and team management; his self-media experience made him understand traffic mechanisms and public domain operation methods; his trading experience brought him B2B, B2C and B2G docking capabilities; his biotech experience cultivated his sense of smell for AI and hard technology trends. In addition, the technical director graduated from a top overseas university and is also an alumnus of the founder, responsible for mini-programs, IP knowledge base and data base; three external consultants are respectively from the School of Artificial Intelligence of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the Academy of Arts & Design of Tsinghua University, and former product operation staff of Xiaohongshu. The full-time person in charge of the supply chain left earlier due to inconsistent values, and is currently acting by the founder, which is planned to be supplemented after the completion of the seed round financing.
For future financing, Guanyunyan prefers to choose investors who have layouts in both the new consumption and AI fields, and have successful cases in the consumer or service industry, expecting to obtain strategic synergy, talent expansion and resource docking in addition to funds. "Our ideal cooperation is that capital, wisdom and resources come in together, and we walk together for the long term." Yang Kaiwen said.
What Guanyunyan really wants to reach is never a sales figure, but a more long-term existence - to let the thoughts and stories in Eastern culture that have not yet been fully told re-grow through contemporary products and narratives, so that everyone who walks in can find the meaning of resonance, belonging and participation. It chooses a slow but solid road: to stand firm with products, precipitate data with the platform, and finally undertake cross-industry imagination with an open ecology, growing itself from a brand into the infrastructure on which Eastern cultural IPs rely for growth.