Some post-00s speculate in stocks, while others speculate in “Valley”

In this article, we will take a deep look at the emerging investment and collection trend among the post-00s generation - the "grain" culture. From comics, animation to games, these two-dimensional derivatives not only attract the attention of the younger generation, but also play an important role in their lives.

Not long ago, A-shares were all in the green, attracting a group of enthusiastic new investors born in the 2000s to enter the market, and even rumors of new investors borrowing money to clean up the stock market were spread. Compared with stocks, some new investors born in the 2000s are more obsessed with speculating in a new potential "valley".

What is millet?

The word "guzi" comes from the homonym of the English word "goods", which refers to peripheral products derived from copyrighted works such as comics, animations, games, idols, special effects, etc., and belongs to the two-dimensional related products. It mainly includes:

Baji (badge in English, which is the homonym of badge) refers to badges in animation, games and other peripherals. These badges usually have character images and fans can pin them on clothes or bags. They are usually made of tinplate.

Colored paper: Made of cardboard, mainly square. Recently popular techniques include quicksand colored paper and acrylic colored paper, some of which come with a stand.

Stand: Made of acrylic. Commonly used hot stamping process. Can be used as a desktop ornament.

LiDe: Paper products, mostly with hot stamping technology or without technology, in a variety of sizes.

Mahjong (acrylic product): a rectangular acrylic product, not the mahjong in the four-player domino game, mainly divided into ordinary mahjong and quicksand mahjong. Quicksand mahjong contains glitter sequins and quicksand oil.

Laser ticket: Paper product, mostly laser processed, common length is 21cm, width sizes are more.

Posters: PP material is more, compared with paper products, the material is harder and not easy to damage. The process is simple and the size is rich.

Transparent card: PVC material, transparent, simple process, and rich sizes.

Pendant: Made of acrylic. Available in various shapes. Can be used as a hanging item for school bags or keys.

Figures: Sculpture collectibles, usually referring to three-dimensional models based on anime or game characters.

BJD doll: ball joint doll, you can change clothes and styles freely.

Papa: Generally a Q version plush toy, most of which are in a prone position.

Nunu: A cotton doll with a head-to-body ratio close to 2:1.

Baby: It can be understood as a doll in the popular sense. The common heights are 15cm and 20cm. (From this, it can be expanded to dumplings, plush pendants, etc.)

In addition to the above, there are also some practical peripherals, such as pajamas, hats, fans, etc., with a wide variety of types. A large number of specialized words have been born around Guzi, and these Guzi circle "jargons" have discouraged many people outside the circle. On social platforms, many netizens even posted a collection list of "Eating Guzi jargons" to help people integrate into the Guzi circle more quickly.

Image source: screenshot from Xiaohongshu

1. Online "blossoming", offline "fruiting"

Most of the millets are derived from online IPs. In recent years, from the domestic large-scale games "Genshin Impact", "Love and Deep Space", "Love and Night", "Black Myth: Wukong", novels "Grave Robbers' Chronicles", "The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation", "The Mermaid Falls", to the emoticon package "Siam Lip"; from the early foreign anime "Attack on Titan" and "Detective Conan", to the recent hot "Haikyuu!", "Spy X House", "My Little Pony", etc., a large number of millets have been derived, stimulating batches of two-dimensional consumer groups.

On a second-hand trading platform, an acrylic mahjong with a character from "Haikyuu!!" was sold at a high price of 83,000 yuan; a collectible card from "My Little Pony" was sold for 250,000 yuan, setting the Internet on fire; the nap blanket recently launched by "Siam Lip" was sold out across the entire network, and on second-hand trading platforms, the price of purchasing on behalf of others has doubled... On platforms such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Weibo, the number of views and discussions of various videos and topics related to Guzi has reached hundreds of millions.

Image source: Screenshot from TikTok

The above-mentioned rare and expensive millets are called "Seaview Millets" by millet circles (as rare as seaview houses). The price is slightly lower than that of Seaview Millets, which are called "Lakeview Millets". Other ordinary millets are called "Plain Millets". Someone has calculated that a "Baji" worth 72,000 yuan weighs about 20 grams, which means that the value per gram is 3,600 yuan, which is about 4.5 times the current gold price. Therefore, millet is also called plastic gold.

Young people's love for millet has also spread to the three-dimensional world (the real world). In a small supermarket in a third-tier city, primary school students lined up to buy My Little Pony cards, buying 100 bags at a time; in Hangzhou's Gonglian CC, young people gathered here on weekends, from pop-up stores to millet stores, with a strong two-dimensional atmosphere...

While parents are still worried about their children becoming addicted to drawing cards and spending hundreds or thousands of them, countless millet stores and pop-up stores have sprung up around major supermarkets and schools.

Photo provided by the interviewee

Cheng Er, an industry insider, said: "Since the beginning of this year, the number of offline millet stores has increased significantly. Some have used their own IPs to open millet stores, while others have used foreign copyrights to become exclusive agents in China to open chain stores. Chain stores such as MINISO and K11 have also added millet varieties from other IPs to sell. With the generalization of the ACG population, the millet market has also undergone great changes."

Yidu Pro observed that upstream IP copyright holders such as Mihoyo, Tencent, NetEase, Bilibili, and Kuaikan Comics have also begun to increase their investment in the millet market and improve the one-stop industrial chain from IP to products.

2. Generating electricity for love, identity recognition, and secondary sales: the triple value of buying grain

In late October, Xiao Han, a new player in the Valley Circle, and his classmates attended an offline birthday party for the character Shen Xinghui in the O-game "Love and Deep Space" at Dalian CapitaLand Peace Plaza.

Photo provided by the interviewee

According to her, to participate in such offline activities, you need to provide your game level and your favorability towards the character, or related materials to prove that you have played the game and show that you are a loyal fan. At the scene, you can also get wallpapers and materials of related games and characters.

However, this was not Xiao Han's original intention to buy millet. In her words, it was "following the trend". After being admitted to graduate school, Xiao Han realized the freedom of time. At the same time, Xiao Han took a part-time job as a photographer, which allowed her to spend money more freely. She observed that millet became popular this year, and many people could make more money by reselling it second-hand. Without much consideration, Xiao Han directly entered the millet circle and started her shopping journey.

After entering the circle, Xiao Han admitted, "In fact, I didn't make as much money as I imagined. It's still hard to make money by my own strength." Instead, because she really likes it, Xiao Han bought a lot of millet, such as "Non-Human", "Cardcaptor Sakura", "Love and Deep Space", "Siam Lip", "Jujutsu Kaisen", whether it is domestic or foreign, or mobile games and animation, Xiao Han, who loves people, has dabbled in them all. She doesn't care about the quality of the millet, or whether it is genuine or not, she only cares whether she likes it and how good it looks. Every month, the cost of buying millet accounts for 20% of her living expenses.

Photo provided by the interviewee

Through bartering in the Gu Circle, Xiao Han has also made many friends who share the same interests. "For example, if someone else has the Gu of a character I like, and she has the Gu of a character I like, then we will exchange. There is an unwritten rule that when packing, you need to put some small gifts in to show friendship. This is the packing culture of the Gu Circle." For Xiao Han, passion and making friends are her biggest motivation to buy Gu.

Completely different from Xiao Han, Kyla, who is also a graduate student, is more interested in the practicality and cost-effectiveness of millets, such as the pillow of Haikyuu and the headband of Harry Potter... Kyla will not go to online stores to choose millets, but when she goes shopping offline, she will buy what she likes. However, for the blind box of "Spy X Play House" and Pop Mart that she really likes, Kyla is not obsessed with cost-effectiveness.

Quanquan, who has been preparing for the civil service exam at home since graduating from university, does this completely for the love of the business. She does not consider the cost-effectiveness and does not want to make money. For her, if she likes something, she will buy it. Now she is lying at home and not making any money. "The biggest purpose of my buying millet is to decorate my 'pain table'. When I have a stable job in the future, I will set a fixed part of my expenses every month for this." For Quanquan, decorating the "pain table" will make her feel a sense of accomplishment.

The same meaning as "pain table" is pain bag. During the Olympics, the pain bag was popularized by diving champion Jeon Hongchan, and more people learned about the pain bag culture. Pain bag refers to a bag full of anime character badges and dolls. Because such a bag makes people feel "strange and exaggerated (the Japanese word "pain" has this meaning)", it is called "pain bag (itabag)". It has even derived "pain bed", "pain car", "pain plane" and so on.

Photo provided by the interviewee

"I used to spend all my pocket money on my favorite IPs, but now I can stand on the shore and look at millet culture rationally." Ahao, a worker in the system in a second-tier city, will configure a desktop computer for "Black Myth: Wukong", but will not spend a penny more on millet. Even the peripherals of "Black Myth: Wukong", he can look at it rationally.

For him, the quality and copyright of millet are more important. The reason why millet culture is so popular now is that there are more and more small workshops, the price range of millet is wider, and more and more people can afford it. "Compared with the previous high premium, the current millet market is aimed at middle school students and even elementary school students. The assembly line-style mass production creates economic benefits far exceeding the original expensive figures of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of yuan."

"For us workers, it is better to go home and play a few online games instead of spending money to buy grain. It will make us more relaxed and happy," said Ahao.

3. Is it easy to make money from millet?

“When the aunties in the vegetable market all know how to make money by speculating in stocks, then it’s time to lose money”, this also applies to millet. Regarding the “money prospects” of the millet market, whether it is the current purchasing enthusiasts or the former practitioners, their unanimous opinion is “pessimistic”.

Cheng Er, a former practitioner from a comic platform, believes that "the current trend of opening stores is a bit too much, including my friends who have already opened stores, and the current market is not sustainable.

"In her opinion, the millet market is ultimately based on the pocket money economy. At the same time, the two-dimensional culture belongs to the youth culture and is unlikely to attract more middle-aged and elderly people. In addition, the number of births has dropped sharply in the past two years, so the entire market is naturally on a downward trend.

Many people understand this principle, but it still cannot stop the craze for opening stores. On social platforms, you can see that there are endless posts about various strategies for opening stores. However, when you open the comments, you can see that most people have negative comments about opening stores. Most of them focus on the high rent, water and electricity, unstable supply, serious homogeneity, and difficulty in obtaining IP agency...

Cheng Er even boldly predicted that if it were not a chain store, it would be difficult for Gudian, which started on its own, to survive more than a year.

Image source: screenshot from Xiaohongshu

In her opinion, those who can make money in this industry have started investing in the past one or two years and have a stable source of customers and goods. Opening a store now requires heavy asset investment and has great competitiveness. Relying on market dilution, it is a good result if they can avoid losses.

Even the players in the Guzi circle themselves are not optimistic about this market. Xiao Han said, "The market premium is too serious. It is really easy to make money in the two-dimensional world, but everyone is not stupid." Some people who rely on premiums and resale to disrupt the market will sooner or later push the Guzi market to the opposite side of the public. Some netizens also reported that even the official and genuine Guzi will be shoddy, overpriced, and the creators are only concerned with profit.

Image source: Weibo screenshot

What is more serious is that with the popularity of Guquan, some "bad guys" took the opportunity to enter Guquan to make profits and carry out online fraud against minors.

Some fraudsters lure minors into buying millet by claiming it is their favorite product. Then they pretend to be public security, procuratorial and judicial personnel, and threaten them by saying that minors are not allowed to buy it, so that they can transfer money to eliminate the so-called "legal responsibility". Because most victims are young, lack social experience and awareness of prevention, they can easily fall into the trap of fraudsters. In addition, the purchasing of millet by proxy, group buying, free gifts after leaving the circle, and money back after leaving the circle are also high-incidence areas for fraud.

Therefore, the unregulated millet market needs to return to its essence, return to the content itself, stabilize the audience with content, and retain the audience with good products.

Text: Mu Qiao Editor: Xiaoying