MINISO once again holds the workers in its hands

This article talks about the sales and impact of MINISO’s newly launched co-branded products. Interested readers can read on.

Taking advantage of the Chiikawa craze that has spread to the Chinese market, MINISO’s co-branded products have once again “harvested” young people.

In the early morning of March 29, a large number of Chiikawa fans waited outside the MINISO and Chiikawa joint pop-up store in Shanghai, waiting for the IP products to be launched in the Chinese market. On the first day of opening, according to media reports, the pop-up store had sales of more than 2.68 million yuan in 10 hours. Under the time and purchase restrictions, the store's performance in the first three days of opening was still as high as 8 million yuan.

The hot sales continued to the MINISO x Chiikawa Beijing pop-up store. On the first day of the store's opening, not only was it difficult to get a reservation code to enter the store, but even consumers who got a reservation still had to queue for nearly an hour to enter the store.

Wang Jing, a post-95 consumer in Beijing, said that she didn't check in at the Beijing pop-up store until April 20. Although reservations were no longer required, there were still many people queuing outside the store. "I arrived at the scene at 10 o'clock in the morning, and the queue was already over 700. I waited for more than an hour before entering the venue. Fortunately, I bought the limited edition products of the pop-up store that I wanted."

From Chiikawa to Loopy, and earlier models like Linear Dog and Lingna Belle, MINISO seems to be rarely absent from popular IP collaborations, and its best-selling products are frequently launched.

Last year, the series of products jointly launched by MINISO and Loopy were sold out instantly on the day of their online launch, causing the mini program to crash. When the Barbie movie was released, MINISO also revealed that the nail stickers, Chanel-style diamond-shaped box messenger bag and Bluetooth headphones jointly launched with Barbie were the top three best-selling products among its joint products.

1. MINISO and Chiikawa

In recent times, Chiikawa has become one of the most popular anime characters among young people.

Chiikawa is a comic series created by Japanese cartoonist Nagano, which began serialization on the X (Twitter) platform in 2020.

The three cute protagonists of the comic - the white hamster Ji, the kitten Hatchi (Xiaohachi) with blue bangs, and the rabbit Usagi, live together in the forest.

But this forest is not a fairy tale world. Even cute little animals like the protagonist have to face the survival problems in the cruel reality and rely on working hard and fighting monsters to earn income in order to make a living.

In 2022, the animated series adapted from Chiikawa's manga was broadcast in Japan and quickly became popular in the domestic market, winning the Japanese Character of the Year Award that year.

With the help of social media, Chiikawa's craze has spread from Japan to the world. Currently, Chiikawa has opened official accounts on X, Youtube, and Instagram, and has nearly 3.2 million fans on the X platform alone.

"Before this, I often watched Chiikawa's animation on overseas social platforms. Because I couldn't understand Japanese, I could only watch the Chinese translation of the animation made by the Instagram blogger I followed. I thought the images of the main characters were very cute, and later I found that the storyline was also very warm and healing. The short video animation format of more than one minute per episode is very suitable for dissemination on social platforms. I feel very relieved when I watch it after get off work." Chiikawa's Chinese fan Han Yue said. She showed Value Planet a social platform animation blogger she followed. The average number of views of the short videos classified under Chiikawa was several million times, and the popularity was quite high.

The popularity of Chiikawa has quickly boosted the commercial value of the IP. In 2022, Chiikawa took the second place in the Japanese popular product rankings, and has collaborated with many well-known brands such as McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Lawson, and Uniqlo.

According to Japanese media reports, Chiikawa's author Nagano's annual income exceeds 5.2 billion yen (about 250 million yuan), and the sales of peripheral products contribute the most to his income, reaching 5 billion yen.

In January this year, the Chinese dubbed version of Chiikawa's animation began to be updated on the official accounts of Bilibili and Douyin platforms. Many Chinese fans created secondary emoticons of Chiikawa's image, which quickly made him familiar and loved by more young Chinese people.

In the Chinese market, this collaboration with MINISO is the first time that Chiikawa officially launched authorized peripheral products. Previously, Wang Jing and some of her friends could only purchase Chiikawa peripheral products in Japan through online purchasing channels. Now MINISO undoubtedly provides a more convenient and cost-effective shopping option.

Image source: Maji Photo

Wang Jing said that a few days before the MINISO Chiikawa products went on sale, she didn't want to queue up at the pop-up store, so she went to the regular offline store a week later. "At that time, there was no need to queue up, but many products in the offline store were not available. Later, I placed an order on the MINISO APP and finally collected all three "cuties". Each doll cost between 30 and 60 yuan. Compared with the price of more than 100 yuan for purchasing from Japan, I think it is very cost-effective."

2. Hitting the emotional value, young people buy Chiikawa

Behind MINISO's keen sense of hot-selling products, it actually accurately grasps the emotional state of contemporary workers and caters to the psychological needs of young people such as "going crazy" and "seeking simple happy emotions" under the pressure of work and life.

Han Yue said that the reason why Chiikawa is popular is largely because its storyline resonates with many young people, allowing people to gain energy and feel "healed" from these cute anime characters.

The three main characters in Chiikawa each have their own personality traits. The kitten named "Hachi" is not only polite and emotionally stable, but also very selfless to his friends; the hamster Jiyi is a very "i" character with some social phobia, and many young people have found their own shadows in him. Although he rarely speaks and is timid, he is very warm to his friends; the rabbit Usagi makes all kinds of strange noises without logic in his daily life, giving people an emotional outlet to "go crazy" without any reason in addition to maintaining rationality in daily life.

Like human social animals, Hachi and Jiyi also need to work hard to earn money to support themselves, doing odd jobs like weeding or killing monsters in the forest to get paid. In order to increase his pay, Jiyi also needs to pass the exam to obtain a weeding certificate, but in reality, he failed the test twice. These plots can resonate with many young people who are under pressure to study and find a job.

"Xiao Ba himself is not very rich and lives in a stone house. Although he is not well off, he shares everything he has with his two friends. Ji Yi is very timid, but he is not afraid to save his friends." Han Yue said that in real life, it is difficult to have such a perfect friendship as the one between Xiao Ba and Ji Yi, and it is also difficult to have an attitude like Usagi who does not care about anything and goes crazy and screams without wasting time.

For many young consumers, the details in the Chiikawa story, in which the three little animals face an unsatisfactory environment but still live positively and support each other, make up for their own emotional needs that are "forced" but actually seriously lacking in real life. It is no surprise that Chiikawa has become a top IP at the moment.

Han Yue said that she has watched all the 100-plus episodes of Chiikawa animation released so far, but she still often revisits some clips. The plots performed by the three cute little cuties make her feel warm every time she watches them.

The pink beaver Loopy, which was co-branded with MINISO last year, also has similar attributes of being "soft and cute", "working man" and "crazy". Both emoticons and various co-branded products have become popular because they hit the psychological state of contemporary young people.

3. Enjoy the benefits of joint ventures, but occasionally fail

As early as 2019, Ye Guofu, the founder of MINISO, proposed the concept of "interest-based consumption" and promoted product innovation through IP collaboration and other means to meet the material and emotional needs of young consumer groups.

In recent years, relying on the IP co-branding strategy, MINISO has cooperated with globally renowned IPs such as Disney, Sanrio, Marvel, and Pokemon, achieving a significant increase in brand influence.

According to MINISO's official website, MINISO has worked closely with more than 100 world-renowned IPs. According to media reports, by 2023, MINISO's IP co-branded core SKUs will exceed 2,300.

Specifically, from Barbie, Stripe Puppy, Loopy to Chiikawa, "co-branding" as the traffic code for MINISO to attract fans has always achieved "miraculous results".

Image source: Maji Photo

When the "Barbie" movie was released, MINISO launched more than 120 new IP co-branded products, which were sold simultaneously in China and the United States, with a sold-out rate of 70% within two weeks.

Last year, the joint product launched by MINISO and Loopy also became one of its most popular phenomenal IP products. According to media reports, the online sales of Loopy series products alone reached about 4 million yuan in a single month. The keyword "Loopy doll" was also shortlisted for Taobao's top ten products of the year in 2023.

The popularity of the new "Internet celebrity" Chiikawa is even higher than Loopy. On the Xiaohongshu platform, searching for the keyword Loopy shows more than 710,000 notes, while searching for Chiikawa shows more than 1.5 million notes. The popularity has spread to offline, with a large number of fans flocking to MINISO, and their enthusiasm for buying Chiikawa co-branded products is higher than ever before.

By collaborating with IPs that have their own traffic, MINISO has not only expanded its brand influence and attracted many young consumers to join in, but also driven further profit growth.

In 2023, MINISO's revenue exceeded 13.8 billion yuan, and its adjusted net profit was about 2.36 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 110%, and its gross profit margin reached 41.2%, a year-on-year increase of 6.3%. MINISO said that one of the reasons for the increase in gross profit margin was the brand upgrading strategy in the domestic market, which launched products with higher gross profit margins.

Zheshang Securities believes that MINISO's IP strategy has been proven to be successful, with past sales performance exceeding expectations. The blockbuster IP collaboration with Chiikawa will significantly boost sales growth, and second-quarter performance this year is expected to exceed expectations.

But traffic is often a double-edged sword. On the one hand, IP collaboration has become a shortcut for brands to quickly attract a large amount of attention. On the other hand, once any inappropriate content appears, it will be infinitely magnified.

For example, in this joint marketing with Chiikawa, MINISO experienced a reputational "turnaround". In a promotional video posted on its Douyin account, the three main characters of the animation were called Crazy Screaming Rabbit, Blue Pants Cat, and Mentally Retarded Crybaby, which aroused the disgust and condemnation of a large number of fans.

Subsequently, MINISO urgently deleted the relevant videos and issued a public apology letter, stating that it would seriously deal with the mistakes of the internal team, dismiss the person primarily responsible for the incident, and order immediate rectification.

Previously, MINISO was criticized for incorrect product descriptions during its promotion in the Spanish market. When promoting a Disney Princess series blind box on a social platform, MINISO mistakenly translated a doll wearing a Chinese cheongsam as a "Japanese geisha" in a post, sparking doubts from a large number of netizens.

It can be seen that although the "co-branding maniac" MINISO has reaped the benefits of cooperating with major IPs and attracted wave after wave of young fans, if it fails to accurately grasp the connotation of the IP, a reversal of reputation will only take a moment.

In 2023, MINISO said it would build unique competitive advantages under the globalization strategy by relying on "China's efficient supply chain and global super IP" to promote the brand's new vision of becoming "the world's first IP design retail group" in the next decade. As MINISO accelerates its entry into the global market and quickly breaks out of the circle through IP marketing, it is undoubtedly facing more and more complex challenges.

Author: Maji, Editor: Weber

Source: ValuePlanet (ID: ValuePlanet)