MINISO has become the ideal type of top IP

The author of this article analyzes MINISO's outstanding brand marketing and IP collaboration. If you are interested, please read it together~

In 2018, Ramiras, former vice president of global marketing at Coca-Cola, made an interesting statement, which is that most human actions are driven by emotions. So for ordinary products, consumers are only willing to pay for the basic cost. But when faced with brands that carry ideas and emotions, they show loyalty beyond reason.

Take the two companies where Ramiras worked successively as examples - ten years ago, Procter & Gamble, which only emphasized the efficacy of its products, saw its performance rapidly decline after reaching its peak; while Coca-Cola, which focuses on emotional drive, continues to capture the hearts of consumers from all over the world with emotions such as happiness, sharing, and youth.

At the end of last month, I visited the first theme pop-up of MINISO and Chiikawa, and found that the nature of people being "driven by emotions" has not changed at all. However, the carrier of emotions has changed from the brand slogans and well-made advertising films that have been deeply rooted in people's hearts to real and tangible IP products.

For example, in the "Chiikawa" IP animation, the three protagonists who need to work constantly and fight monsters, but always live seriously and warm each other, have become the "spiritual ibuprofen" that heals young people. How popular is Chiikawa? In 2021, its comic book sales reached 1.1 million copies; now it has nearly 3 million Twitter followers; on Youtube, a two- to three-minute animated short can reach tens of millions of views.

MINISO, as the first Chinese brand to obtain the Chiikawa IP license, has once again stirred up the market. On March 29, I saw the following scene at the pop-up store in Shanghai Jing'an Joy City: some people lined up for 10 hours overnight to be the first to buy Chiikawa peripherals; before 7 a.m., the line was suspended because it was too popular; in the mall, almost everyone was carrying a big red shopping bag of MINISO...

Not only Chiikawa, but also MINISO has become the envy of many brands after co-branding with popular IPs such as Barbie and Loopy:

• As of 2023, it has cooperated with more than 100 leading IPs such as Disney, Sanrio, and Marvel, and developed more than 300 IP products, with cumulative sales exceeding 700 million units.
• At MINISO, users who have purchased IP products have a 263% higher average contribution per person and a 176% higher average order value than ordinary users.
• The number of global customers who have bought MINISO IP co-branded products has reached hundreds of millions, and the founder Ye Guofu has opened a super store directly in New York's Times Square;
• Because it sells well and is popular, making money is a natural thing. In 2023, MINISO earned 13.8 billion yuan in revenue, a year-on-year increase of 40%, and its adjusted net profit was 2.36 billion yuan, more than doubling.

When IP co-branding is booming, how did MINISO attract young people to buy and become popular? There are thousands of co-branded brands, why can it be favored by IP parties? In the field of going overseas, which is of particular concern to Chinese brands, can MINISO provide experience reference?

When these questions emerge in our minds, it is time for us to think calmly about how the "joint brand boss" was made.

1. The first step to break the circle: IP inclusive global market

Nowadays, it has become the norm for brands to find major IPs to collaborate with, and then invest in channels and marketing. However, the cruel market results show that popular collaborations like MINISO x Chiikawa are rare.

The biggest challenge for Chinese brands to achieve success in the involutionary co-branding track is to "break the circle". One is to break the circle of fan users, how to make IP fans accept new products and new brands; the other is to break the circle of the mass market, how to make more ordinary consumers attracted by the charm of IP and willing to buy one or two co-branded products.

The first step for MINISO to "break the circle" is to leverage its scale advantage and deepen its supply chain, using IP to satisfy the emotional value of global consumers. The same Chiikawa co-branded doll is generally sold for 200 to 300 yuan in Japan, while the unit price of MINISO is concentrated at 29.9 yuan and 49.9 yuan.

This is attributed to the fact that, on the one hand, it relies on the demand of more than 6,400 stores worldwide, allowing each sub-category to enjoy the scale advantage; on the other hand, it deepens the supply chain and improves the ability to control costs by integrating the resources of more than 1,400 suppliers worldwide. These two key measures have lowered the threshold for IP consumption, making it affordable for students and young people entering the workplace. This also echoes the saying among Chiikawa fans: It’s not that Nichigo can’t afford it, but that Miniso is more cost-effective.

In the second step, MINISO opened 6,413 stores around the world, mastering the key to reaching mass consumers. For MINISO, offline stores are not only sales channels, but more importantly, they allow ordinary consumers to perceive the IP. The most obvious manifestation is that a Chiikawa doll is "hard to find" in the Japanese market, but MINISO consumers can buy Chiikawa co-branded products in stores/e-commerce channels across the country. This month, several friends even told me that when they were shopping, they took the dolls, U-shaped pillows, and stickers home directly because they thought Chiikawa was cute.

The third step is that MINISO has built "super stores" around IP and successfully occupied the high ground in consumers' minds. Since 2023, MINISO has successively entered well-known business districts such as Times Square in New York, Oxford Street in London, and Huaihai Middle Road in Shanghai. In stores with a total area of ​​1,000 square meters, it has set up strategic category experience areas such as aromatherapy and blind boxes, and carefully decorated IP check-in points for users. I think this is very important, because even customers who do not plan to consume can continue to deepen their understanding of "MINISO = co-branded big brother" while traveling, shopping, checking in and taking photos.

2. Become the retailer that understands IP best

Among so many retailers across the country, why is it Miniso that has obtained the Chiikawa authorization?

The fundamental purpose of the cooperation between brands and IP is to achieve the effect of 1+1>2. This requires the brand to understand the needs of its own audience and have a full understanding of the IP in order to create touching co-branded products.

The same is true for why MINISO is "favored" by IP owners. Over the past decade, with its long-term focus and accumulation, MINISO has become "the company that understands IP best in the retail industry." This is not my boasting, but the unanimous evaluation I heard after communicating with the heads of IP copyright holders such as Sanrio, Disney, and Universal Pictures.

Many copyright holders and agents told me that MINISO's focus on and understanding of IP is reflected in every aspect.

For example, when it comes to the selection of co-branded IPs, MINISO has a rigorous process system: it prioritizes world-renowned IPs; it spends at least one year researching and investigating the IPs; it produces reports for the IPs based on data from social media, private domains, and third-party research; and it develops a full life cycle development and inventory management plan for each IP, rather than just doing it for the sake of temporary popularity.

Ye Guofu, the founder of MINISO, has always been the fashion leader at the forefront. MINISO holds a "sample selection meeting" every Monday, where Ye Guofu personally decides who to collaborate with, whether each product will be launched, how much to price it at, how to market it, and so on.

Secondly, regarding the rhythm of product launches, there is also a "711 principle". That is, MINISO selects 100 new SKUs from 10,000 product ideas every 7 days, and launches about 530 SKUs per month on average. Among them, IP co-branded products involve review, so if new products are to be launched every month or even every week, the investment in manpower and material resources will only be greater and more.

In addition, MINISO has always been very patient in dealing with the IP design process. As far as I know, MINISO has planned to build four design centers in China, the United States, Japan, and South Korea to provide more professional design output to different markets; at the same time, it has incorporated the world's top fashion organizations such as WGSN and Pantone to create more IP-designed and best-selling lifestyle products around the world through the joint efforts of multiple parties. As Ye Guofu himself said: There is no upper limit to MINISO's investment in product research and development and design.

In January 2024, at MINISO's "Global Investor Conference", Sanrio China COO Joy told me that IP parties, who excel in design and aesthetics, will consider the retailer's design capabilities as a key factor in whether to cooperate. "We don't want to put a Hello Kitty pattern on the product, which would only be a soulless creation." For Sanrio, MINISO is an all-round player in terms of supply chain, design capabilities, R&D capabilities, and other aspects.

3. How to play with young people

Can you become a "co-branding giant" by having high cost-effectiveness, multiple channels, or having good-looking stores and better understanding of IP?

In fact, in the past few years, there have been many dazzling joint ventures that have failed to convince young people to pay for them, and it is common for some of them to fail directly.

To be frank, the reason for failure is that many people want to do IP co-branding for only one reason: to capture the consumption power of young people. As for what consumption needs young people have and what kind of emotional value they care about, they don't care at all.

IP retail is indeed a big business, but it only belongs to those brands that are not arrogant or impatient and respect young people. From MINISO, I really feel how the consumption needs of young people should be valued and what young people like to play and use.

Zanmang Loopy IP is very popular in 2023. MINISO took advantage of the opportunity to launch a number of co-branded products such as dolls, shoulder bags, slippers, suitcases, etc., bringing beautiful and practical products to young people. Just a few days ago, at the Weifang Kite Festival, the female star Loopy made a surprise appearance again. MINISO sent the Loopy kite to the sky, accompanied by the slogans "Standing on the crazy mouth, you can also go to the sky" and "Who is not a baby?", and went "crazy" with young people at the 10,000-person kite flying event, and took a look at the cute "crazy" style of the conspicuous Loopy baby.

In addition to competing with others at the Weifang Kite Festival, MINISO has combined the influence of super IPs to launch many marketing activities in recent years. For example, it teamed up with Barbie to create the first national float parade for the 65th anniversary of MINISO and Barbie in Dongshankou, Guangzhou; and jointly created the "Laughing Velvet Special Train" for the 100th anniversary of Disney, which uses Disney's four major trendy IPs as core elements, and has "Mickey Carriage", "Strawberry Bear Carriage", "Stitch Carriage" and "Three-Eyed Boy Carriage", continuing to build a strong brand potential around IP.

For MINISO, IP is by no means just a one-time joint authorization, but a medium for communicating with young people and a brand asset that needs to be continuously managed. Only by constantly exploring new ways of IP marketing, enabling continuous interaction between the brand and users, and truly playing with young people can the greater value of IP be brought into play.

Of course, playing with young people cannot just stop at marketing activities. MINISO has long discovered that users, especially young users, are better at playing than the official ones. Therefore, it imported more than 39 million consumers from offline stores into the private domain and recruited more than 50,000 koc users from them. These kocs are die-hard fans of one or several IPs on the one hand; on the other hand, they are almost all young people, so they love to play and know how to play. Take the joint venture between MINISO and Chiikawa as an example. It is precisely because koc spontaneously shows off their babies, visits stores, and shares shopping guides that many pop-up stores can be "popular before opening."

Official data shows that over the past two years, MINISO's Kocs have helped the brand generate 4 million pieces of content on Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and WeChat Moments, gaining 1.7 billion exposures and saving more than 40 million in marketing costs. This truly realizes the MINISO model that founder Ye Guofu said "upgrade consumption to passion and upgrade customers to users."

The linkage of IP, users, and content systematically constitutes the unique marketing growth flywheel of MINISO. The reason why MINISO has become a "co-branding giant" is that it has turned its own growth flywheel through repeated co-branding and interaction. Specifically: 1. MINISO cooperates with IP to create fun, good-looking, and easy-to-use products to capture the hearts of users around the world; 2. MINISO encourages users to create secondary works and produce real content; 3. The real content produced by users not only "continues to attract new users" for MINISO, but also stimulates the innovation of IP products and promotes the increase of user scale.

4. Super IP + Globalization =?

The globalization of Chinese brands is a topic that I will focus on in the near future and for a long time to come. On the one hand, as the domestic market gradually becomes saturated, going overseas will become the largest source of growth for Chinese companies in the next 5 to 10 years ; on the other hand, the globalization that international giants are familiar with is still a shortcoming that most Chinese brands have not yet overcome.

In my opinion, among all the Chinese brands going global, MINISO is a sample worth studying and learning. There are many reasons, but I think the most important one is still what I mentioned above: it is deepening the brand's new positioning of "global IP joint collection store", constantly innovating and achieving sustainable growth.

How to verify the above views?

Times Square in New York, USA, has always been known as the "crossroads of the world" and is one of the most fashionable landmarks in the world. But here, MINISO opened a global flagship store of nearly 1,000 square meters. On the opening day, consumers began queuing from 9 a.m., and the store's sales exceeded 550,000 yuan.

What attracts American consumers the most is the joint hits. For example, the joint products of MINISO and Barbie were sold out in American stores last year. In less than a week, the sell-out rate exceeded 60%. In the end, the actual order value was 2.5 times the initial order value.

I went to Indonesia not long ago and saw MINISO in a very prominent location in the Margo City shopping mall near the capital Jakarta. Last October, MINISO's first Sanrio IP limited theme store opened here, attracting consumers from all walks of life. People lined up and waited for four or five hours just to buy Sanrio's limited joint products.

So, how big is the IP retail market? What advantages does MINISO have in participating in global competition?

In 2022, the global IP product retail market will reach RMB 1.8 trillion. Twenty years ago, there was no IP retail market. It is conceivable that this market will be even bigger in 20 years. The global popularity of classic IPs such as Sanrio and Disney also fully illustrates this point. Today, MINISO is joining forces with them to create high-quality and affordable popular products through China supply chain + global super IP + global channels to truly meet the needs of global consumers.

As Ye Guofu said, MINISO's business philosophy is called "philosophy of happiness." In the past, it made Chinese people happy, and in the future, it will make people all over the world happy.

Making people all over the world happy is not just talk, it is tantamount to starting a business again and creating a new world. But I see that MINISO is on the road of continuous development.

Editor: Xia Zhouzhou Chief Editor: Shen Shuaibo

Source: WeChat official account: "Jinjibo Finance (ID: jinbubo)"