The “stolen” Guka business

As a new decorative fashion, "Guka" has quickly become popular among the post-05s and post-10s, giving rise to a short-lived boom in the domestic Guka business. How does this business make money? How far can the current "Guka" merchants go? This article takes the experience of a Guka department store owner as an example to introduce the new "Guka" gameplay, hoping to be helpful to you who are concerned about new consumption.

Guka is good business.

If you watch more short videos, it is not difficult to make such a judgment.

The so-called "Guka" is to decorate the celebrity cards with accessories. This is a way of cheering originated from Korean fan circles. Through the spread of the Chinese Internet, it has now evolved into a new way for young people to socialize. The objects of "Guka" have also expanded from celebrity cards to acrylic, key chains, mobile phone cases, etc. In short, everything can be "Guka".

How popular is Guka? In Baidu Index, the search volume of Guka has been rising since the beginning of this year and is still growing. Its search peak has even repeatedly exceeded that of blind boxes.

In sharp contrast, in the WeChat Index, the popularity of Guka is far lower than that of blind boxes, and the two are not even on the same order of magnitude.

According to the characteristics of the two indexes, the surge in the Baidu Index shows that Guka, as a new thing, has aroused curiosity among the general public.

The WeChat Index is calculated based on WeChat searches, public account articles, and articles publicly forwarded in Moments, which shows that this youth culture is more popular on social media for strangers, rather than on WeChat, which is a circle of acquaintances. Guka has not yet fully entered the mainstream vision, so there are not many articles on WeChat public accounts.

On TikTok, the video #咕卡 has been viewed more than 1.8 billion times. On Xiaohongshu, there are as many as 550,000 "咕卡" notes, which are far more popular than the fireside tea-making and electronic wooden fish that have received more media attention.

Guka has not been widely reported by the media. The reason is that its user base is too broad and younger, which means that Guka cannot become popular quickly because of a certain group's "central voice" or surprising actions. Instead, it is due to the accumulation of continuous consumption by different audiences, and eventually, with the enthusiasm and sharing of a new group of players, it is gradually known by more people.

With the support of all these sexy data, does it mean that Guka is expected to become a new generation of blind box business?

The reality is harsh.

Sun Ji (pseudonym), who runs Guka Department Store, just broke up with his partner.

His partner is a post-2010s girl who is both a Guka player and a Guka blogger, connecting the two ends of consumption and production. Sun Ji approached her in the first place because he wanted to place a bait in the buyer's market to attract more target customers. As a result, she saw that she was becoming popular and began to cherish her reputation, so she wanted to cancel the contract.

1. The Guka users are young

The mainstream audience of Guka has grown from those born in the 1990s to those born in the 2010s, and the core players have obviously become younger. Looking through the related entries of Guka on Douyin and Kuaishou, most of the creators are primary school students.

Of course, there are a few "old" Guka users in short videos. But their accounts were created relatively recently, or they have only recently tried to shoot Guka-themed works. In the final analysis, it is the post-2010s generation that has popularized Guka culture, attracting more and more bloggers to participate in sharing the traffic code.

As player profiles change, their consumption psychology also changes from before.

The first batch of Guka fans were more for self-entertainment and often communicated only within the circle. Because of this, Guka culture has existed in Korean fan circles for a long time and has been introduced to China for several years, but it has never been widely perceived by the public.

When it comes to the post-2010 players, Guka is no longer a ritual prop for group building, but a social carrier for them to attract attention. To be precise, others play Guka, but they show off Guka.

So we can see that in social media, the most popular creation themes for Guka are tutorials, sharing, homemade Guka, etc. These contents reserve a position for "receivers" and are obviously not one-way output.

Compared to being Guka players, these creators position themselves more like "circle idols". They continue to promote a gameplay, a tool, a style or something else to their fans. Currently, the most popular Guka bloggers in short videos are mostly those born after 2005 and 2010, such as Xixi, Jilingjie and so on.

Several Guka suppliers told Hard Candy that, like Ultraman cards, notebooks and other products, Guka consumption will usher in explosive growth in 2022. The fundamental reason is still the impact of the epidemic, and primary school students at home do not have more entertainment activities.

Sun Ji noticed this in time and successfully reaped the first wave of benefits from Guka.

In March this year, Sun Ji completely gave up his original blind box business and began to contact factories to develop Guka tools, stickers, accessories, etc. At the same time, he found a large number of primary and secondary school students born after 2010 through Douyin, QQ Space, Xiaohongshu, etc., sent them products and filmed promotional videos to help promote his own products.

According to Sun Ji, he avoided Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen from the beginning, and looked for primary school students in third- and fourth-tier cities, or even in lower-tier cities. In his opinion, entertainment consumption in first-tier cities is more trendy, and blind boxes, trendy toys and action figures are more popular. "More importantly, they have a strong sense of copyright and look down on or even resist our copycat products."

Baidu Index also shows that the top four search regions for Guka are: Shandong, Hebei, Guangdong and Henan. To a certain extent, this also confirms Sun Ji's judgment on the market for "Small Town Guka".

Sun Ji told Mr. Hard Candy that compared with other age groups, although the post-2010 Guka players are very young, it does not affect their influence and appeal at all.

Compared with mature players, this group is more cooperative. When the number of fans is relatively low, you only need to send them free products to get support from one or more videos.

In order to pursue better traffic-generating effects, Sun Ji will take the initiative to give shares or commissions to high-quality accounts, "ranging from 0.5 to 4 yuan per order."

A certain small player once accidentally brought out a hit product, selling more than 40,000 orders of a sticker, and received nearly 20,000 yuan in commission . "She took the photos for fun, and at most spent some time, but I bought all the traffic and recommendations, so I made a net profit."

But what worries Sun Ji is that when these small bloggers have a certain number of fans, they will face more scrutiny from players in the circle. Many of them end their cooperation with him due to product copyright issues, and "have to start from scratch again."

2. Stealing the Hot Items

Since Guka is a decorative game, the decorations themselves are very important.

In the simple understanding of the masses, there is no difference between Guka and handbooks. In detail, Guka is easy to use and the materials are affordable, so the entry threshold is lower.

Sun Ji also said that Guka’s material packaging process does not require any technical content, “the difficult part is the design.”

There are some classic styles in Guka materials, such as transparent bricks, bows, lace, chains, etc. But the styles of these things are similar, and manufacturers can only fight price wars to use them as drainage products to increase the number of customers in the store.

The profits of Guka business mainly come from the internet celebrity models .

According to Sun Ji, the renovation speed of Guka materials is getting faster and faster. Sometimes if you miss a wave of popular elements, you may miss out on more than 100,000 yuan in profits. Before Guka culture became popular, most of the people doing this business were cultural and creative studios.

Mr. Hard Candy noticed that many of them are seven or eight-year-old stores. They originally started out making Korean Guka accessories, and after accumulating enough popularity, they also began to try to create original products.

Usually, store owners will predict the next popular element from the popular Korean gukka materials, and then integrate it into the aesthetic taste of local players. Due to the small consumer market, these designers had to vote and crowdfund in the fan group in the early stage to reduce the cost of trial and error.

Several original store owners told Mr. Hard Candy that "making original Gukka doesn't make money, and it's hard to really build a brand." Today, the market demand for Gukka has soared, attracting more gold diggers, and Sun Ji is one of them.

What remains unchanged is that in the Guka business, originality is still not a good business, but piracy is.

Sun Ji's style is fast, fierce and accurate. He follows the route of "coming from the masses and going to the masses": on the one hand, he asks the primary school students he works with to share the popular Guka styles among classmates and friends every week, judges the popularity cycle of these products, and reproduces them as soon as possible. On the other hand, he will also familiarize himself with the Korean market and quickly make patterns for Korean Guka materials, just like the Taobao Internet celebrities made patterns for Korean clothing back then.

The most important thing is that his products are not aimed at core Guka fans, but meet the needs of general players, or even pseudo players. "This way, you can make money and avoid a lot of lawsuits."

Compared with the original work, the profit from this pirated production model is obviously more substantial.

Sun Ji roughly estimated that the monthly sales of the hot-selling items in their store reached 60,000 pieces. Even if they were taken off the shelves after two months of sale, the total gross profit of a single product could still be around 150,000 yuan. Of course, the risks borne by pirated stores are also high. In most cases, they are chased by core players and scolded as "black-hearted" and "trashy plagiarists", but these are all "sweet burdens".

Therefore, more and more pirated Guka material stores have emerged on e-commerce websites, trying to make a profit while this culture is hot. But these good days may not last long.

In the past, Sun Ji thought that as long as he didn't copy domestic products, e-commerce platforms wouldn't care if he was reported. But now that the proportion of general enthusiasts has increased, behaviors that break the rules of the circle are more likely to cause dissatisfaction among core players, leading to larger-scale conflicts and frictions, which may impact the root of pirated stores.

3. Can “Gu” become a new cultural creation?

While focusing on the layout of online sales channels, Sunji has actually also tried to build some offline channels, such as cultural and creative stores and handmade stores in third- and fourth-tier cities.

But the reality is that the demand for goods in these places is relatively low, and it is very easy for them to be unsalable. He would only sell some items that are not selling online, or defective items, at low prices in offline stores. "E-commerce makes prices transparent, and there is really no profit in stores. I gave up a long time ago."

The most striking contrast is that the worst-selling product in Sunji's online store is cute stickers, with monthly sales of only more than 200 pieces. But "in a store in a small city, it may not be able to achieve this sales volume in three to five months." As for the luxury gift boxes that are popular in the online store, no one is interested in them in offline stores because of their high prices.

The genuine Guka brand is completely different. They will spend a lot of energy to operate offline channels, because this is the only way to build a brand and it is also a key step.

Data shows that in 2021, the market size of my country's cultural and creative products industry has reached more than 87.2 billion yuan, successfully spawning a large number of trendy cultural and creative stores, grocery stores, and retail markets, such as Tomato Pocket, Mengwu Collection, Jiumu Miscellaneous Store, etc. These stores have also become the main offline sales channels for genuine Guka brands.

When I was a kid, the one-dollar store model was very popular, but when I think about it, it really didn’t bring any memorable brands to the fore. Although the current cultural and creative stores and grocery stores are high-end models, the consumption of Guka itself is very light, and it is still difficult to bring a strong brand awareness to ordinary fans. This is the dilemma that restricts the development of Guka.

Before trying the Guka business, Sun Ji had been engaged in the blind box business for a while, but it ended in failure. He told Hard Candy that the investment cost of blind boxes is high, and the core players have been firmly occupied by several major trendy toy manufacturers, so it is difficult for new brands to share the cake.

"Anyone can do business like Guka, but we don't know how long we can do it. Everyone wants to make a quick buck and then withdraw."

Although the road to branding is extremely difficult, the original Guka brands are still persisting, and they find confidence in the notebook industry. After all, in foreign countries, the business model of notebooks has been quite mature, and a series of high-end brands such as Dengta and Kokuyo have been nurtured.

Mr. Hard Candy noticed that the domestic notebook market is also developing well. Old stationery brands such as M&G and Deli have already entered the market, and many new brands have also gained popularity among the old player groups.

German Lighthouse Notebook

From this perspective, the biggest embarrassment of the Guka business is that those who are enjoying it and selling well may not be real players in the circle. When everyone comes in with the mentality of "harvesting", no one cares whether this culture can flourish. Whatever the brand is, just be happy.

Author: Liu Xiaotu; Editor: Li Chunhui

Source public account: Yuleyingtang (ID: yuleyingtang), a warm self-media in the pan-entertainment industry.