Blind box Ultraman cards are popular among primary school students, costing only 10 cents and making crazy profits

Nowadays, many businesses are targeting the primary school student market, and there are more and more ways to make money. For parents with children, they must have been dragged by their children to buy Ultraman cards. This is indeed a good business, and many companies are making huge profits from this.

According to media reports, Ultraman cards have become popular among primary school students in recent years. Children keep buying, drawing, and collecting cards, spending a lot of money on them.

Merchants seem to be well aware of this. Ultraman card giant Kayou Animation has increased the value of cards by continuously subdividing the levels of Ultraman cards, setting cards of different rarities, and developing battle game modes. This is combined with the social attributes of card games and the circulation transactions in the second-hand market, and a business called "Ultraman Cards" was born.

Although Kayou Animation has not yet disclosed its operating data, it can be used as a reference that another listed company that operates Ultraman cards, Huali Technology, had an operating income of 175 million yuan from animation IP derivative products in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 156.52%. In 2020, cards from the Ultraman IP alone generated 41.6802 million yuan in revenue for Huali Technology, which can be called a "strong and loyal servant".

There are many kinds of Ultraman cards, including 2 yuan, 5 yuan, 10 yuan, 20 yuan, and some are as expensive as 300 or 400 yuan. But if you count the quantity, the 2 yuan and 5 yuan ones are more popular. I buy a pack today and a pack tomorrow, and I buy more and more. "

The Tmall flagship store of Zhejiang Kayou Animation Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Kayou Animation), one of the giants of Ultraman card games, shows that the most expensive set of Ultraman Nebula Edition (1 box of 12 packs, 360 cards) is priced at 599 yuan.

The essence of card collection is still the blind box model. It is this kind of lottery-style expectation that easily triggers addictive stimulation. The more levels of cards there are, the more fragmented the expectation is, the easier it is to satisfy, and the higher the enthusiasm of children to spend money.

According to data from the China Economic Industry Research Institute, the global collectible card game market size reached US$11.13 billion in 2020, and is expected to expand to US$31.26 billion in 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 15.9% from 2021 to 2027. Compared with the international market, my country's card game market started late and is still in the blue ocean.

Financial data shows that from 2018 to 2020, Huali Technology sold 14.9559 million, 23.3435 million and 22.7707 million anime character cards respectively. In 2020, the cards from Ultraman IP alone generated revenue of 41.6802 million yuan.

The sales revenue of Ultraman image cards in Huali Technology's animation IP derivative product business has also increased from 28.4% in 2018 to 69.57% in the first half of 2020, and it has always been the number one seller for Huali Technology.

Several investors close to Kayou Animation learned that Kayou Animation's revenue in 2020 was approximately 3 billion yuan, with a net profit of over 1 billion yuan, and its net profit reached 1.5 billion yuan in 2021.

In contrast to the huge profits is the low production cost of the cards. Even rare cards with more complicated craftsmanship only cost 1 cent each.

A product that costs 10 cents can be sold for tens or even hundreds of yuan, which makes it hard not to sigh that it is indeed easy to make money from minors. But in the card industry, the majority of the profits are actually from adult enthusiasts.