A fire from the fashion game world extends the blind box game to a variety of industries.

Since the bubble fire, the secret of its success-the blind box, is constantly being used for reference by beauty, fresh, tea, wine travel and other major fields.

When Xi Tea, Trip.com, KFC and L'Or é al, which have nothing to do with tide play, are launching their own blind boxes, a trend of "all things are blind boxes" is on the rise. From listed companies of large brands to vendors and small and medium-sized companies, they all began to create their own blind box products.

With the blind box, all the major manufacturers have made a profit:

Trip.com, Qunar, Flying Pig OTA platform, through the "air ticket blind box" set off a user rush to buy, earn enough traffic at the same time, but also achieved good sales growth.

Small vendors sell fresh food, express delivery and snacks as blind boxes. Sales soar and income doubles.

However, with the rapid expansion of the blind box, all kinds of hidden dangers are also exposed.

Many businesses rely on "blind" not to publish specific products, exaggerating the value of winning products, and encounter more and more consumer complaints.

Some businesses even openly manufacture and sell fake products, refusing to return even if there is something wrong with the blind box.

Based on this, more and more voices began to call for strengthening the supervision of the blind box market.

At the end of January this year, the China Consumer Association pointed out that it should be particularly vigilant against the four major pits in the blind box problem: excessive marketing, false propaganda, fake and shoddy, and difficult to guarantee after sale, and called on "not to let the 'blind box' become a blind area of supervision."

So, in the era when everything is blind box, how to play the blind box business? Where will it go?

Everything can be blinded?

With a pink face, big blue eyes, curled yellow hair and slightly warped lips, this is the hottest IP image in the gaming world-Molly.

Pop Mart International, who leads the R & D, design, production and sales of Molly products, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in December. With a series of own IP, such as Molly, Pop Mart International set off a fashion trend in the game world.

In China, the number of offline stores in Popomat increased from 114 at the end of 2019 to 187 at the end of 2020. In overseas business, Wen de, vice president and president of overseas business of Pop Mart International International Group, also said recently, "after the improvement of the epidemic in 2021, Pop Mart International's overseas sales will more than triple compared with the same period last year."

Pop Mart International's blind box business is growing rapidly, which is coveted by many players and scrambled to emulate.

In front of Lancome, L'Or é al, Sea Blue Mystery and other well-known brands launched makeup blind box, then Trip.com, Flying Pig and other OTA platforms launched air ticket blind box; even in the food field, such as Jinshang fresh, KFC and so on have their own blind box products.

In the field of cosmetics, L'Or é al has launched its own blind box, the Little Beauty Box, which is constantly updated every month.

In L'Or é al's blind box, there will be 6-8 trial suits of different brands, including Koyan, Helena, YSL and other international brands of makeup and skin care products.

"if opening a product is what the customer wants, she will feel that today is her lucky day, and will actively forward and share it, creating a publicity effect; if opening is a product that she has not bought, that is the best way for the brand to let consumers experience the product. A cosmetics industry once analyzed the routines of the beauty blind box to Cosmetics Finance online.

From the L'Or é al Tmall flagship store, the monthly sales of different styles of small beauty boxes have reached nearly 1800 pieces, with cumulative sales reaching hundreds of thousands.

Trip.com, Flying Pig, Qunar and other wine travel brands have also launched the "blind box of air tickets".

On April 22nd, Trip.com officially released a 99-yuan "hidden money" blind box for air tickets. According to Trip.com 's official introduction, this blind box enables users to buy a domestic ticket with a specified departure, random destination and random date for 99 yuan within the specified time of the product.

In addition to the 99 yuan price file, Trip.com also launched the "699 yuan blind box" and "999 yuan blind box", adding accommodation, catering and other services on the basis of air tickets.

At the same time, Flying Pig and Qunar also launched 66 yuan and 88 yuan travel blind boxes.

Take Flying Pig 66 yuan blind box as an example, consumers who participate in the event can get a 66 yuan ticket to any random destination across the country with the help of three friends.

According to the Insight inquiry, the price of air tickets from Shanghai to Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and other popular cities is more than 300yuan, while to Chengdu, Sanya and other tourist cities, the price is also 700yuan.The small blind box of air tickets is less than 100 yuan, and the price is very attractive, so most of them are emptied as soon as they are online.

In the field of fresh food, when the giants competed for the community group purchase war in 2020, the rookie post station and Hello bike were launched.Fresh blind boxCollect the activity for free. The blind box is randomly filled with all kinds of fresh products such as vegetables, fruits, rice, meat and so on.

In the field of tea, Hangzhou tea brand Honey has been launched recently.Blind box milk teaThis blind box of milk tea has a long cup body with milk tea on top and various products underneath. There are lottery tickets, hair cards, buffet vouchers and other gifts in the blind box of milk tea, as well as lipstick, eye shadow and powder of big brands.

Even KFC has launchedFried chicken blind boxA box of fried chicken buckets with 2 pieces of hidden chicken wings. The chicken wings are randomly selected from five flavors, such as butter hot pot flavor and tomato hot pot flavor.

Since 2019, the popularity of Blind Box has remained high, and its market scale has been expanding. According to the 2020 Blind Box Economic Insight report released by Mob Research Institute, the blind box industry will usher in rapid growth in the next five years, and the market size of the blind box industry is expected to double to 30 billion yuan in 2024.

Many media have also reported that operating blind boxes has become a means for many businesses to get rich.Small vendors who rely on selling fresh blind boxes have increased their income by 400-500 yuan a day, or more than 10,000 a month, after a sharp increase in sales.

According to DoNews, a large number of orders for custom-made blind boxes have poured into the factory since the end of 2020, with shipments almost every day. Blind box foundry sources revealed that the brand or individual only need to provide patterns, the factory can open the mold according to the picture, and then mass production.

The Blind Box Feast has been opened, from large brands to small vendors, all imitating the way Blind boxes play. What kind of thoughts are hidden behind the "everything can be blind box"?

The blind box is just a promotional coat?

"Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get. "

This phrase is often used to describe the principle of the blind box business-making money from the psychology of gamblers. But what they don't point out is that the value of chocolate itself is also crucial.

It may be hard for many people to imagine how hard it is for fans to snap up Molly blind boxes.

At many Molly exhibitions, such scenes often appear: "it goes on sale at 10:00, and someone is waiting in front of the mall at more than five o'clock in the morning"; "specially take the plane and high-speed train to the city where the exhibition is held"; "mobilize relatives and friends to snap up and buy, and even find daigou and scalpers"...

Molly with big eyes and toot mouth has captured the hearts of countless young people with its lovely image. And she is the IP image that Pop Mart International founder Wang Ning spent a long time incubating together with several well-known designers.

In 2020, Molly is still Pop Mart International's largest source of revenue. According to Pop Mart International's annual report, the income from Molly in 2020 was 357 million yuan, accounting for 14.2% of revenue. The second largest income came from another major IP Dimoo, with a contribution income of 315 million yuan, accounting for 12.5%.

For the blind box business, Wang Ning has said many times in public that the play of the blind box itself is not the core competitiveness, IP is the key threshold.

In a recruitment software, when connecting Insight uses "blind box design" as the keyword to query related positions, it all contains the content of IP design. In terms of salary, almost all enterprises pay more than 10K per month, and even some enterprises can offer monthly 25K-40K salary, which shows that businesses attach importance to blind box IP.

The performance of users can also confirm the importance of IP. On Weibo Corp, many people shared that they bought a large number of blind boxes, even thousands a year, in order to get their favorite IP dolls. "once they enter the blind box, it is as deep as the sea, box after box." "

But in other areas where everything can be blind, the taste of the blind box has changed a little.

Compared with Pop Mart International's high premium blind box toys with more than 50 yuan, blind boxes in other fields have the characteristics of "low price".

Trip.com launched the blind box of air tickets, which is cost-effective, and the price of its products is much lower than that of ordinary air tickets with a general price of more than 100 yuan. From the 98-yuan blind box launched by Trip.com to the 88-yuan and 66-yuan air ticket blind boxes launched by Qunar and Flying Pig, their prices are getting lower and lower, and even started a "price war" of air ticket blind boxes.

The convenient vegetable blind box that JD.com once launched is only 11.11 yuan, which includes ace dishes from nearly 20 catering brands, such as Chiban Pavilion, Da Dong, Hannah Mountain, such as Fotiao Wall, Boiled Fish with Pickled Cabbage and Chili, Roast Duck and so on. The daily prices of most of these dishes are more than 30 yuan.

Second, many businesses are borrowing blind boxes to get traffic.

Trip.com, for example, has pushed "Trip.com Blind Box" on the official Weibo Corp, APP and official account respectively since April 20. At the same time, the official also launched a friend-assisted play: invite three friends can be snapped up, so as to spread through users, get a lot of traffic.

In Weibo Corp, Zhihu Inc. and Xiao Hongshu, many consumers are sharing the surprise of snapping up the blind box of air tickets, thus forming a lot of likes and retweets. Through the spread of the online community, the blind box of air tickets successfully achieved drainage.

For example, L'Or é al's little beauty box has received a lot of attention by adding the trial outfit of stars to the blind box and launching offline code scanning and opening blind boxes at the Goddess Festival.

Not only that, Little Red Book bloggers are recommending L'Or é al's little beauty box, and most of these makeup bloggers have thousands to hundreds of thousands of fans, which has strongly led a large number of fans to discuss L'Or é al's small beauty box.

In all kinds of marketing actions, the mind of the merchant is clear-the blind box is only a diversion tool, and the ultimate goal is to get the flow and rub the heat.

Compared with the bubble IP blind box, the blind boxes in other fields, such as air ticket blind box, milk tea blind box and fresh blind box, do not have the shadow of IP, but earn enough gimmicks by means of low price and "lucky draw". Plucking the coat of the blind box is essentially no different from previous promotional activities such as "giving coupons" and "paying attention to gifts".

However, compared with traditional marketing methods, Blind Box after all has a "blind" coat, and businesses take advantage of this feature to "cut leeks".

Blind box play, naturally suitable for "cutting leeks"?

An obvious phenomenon is that the more blind boxes appear in various fields, the more bad experiences consumers have.

For example, on Little Red Book, a user shared that he had bought a blind box on China.com. He wanted to open canvas bags and some famous books, but it turned out to be a minority bibliography, such as "suggestions on third parties" and "Paper Notes." Some users also mentioned that the books opened in the blind box are not sealed, and the pages are yellow, which is obviously overstocked.

For example, some milk tea shops put lipstick and mascara in their blind boxes and invite the flow bloggers of Little Red Books to make Amway for themselves, but in fact, gifts are produced by unknown cosmetics manufacturers, and the probability of producing big-brand cosmetics is very low.

When a blogger asked the clerk about the probability of winning the lottery in the Honey store of Hangzhou tea brand, his reply wasOne day there is only one Dior lipstick in all the blind boxes of milk tea.Most of the other products are hair cards, small toys and even lottery tickets.

In other areas, products involving "random selection" have long been standardized.

In December 2016, the Ministry of Culture issued the Circular of the Ministry of Culture on standardizing the operation of online games and strengthening the supervision after the event, stipulating that game coins in the game industry: "Random sampling shall not be directly invested in legal tender or virtual currency." the probability of extraction or synthesis shall be publicized. "

At the end of 2020, the "original God", which became popular in the mobile game market, has announced its probability of winning the lottery, of which the probability of the five-star character praying is 0.6%. In other words, according to the price of drawing cards for 16 yuan, players have to draw 167times, totaling 2672 yuan to win a five-star character.

In Japan, the game of blind box is developing in the direction of open probability.The Japanese blind box is actually twisting eggs, that is, putting prizes in a plastic eggshell, including anime handmade, creative accessories and so on.

However, in the past, Japan had a low winning rate, but it was not regulated for a long time until the outbreak of the "Monkey Girl incident" related to the Japanese mobile game "Blue Fantasy".

In this incident, a player paid 680000 yen, or about 38000 yuan, or 2276 yuan for a live draw to get the rare character "Monkey Girl" at that time. The character was hit by famous celebrity Reiki Tanaka for the first time in a row and showed off on Twitter. This caused an uproar in the Japanese game industry, and the public generally believed that the game was manipulated in a clandestine way.

So much so that the relevant departments of the Japanese game industry stipulated that the category of Japanese twisted egg games must be clearly defined, indicating the winning rate; at the same time, the "upper limit of krypton gold" was set at 50, 000 yen (about 2880 yuan), in other words, consumers must get target props for 50, 000 yen.

But nowadays, the blind box products launched by Trip.com, Qunar, Xi Tea, McDonald's Corp and other industries have not announced the probability of lottery, and many products have been complained by users.

For example, many users have reported that most of the tickets in the blind box run from late night to early morning and arrive at their destination from the early morning to the morning of the next day, or mainly discounted tickets on unpopular routes, rarely get tickets to the ideal destination.

An App called Blind Box Planet has also gathered a large number of complaints and is regarded as a "leek cutting platform".

Blind Box Planet is an App that mainly sells Blind Box products. In its mall interface, it includes 8 categories of Blind Box categories, such as fashion play animation, technology digital, bag jewelry and so on, and each category contains subcategories ranging from several to dozens.

According to one user's complaint, he bought 20 blind boxes on Blind Box Planet, most of which were unpacked by second-hand users. The merchants did not inform consumers in advance and were rejected by customer service when they detected quality problems and asked for returns.

There are many other problems with Blind Box Planet, such as overdue delivery. Many users said on black cat complaints that after drawing a popular series of blind boxes, the platform has been overdue for delivery.

One user mentioned that he bought a blind box toy of Pop Mart International's 10th anniversary DIMOO (with code) in December 2020 and paid 62 yuan for the toy. as the toy is for pre-sale, it needs to be shipped after December 26, 2020, but the product has not been issued until April 23, 2021.

The problem of the Blind Box Planet represents the epitome of the current blind box mess: merchants use the opaque feature of the blind box to cut leeks, while consumers have no way.

More and more public opinion has noticed the problems behind the "blind box of all things".

In January this year, China quality News, China Market Regulatory News and Securities Times both published articles entitled "Don't let the Blind Box become a Blind spot in Supervision", calling for strengthening the market supervision of the Blind Box. Recently, in view of the Blind Box of Tourism and Stationery, the people's Daily online and the China Economic Network also once again called for strengthening the supervision of the Blind Box.

Blind box should not be just a flow harvest game, give consumers due product value, can really gain a foothold in the market. After all kinds of chaos, where will the blind box business eventually go?