What kind of store is it? , a millet store with a daily income of hundreds of thousands
"Think about it when we were young, how could we have the conditions you have now!"
When people reach middle age, ah no, one of the signs of adulthood may be to keep this sentence on their lips. But if you go to the "Millet Store" where young people like to shop now, it's probably hard not to think of this sentence in your mind.
Social development has stepped on the accelerator, allowing adults to bid farewell to the school gate snack shop for a long time. It has evolved into version 2.0 and developed into something we cannot recognize. These are the most popular shopping and social gathering places for young people nowadays, and they are also quietly changing the status of many traditional shopping malls.
"The team leader will adjust the price first and start the arrangement. The mother position will be given priority, and then the jungle and cross-mother positions will be pushed. The remaining unpopular items will be bundled according to the order of the bundle and the situation of the cart. After the bundle is completed, the kidney table will be produced, and the order will be placed after collecting the kidneys. ”
If you can understand the above sentence, which has a high concentration of two dimensions, then congratulations, you have perfectly integrated into the circle of young people. It doesn’t matter if you can’t understand it. We can start with the simplest words, such as millet.
"Millet" is transliterated from "Goods". Broadly speaking, it can refer to all peripheral products of copyrighted works such as comics, animations, games, idols, and tokusatsu.
If you still don’t have an idea, maybe you can imagine the small shop at the school gate when you were a student. It was always filled with all kinds of IP peripherals, toys, stationery, etc. that children like most today. Today's millet stores mostly sell character-centered peripheral decorations that are small in size, light in weight, and made of inexpensive materials.
"I loved visiting this type of store when I was a kid. At that time, they seemed to be called peripheral stores, and the items they sold were mainly figurines." Xiaolan, who lives in Beijing, is a senior "grain eater." According to her, the areas where Beijing’s millet stores are concentrated are mainly Wangfujing and Chongwenmen business districts. In addition to fixed stores, there will also be irregular offline activities for 2D enthusiasts, including weekends and holidays. Opportunities to set up stalls and sell goods for free, but you need to come early to grab a spot.
"In terms of price, some small items are almost 20% more expensive than buying them online. But buying offline is mainly for the immediate pleasure, which I think is acceptable, so I buy a lot when I go shopping often." Xiaolan said.
"The customers in the store range from elementary school students to office workers, but they are mainly college students and high school students. In terms of consumption, cheaper bookmarks, stickers, etc. may be less than ten yuan, while expensive dolls, figures, etc. are available for several hundred yuan. .The average price per customer is around 100 yuan.”
Ms. Qin runs a millet store in Beijing’s Chongwenmen business district. She told Sino-Singapore Finance reporters that the owner is actually her son who was born after 1995 and is currently working and living in Japan. "He is responsible for purchasing goods and so on. I help him look after the store, but I also need to learn the knowledge of animation so that I can talk to young people."
Ms. Qin’s store is very small, with an area of about 10 square meters, but because it is in a good location next to the elevator, the monthly rent is more than 10,000 yuan. In order to grasp the fixed customer flow, the store is cultivating more old customers through community operations and other methods. It will notify irregular small new products in the group almost every day, and there will be a major product update in about half a month.
"Business is usually better on weekends, and the daily turnover can exceed 10,000 yuan. Sometimes when popular products arrive, there will be a lot of people queuing up before the store opens." Ms. Qin's son also runs an online store, so You can also make some money during the day on weekdays when there are relatively few people.
According to data from the "China ACG Content Industry White Paper", preliminary statistics indicate that in 2023, the number of pan-ACG users in my country will reach 490 million, of which core ACG users will reach 120 million. More data shows that the scale of the two-dimensional consumer market exceeds 100 billion.
Unlike Ms. Qin, who opened her store not long ago, Mr. Cheng's millet store in a new first-tier city has been operating for about two years. According to his recollection, in the spring of this year, with the influx of some popular new IPs, the popularity reached its peak since the store opened. It was common for a small plush pendant originally priced at 60 to 70 yuan in foreign countries to be sold for several hundred yuan. "Because some peripheral products were not replenished in time, it was actually very difficult for us to purchase them."
The "two-dimensional" world cannot escape the troubles of "three-dimensional"
"I remember when it was just ten days after opening, I calculated that the store spent nearly 200,000 yuan just to purchase goods. I was really shocked." When talking about opening a store, the first thing Mr. Cheng emphasized was investment: " The money is all in the goods. Although they seem to be small items of little value, you can’t really open a store without hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Mr. Cheng introduced that based on the source of IP, Millet can generally be divided into Rigu and Guogu. Rigu mainly comes from animation and comics, and Guogu mainly comes from games. "Rigu purchases goods from Japan. Customs, postage, and sometimes purchasing fees are not cheap anymore. And now many people want to get a piece of the pie, so the more demand there is, the more counterfeiters there are."
Mr. Cheng said that the profit of Rigu in his store is generally 5%-20%, while Guogu generally follows the official website price, and the price is more transparent. When the store is doing well, its monthly turnover ranges from tens to hundreds of thousands of yuan, but 70 to 80% of it is the cost of goods, not counting labor, rent, water and electricity, etc.
"Because millet is generally small in size, loss and wastage are also a big problem. Hundreds of dollars can be lost every week during the inventory. This year during the Spring Festival holiday, nearly 5,000 dollars of goods were lost." This made Mr. Cheng very helpless. He found that many of his colleagues' stores had recently installed anti-theft sensor doors, and he was also considering this matter.
More and more millet shops are popping up on the streets and alleys. Many interviewees believe that the only ones who can truly retain customers in the competition are experienced Guquan store owners who truly know how to select products.
"At present, many of the relatively large-scale stores in the industry have accumulated a lot of customers online, and there are people downstream who buy goods from them, forming a very complete business chain. If you want to buy goods yourself, you have to rely on others. Agents who don’t know much about Guquan and just want to follow the trend will have a hard time escaping the outcome of closing their stores.” In the past two years, Mr. Cheng has also witnessed the departure of his peers.
In the ebb and flow of the tide, the "paper people" who were once considered to be empty concepts have transformed into hot-selling products that are hard to find, offline activities with huge crowds, popular companies with huge profits, and companies with great potential. Content IP.
At the same time, the injection of young forces has also changed the status of some business districts to a great extent. Take Wangfujing Joy Shopping Center in Beijing as an example. It is understood that its predecessor, New Yansha Golden Street Shopping Plaza, will be renovated and unveiled at the end of 2023 with the concept of the first "New National Trend Shopping Center" in China after closing in 2020. Aiming at a positioning that is more relevant to young people.
Traditional shopping malls with relatively stable passenger flow are also using fresh methods to attract young people. The relevant person in charge of Beijing Xidan Joy City revealed to reporters that the Zanmeng Ruby pop-up store held in Beijing this year led to a 14% month-on-month increase in customer flow. Starting from June this year, the mall will also hold a "Midsummer Animation Season" event.
"In addition to driving customer flow and sales through activities, we are more focused on attracting and communicating with each other among fans from all circles. We hope to continue to interact and resonate with young people through high-quality content and activities." said the person in charge.
