After Line and Kumamoto Kumamoto Xiong, Ali also opened a coffee shop, how to cross the border animation IP new retail?

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From memes and cartoon characters to opening a physical store, what kind of retail realization road has Ali walked out of IP?

Text | Gao Min

Core guide:

Why did Ali's company come to open a coffee shop, and why did it choose Zhongguancun?

What's the difference between themed cafes and Starbucks?

(3) the way to borrow power of cross-border catering for the provider of animation content.

If you are a social software user, you must have seen the emoji package of "Ali". The image of this little red fox in white shorts has been active in the public eye for more than a decade.

Ali entered people's view from the cartoon drawings released by Xu Han, a graduate of Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts, on the Internet. it has long been a super IP of domestic animation, from picture books to facial expressions, animation, perimeter, installation exhibitions, and various categories of licensed products, are very popular among young people. Its first 3D animation "Ali Buta" story collection has achieved 100 million hits in just three months, while at the same time Ali's big movie is also under preparation.

Now, on the road to ploughing IP, Ali's creative team, Beijing Dream City Culture Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Dream City"), has cut cartoon characters from online to offline, and Ali-themed Cafe opened on Beijing's Zhongguancun Shibao Street on May 1.

In this gourmet complex, which began trial operation at the end of 2016, Ali Cafe is one of more than 80 catering brands. In addition to Ali's characteristic coffee drinks and food, there are also several shelves. Ali's plush, clothing, picture books, bags and bags are displayed everywhere, and there are two baby-grabbing machines in the corner, as well as a special photo area. It not only plays a decorative role but also has retail value, which not only satisfies the hearts of young girls, but also brings satisfactory passenger flow to the store.

Animation IP Cross-border Cafe, with 16 million traceable online fans, Ali, whose emojis cover hundreds of millions of people, walked from the Internet to offline. What was the result of this attempt in Dream City? Is the creation of this brand experience space a form of new retail? And what is the uniqueness of themed cafes? "Retail owner Internal reference" APP (Wechat ID:lslb168) chatted with Yu Renguo, CEO of Dream City.

1. How to choose the best location in Haidian?

It is only natural that Dream City decided to open an Ali-themed cafe.

In the animation business model, the theme space is an important part, including theme playgrounds, theme parks, theme art galleries and so on, and the coffee shop is the smallest unit. Cafes are relatively easy to control because of their small scale and easy to calculate input and output.

On the other hand, such a space also provides a fixed experience space for fans.

We all know that Ali is on the Internet, and there are only offline activities such as book signing and installation exhibition before, and the people who can participate in it are only a small number of fans. The cafe provides a long-term offline experience space, through the continuous introduction of new food, products and devices, as well as unscheduled parties, become the joint point of animation IP online and offline.

As Line, Kumamoto Kumamoto and other Japanese-Korean themed cafes into China triggered an upsurge, Ali, as a big local animation IP, naturally did not lag behind. The site of Dream City has been selected since 2015, and the current location of Zhongguancun Shibao Street was not decided until last August.

In a city like Beijing, it is not easy to choose a location, especially in the coffee industry. Yu Renguo recalled to the "Retail Boss Internal reference" APP (Wechat ID:lslb168) that the process was not easy. The business areas where young people gathered, such as Sanlitun, Wangfujing and Nanluoguxiang, had all considered it, but good addresses were either too expensive or saturated, making them unsuitable for new residents.

Finally located in Zhongguancun Shibao Street, after detailed consideration. At that time, the whole street was being closed and redecorated, and accurate judgment was needed for future development. Yu Renguo knows the environment and crowd of Zhongguancun pedestrian Street very well. in his view, Zhongguancun is dominated by college students engaged in science and technology, with young people in the majority, while most of the surrounding cafes are "relatively hard." creative coffee like Ali is blank.

With the transformation of the business district, the lifestyle of the pedestrian street is also upgrading, the demand for entertainment and spiritual consumption is increasing, and the passenger flow and the surrounding environment, as well as the degree of matching with its own positioning, determines that Ali Cafe sits here. "this is the best location in Haidian District."

Facts have proved that this site is indeed quite forward-looking. Now that it is only the second month, the results of Ali Cafe have made Yu Renguo quite satisfied. Passenger traffic in June was 40% more than in May, while the score on Dianping also rose from four stars to four and a half stars, making it into the top 10 on the list of popular coffee shops in Beijing this week. The performance was not disclosed, but it was good.

The cafe is frequented by customers from 10:00 to 10:00, which, unlike catering, is a way of life, and people vary from time to time. During the day, there are more white-collar workers around to talk about things, while in the evening, there will be many students here to do homework, parties, and weekends are more friends gathering. You will find that from college students to children to office workers, the crowd gathered in Ali Cafe has exceeded the fans themselves. Of course, 2/3 are women.

2. "A city can only open two or three at most."

Compared with the ordinary cafe plus retail model, the offline extension of IP such as Ali Cafe is characterized by its IP fan cluster, which is more likely to satisfy a kind of spiritual consumption. In this way, there are many differences in operation.

Themed cafes with fans are usually more goal-oriented. Coffee chains such as Starbucks and Costa can pick up customers where everyone is busy, but since themed cafes have their own fans, their main customers are divergent, and the function of cafes is to gather scattered fans.

Due to the difference in positioning, there can only be two or three themed cafes in a city. Fans are scattered, and if you open too much, you will lose the function of gathering fans. " After all, it is more of a cultural space, first of all, to provide experience atmosphere and party space for those who like Ali. The gathering of fans will also attract more customers to the store, which is the advantage of theme cafes.

In addition, the logic of competition is also different. Usually the most consideration for opening a coffee shop is the flow of people, location and time around, as well as the competitors you are about to face. If the Costa is next to Starbucks, this is direct competition. But Ali Cafe is different. "No matter how many cafes are opened around, it will not affect our passenger flow, the theme cafe has a strong differentiation." Yu Renguo said. Because unlike other brands mainly rely on physical channels to obtain passenger flow, cartoon brands rely on image as a channel to first get customers, and then assign these people to various points.

Since the fan base is a major source of passenger flow, fan operation and interaction is an important part of the business. Ali has long had surrounding retail products for sale on e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD.com, but they have also customized a number of products for cafes, such as Ali coffee cups and Ali mini dolls, which can only be bought by fans who come to the store to experience them. On the other hand, hand-run, Ali Cafe and offline Dream City franchises will always be available for sale on the Internet.

In addition, Ali's dolls come to the store every week to do a live broadcast, because there is only one store, online publicity is also more focused, and constantly planning weekend offline activities. For example, on June 11, a celebration was organized to celebrate the hundreds of millions of cinema shows on the "Ali Buta", and there were curtains on the walls of the cafe.

Compared with the previous entry into China's Line and Kumamoto-themed cafes, Ali is a rare domestic animation-themed coffee test. From Yu Renguo's point of view, Line is more comparable, but compared with Wechat, Line has a limited installation in China and attracts customers with its image design and lifestyle. It is currently the best themed cafe in China. Unlike the perfect model of Japan and South Korea, domestic themed coffee is still in the exploratory stage, and they are constantly debugging store layouts and devices, as well as adjusting and updating products to improve.

3. Take advantage of cross-border new retail

From online to offline, from cartoon to catering, Ali Cafe, which integrates resources to the maximum extent, is undoubtedly taking the path of new retail. Just cross-border catering, for animation content providers, how much need to explore.

Yu Renguo, who has rich investment management, also knows more about catering, and he knows very well that it is not easy to do it. The research and development and adjustment of new food products, as well as the supply chain need to be solved by long-term adjustment. Especially now that it is the first store, it takes more energy to build than a chain brand.

In addition, such as the construction cycle, documents and other uncontrollable factors, has become an unexpected difficulty, after all, the extension of the cycle will bring a lot of hard costs. In retrospect, Yu Renguo said that plans should be made for a longer cycle than expected. After opening the store, everything went well, and Dream City itself has Internet genes, so it is constantly adjusted every day, and the passenger flow increases with it.

Ali brand itself accumulates cooperative licensing resources, which is of great benefit to the theme cafe.

"We are not good at coffee, but we will find people who are good at it to cooperate." In the coffee supply chain, for example, they work with Esquires, New Zealand's largest coffee chain.

In addition, Ali authorized cake, snack partners have long been integrated into the coffee shop, superimposed a lot of mature capabilities for IP. "the theme space needs a lot of efforts, and we don't need to create it all." choosing high-quality partners in the supply chain and integrating existing cooperation models will undoubtedly be of great help to cross-border efficiency.

In addition to Ali, Dream City also has original cartoon IP such as Luo Xiaohei, Xiang Pujun and Pizhuizi. Ali Cafe is their first theme cafe. Luo Xiaohei and a collection of cartoon characters of Dream City are also planned.

When the supply chain and other links run through, Dream City plans to open the authorization. Yu Renguo said that if Beijing can succeed, then second-tier cities with lower rent and labor costs will be more likely to succeed, and the key now is to control the quality and then open up the license.

Under the great opportunity of consumption upgrading, the new retail is an important aspect. Under this background, Yu Renguo believes that the theme cafe is of greater value to the brand. With the rapid development and upgrading of domestic Shopping mall, the consumption scenes of urban people have been mostly concentrated in shopping centers, and brands are facing fierce competition, so the application scene has become the next competition point.

In the shopping center, what kind of industry has stronger viability? In the theme cafe, everything related to the theme is gathered here, where brands rely on channels, while they rely on culture.