一年卖近50亿包卡牌 毛利率超泡泡玛特 卡游为何闯不过IPO这关？

Kayou is the leading player in China's trading card market, holding over 70% market share. The company's IPO process is currently stalled as it faces multiple key challenges. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Kayou has delivered extraordinary growth: its revenue was less than ¥1 billion in 2019, and surpassed ¥10 billion in 2024, with adjusted net profit reaching ¥4.466 billion. It is now valued at ¥69.5 billion, with a stable overall gross margin of around 67% — slightly higher than Pop Mart's 66.8% in 2024. It sold nearly 5 billion packs of cards in 2024.

2. Kayou's core competitive advantages lie in IP and distribution channels: most of its IPs are from external licensing, and it holds rights to dozens of top household-name IPs including Ultraman. Its distribution network deeply penetrates target locations such as stationery stores near schools, convenience stores, and trendy toy counters in shopping malls. As of the end of 2024, it works with 217 cooperating distributors and operates 699 vending machines for cards.

3. The core reason for Kayou's stalled IPO is regulatory controversy stemming from its over-reliance on consumption by minors. The company is currently undergoing a transformation to expand its user base to adults and diversify its product categories, but it still faces a final IPO gambling deadline in June 2026. If it fails to list by then, it will need to buy back shares for approximately ¥1.35 billion.

This article summarizes Kayou's current development and core challenges, and offers key insights for brand owners as follows:

1. Consumption trends: Trading cards have strong social appeal among minors, and the blind-box style sales model generates extremely strong profitability. The overall industry is shifting towards covering all age groups and diversifying product categories, and leading brands have already begun to reduce their dependence on minor consumers.

2. Operational takeaways: Kayou achieved rapid scaling by partnering with popular externally licensed IPs, built a distribution moat covering all core consumption scenarios, and adopted a tiered pricing strategy covering the ¥20 to ¥180 price range to match the purchasing power of different consumers. Full-box products are more popular among mainstream consumers.

3. Risk warnings: Over-reliance on minor consumption can easily trigger public backlash and regulatory risks. Heavy dependence on external core IPs exposes brands to concentrated expiration and renewal risks, and insufficient in-house IP development undermines long-term growth. Brand growth requires a balance between commercial expansion and social responsibility, with compliance transformation planned in advance.

This article shares key insights on the trading card track for sellers as follows:

1. Market opportunities: The trading card track is growing rapidly: Kayou grew from less than ¥1 billion in revenue to over ¥10 billion in just five years. Minors have stable, socially driven demand for cards, while adult sports collecting and trendy toy categories also offer large room for expansion. Adjacent categories such as stationery and figurines also bring new growth opportunities.

2. Risk warnings: Blind-box style card sales targeting minors have already drawn criticism from state media and regulatory inquiries, and compliance oversight continues to tighten. Terminal sellers near schools must implement age verification and consumption caps to avoid running afoul of regulatory requirements.

3. Actionable lessons: Sellers can learn from Kayou's playbook of tiered pricing, deep penetration into target consumption scenarios, and driving traffic through partnerships with popular IPs. Sellers should adjust their target audience structure in response to changing regulatory requirements and diversify product categories to spread operational risk. Since the track has already become a concentrated market dominated by a single leader, new entrants must pursue a differentiation strategy.

This article summarizes key takeaways from the trading card industry for manufacturing factories as follows:

1. Product and design requirements: Card products are designed with rarity tiers and sold via blind-box probability-based distribution, with packaging available in single packs and full boxes. Full-box products priced at ¥180 are particularly popular with consumers. Leading brands are now expanding into diverse categories including stationery, figurines, and dolls, driving sustained growth in production demand for these product lines.

2. Business cooperation opportunities: China's trading card industry is already heavily concentrated at the top. Kayou sells nearly 5 billion packs of cards annually and generates over ¥10 billion in revenue, creating sustained large-scale demand for stable, high-quality production suppliers. At the same time, Kayou's expansion into new categories such as adult sports collection cards and branded stationery will bring additional new production orders.

3. Strategic insights: The industry is growing rapidly but compliance requirements are continuously tightening. Factories should assess the compliance status of brands when taking on orders. As leading brands pursue IP and category diversification, factories can expand production capacity targeted to these new needs to capture industry growth, and also pursue long-term cooperation opportunities tied to leading brands' in-house IP development initiatives.

This article summarizes the current development of China's trading card industry and offers key takeaways for relevant service providers as follows:

1. Industry development trends: China's trading card industry has entered a stage of monopoly by a single leading player, with the top company holding over 70% market share and exceeding ¥10 billion in annual revenue. The industry is transitioning from focusing exclusively on minors to serving all age groups, and expanding from pure card offerings to diverse trendy toy and stationery categories.

2. Core pain points for clients: Leading card brands currently face three core pain points. First, they face compliance pressure around consumption regulation for minors: offline terminals near schools generally lack effective age verification and consumption control mechanisms to meet regulatory requirements. Second, their dependence on external core IPs exposes them to concentrated expiration and renewal risks, and they lack established paths for developing in-house IP. Third, to meet IPO compliance requirements, they need to improve data security systems, especially for the protection of minors' personal information.

3. New service opportunities: Service providers can develop age verification systems and consumption limit tools tailored for offline terminals to meet brand needs, offer consulting services for IP negotiation and in-house IP development, and help brands improve their compliance systems to respond to regulatory inquiries.

This article summarizes key takeaways from Kayou's development and IPO experience for marketplace platforms as follows:

1. Core demands from brands: Leading trendy toy and card brands have needs for IPO financing, and require platforms to provide traffic exposure and distribution matching support when expanding into new tracks and categories. They also need platforms to cooperate on implementing child protection rules as part of compliance building.

2. Operational management insights: The trendy toy and card track is fast-growing and highly profitable, and compliant leading brands offer high cooperation value. Platforms can proactively on board leading card brands to lay out in the trendy toy collecting niche, but need to build a compliance management system in advance.

3. Risk mitigation reminders: When operating related businesses, platforms must strictly comply with regulatory requirements for blind-box products and minor protection, and establish mandatory control mechanisms such as age verification and consumption limits to avoid crossing regulatory red lines. Platforms should also pay attention to brands' IP compliance risks, and prioritize cooperation with brands that have already established complete compliance systems.

This case study of leading trading card company Kayou offers key insights for industry researchers as follows:

1. New industry trends: China's trading card industry has formed a highly concentrated monopoly structure, with Kayou holding over 70% market share. The leading company's revenue surpassed ¥10 billion in 2024, with core business gross margin stabilizing at around 70%. The industry is currently in a transition period: leading players are proactively expanding into adult user groups and diversifying product categories to reduce their dependence on the minor consumer market.

2. Emerging industry problems: The core problem facing the industry is that leading players' business models rely excessively on the blind-box probability mechanism, which induces irrational consumption among minors and keeps companies operating on the edge of regulatory red lines. At the same time, leading players are heavily dependent on external core IPs, facing concentrated renewal risks when contracts expire, with in-house IP development lagging far behind. The IPO process also exposed gaps in the companies' compliance systems.

3. Research and policy implications: Regulators need to introduce clearer regulatory rules for blind-pack trading cards targeting minors, standardizing requirements for probability disclosure, sales channels, and consumption limits. For the industry, stakeholders need to encourage domestic brands to develop in-house IPs, optimize audience structure, and balance commercial development with social responsibility. The long-term sustainability of this trendy toy business model tied to minor consumption remains to be seen.