Chuangyuan Co. acquired 30 Ku Le Trendy Toy stores. Are the accounts of trendy toy collection stores still clear?

After Morning Light's "Jiumu Miscellaneous Goods Club," more stationery manufacturers began jumping into the collection store business.

Recently, the export-oriented stationery company and A-share listed company, Chuangyuan Co., disclosed its intention to invest externally, planning to acquire assets from more than 30 stores within the “Kule Trend Toys” system and enter the offline retail of trendy toys and cultural and creative miscellaneous goods.

This is the first real external acquisition for Chuangyuan Co., since Ningbo State-owned Assets took over four years ago, and is regarded as a critical step for this export-focused cultural and creative manufacturing company’s transformation toward the domestic consumer market.

There has already been a foundation of cooperation between Kule Trend Toys and Chuangyuan Co.

In October 2025, both parties, along with domestic original IP brand operator Tianluoxing, formed a tripartite strategic partnership, jointly integrating IP development, original design, AI empowerment, supply chain management, and channel resources at Ningbo Digital Culture Industry Park.

Just five months later, the business partnership evolved into an in-depth equity binding relationship.

Transforming from a cultural and creative product R&D manufacturer to a branding and channel-oriented integrated cultural and creative operator is the core narrative behind this acquisition by Chuangyuan Co.

Yet, real problems remain: With Morning Light's Jiumu Miscellaneous Goods Club suffering years of losses, the venture of stationery companies opening trendy cultural and creative collection stores has yet to prove itself as “good business.”

What exactly has Chuangyuan Co. bought this time?

Only Selling 30 Stores

Founded in 2013, Kule Trend Toys is among the earliest domestic offline retail brands to combine trendy toys and cultural and creative miscellaneous goods.

Most of its stores are located in shopping centers in first- and second-tier cities. Its product matrix covers blind boxes, figurines, soft vinyl plush, and cultural and creative peripherals, working with leading IPs such as Disney and Sanrio, and also incubates its own IPs like Tuntun Zai and Polka Dot Cat.

Currently, Kule Trend Toys has over 300 stores nationwide, with a scale close to TOP TOY, ranking in the industry’s first tier.

But what the listed company is interested in this time is not the entirety of Kule Trend Toys, but more about cherry-picking its high-quality store assets.

According to plans, Chuangyuan Co. intends to acquire 90% of the shares of “Zhejiang ChuKu Future Cultural Creativity Co., Ltd.,” a newly established company by Ningbo Kule Trend Toys and its actual controller Wu Shengfeng.

This company will take over the operating assets and core team of more than 30 mature stores within the system and serve as the future operating entity.

At the same time, the transaction counterpart promises to grant Chuku Future free and irrevocable authorization to use the “Kule Trend Toys” brand and related intellectual property for no less than 10 years.

Behind the prudence lie the constraints of real conditions and reflects that, with enhanced IP supply, the dominant bargaining and pricing power of single channels is weakening.

Crossing over to trendy toy retail through collection channels is not a verified easy path for stationery companies.

A veteran who has worked for a leading trendy toy brand told All Weather Technology that Kule Trend Toys and Jiumu Miscellaneous Goods Club overlap highly in store location and product structure. “Jiumu next door is suffering losses; Kule Trend Toys can’t be expected to perform much better.”

Since its founding in 2016, Jiumu Miscellaneous Goods Club, under Morning Light, has only briefly achieved profitability in 2023; all other years have been losses.

In 2025, Jiumu Miscellaneous Goods Club reported revenue of 1.537 billion yuan, up 9% year-on-year, but its losses grew from 12.44 million yuan last year to 84.51 million yuan. Although the number of stores has exceeded 860 and franchising has long been open, the overall profit model still doesn't work.

Kule Trend Toys follows a similar trajectory. Although it announced the opening of franchising in 2022, public information over recent years shows its store count has stagnated at around 300, with no breakthrough.

The aforementioned industry insider further pointed out that only 30 stores are included in this transaction, possibly due to the uneven profitability of other stores, with some still loss-making or inefficient.

The transaction terms can also indirectly confirm this.

In terms of pricing, both parties based the valuation on a simulated net profit of not less than 10 million yuan for 2025, at an 8x P/E ratio, corresponding to an overall valuation of about 80 million yuan. Chuangyuan Co. will acquire 90% of the shares, with the price expected to range from 70 million to 100 million yuan.

Chuangyuan Co. has paid a 30 million yuan earnest deposit, with the stipulation that if the due diligence does not meet expectations, the transaction can be terminated and the funds returned.

Based on this, the transaction also sets a clear performance commitment.

From the second half of 2026 to 2029, the target company’s non-recurring net profits must not be less than 6 million, 12.6 million, 13.23 million, and 13.89 million yuan, respectively.

Based on the number of stores brought in, the annual profit contribution per mature store is roughly 400,000 yuan.

“If we reverse-calculate based on a net rate of about 10%, each store would have annual revenue of about 4 million yuan, with average daily sales just over 10,000 yuan,” the industry insider told All Weather Technology. “This is better than ordinary MINISO stores but a bit worse than most trendy toy stores.”

For comparison, TOP TOY’s 50 self-operated stores in 2025 achieved revenue of 444 million yuan, corresponding to average daily sales per store of about 24,000 yuan.

In their view, the spatial value of these store assets exceeds the brand and turnover itself. The essence of this transaction is paying for the scarce commercial district traffic entry point and helping Kule Trend Toys recover funds.

The IP Account Yet to Cash In

The business of trendy toy collection stores such as Kule Trend Toys and Jiumu Miscellaneous Goods Club wasn't always this difficult.

In the industry’s early days, trendy toy retail relied heavily on channel dividends. Quality shopping center slots were relatively scarce, and IP gave products premium pricing, further strengthening store appeal and making them online-famous crowd-pulling offline spots.

But as Pop Mart completed market education and players like TOP TOY entered, IP supply quickly increased, co-branding became much more frequent, “hit products” had ever-shorter lifecycles, and the premium ability of a single IP kept declining.

Meanwhile, as consumption becomes more rational, the turnover a single store can carry has receded, revealing the cost pressure of asset-heavy self-operation.

Leaders like MINISO saw both same-store sales and GMV decline by high single digits in the domestic market for fiscal 2024, even as transaction size and item average price rose, reflecting the waning marginal growth momentum on the channel side.

Against this background, IP capability becomes the key variable for profitability.

Since 2025, MINISO has continually strengthened its own IPs through co-branding and acquisitions, leveraging its financial strength and supply chain system, and amplifies them by channel momentum.

Its founder, Ye Guofu, recently gave a 2026 revenue target of around 1 billion yuan for their own IP "YOYO Sauce" at an earnings meeting.

But Kule Trend Toys, with only some 300 stores, is clearly less capable in IP creation and amplification.

If we further reference the path of manufacturing enterprises moving downstream to retail, the issue goes beyond IP.

Using Jiumu Miscellaneous Goods Club as an example, some believe its business goals are not entirely driven by store efficiency, but are constrained by upstream products and brand strategy.

Within the Morning Light system, Jiumu Miscellaneous Goods Club essentially carries a dual function of “channel + brand upgrade”: On one hand it acts as a retail channel, on the other it upgrades self-owned products and brand image.

It tries to upgrade value by leveraging core commercial district stores and unified displays, but still relies on the student crowd for basic traffic; it both sells self-owned products and edges toward trendy toy collection retail. With these layered targets, it’s hard to create a clear, replicable profit model.

By contrast, Chuangyuan Co., as an export-focused cultural and creative manufacturer, is only at the starting stage for its domestic business, with more room for adjustment in product structure, pricing strategy, and channel positioning.

Though domestic business in 2025 grew nearly 50% year-over-year, overall revenue was just 39 million yuan.

Strategically, Chuangyuan Co.'s domestic sales layout already clearly points to IP trendy toys, cultural and creative products, and has reached agreements with Tianluoxing and Kule Trend Toys.

Tianluoxing is a firm invested in by Chuangyuan Co’s major shareholder, the Wenlv Convention & Exhibition Group, and has deep experience in IP authorization and operation, covering cultural IPs like Dunhuang Museum, China Aerospace CNSPACE, and Qin Terracotta Warriors, and also represents several international IPs.

The “IP + manufacturing + channel” combination forms Chuangyuan's basic approach for extending into retail. But whether this model works is still up to the actual store operation and the market acceptance of IP products.

This IP account needs to truly cash in through actual operation.

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