Suplay, the collectible card player, enters the Hong Kong Stock Exchange: How can the business of "price protection and quantity control" be scaled up?
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After KAYOU, another card company has set its sights on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Recently, trend IP consumer goods company Suplay submitted its IPO prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with CICC and JPMorgan as its joint sponsors.
In 2021, the company received investments of $3.5 million from G-Bits’ subsidiary Jixiang Capital and $8 million from miHoYo. Before the IPO, miHoYo, as the largest external shareholder, holds nearly 12% of the shares.
Suplay has established a brand matrix of the collectible card brand "Kakawow", the trendy toy brand "Heifener", and the derivatives brand "Letao Valley".
In terms of influence, "Kakawow", which specializes in collectible cards, may be its core support.
Unlike KAYOU, which relies on famous IPs like Ultraman and My Little Pony for mass distribution, Kakawow is more inclined towards the classic collectible operation model.
The global non-battle collectible card market is highly concentrated. By GMV, Suplay is the only Chinese brand to enter the global top five.
However, in terms of scale and growth speed, Kakawow’s performance remains moderate.
In 2024, Suplay’s revenue increased by 92.5% year-on-year to 280 million yuan, less than one thirtieth of KAYOU’s.
In the first three quarters of 2025, its revenue growth rate further slowed to 40%, with an income of 280 million yuan.
As the entire card industry moves into a rational phase after explosive growth, can Kakawow and Suplay tell a differentiated story under the scale dominance of "KAYOU style"?
The Scarcity Game
In the collectible card field, the transaction heat and prices in the secondary market are the most direct and real measure of brand recognition.
In 2023, Kakawow’s first breakout series, PHANTOM Disney 100th Anniversary Wonderful Characters Collection Cards, was a typical example.
Li Lanlan, head of "Card Jianghu", introduced to Xin Feng that at that time, Kakawow achieved the situation of "blooming inside the wall, fragrant outside the wall." Cards bought at relatively low domestic prices could be sold at several times the premium on overseas platforms like eBay. This substantial secondary market arbitrage space significantly boosted sales and brand awareness.
He believes this was partly due to the fact that there were few companies licensed to issue Disney IP cards domestically at the time. However, now, nearly ten card companies have been authorized by Disney.
Despite more entrants, Kakawow still seized the critical time window in 2023 and took the lead in establishing strategic partnerships with global reputation grading agencies such as PSA and CGC.
In the collectible card value system, grading agencies verify authenticity and quality, providing value benchmarks for secondary market trading. The rate of submissions also directly reflects a product’s collectible attributes and market activity.
Currently, Kakawow has become the brand with the highest proportion of self-submitted cards to international grading agencies among Chinese consumers, and also ranks first in trading volume on both eBay and domestic platforms among all Chinese card brands.
The high value supported by scarcity is further reflected in profitability: Suplay’s collectible gross margin exceeds 60%, more than double that of consumer-grade products.
In recent years, Suplay’s product structure has continued to tilt toward collectibles, accounting for over 70% in the first three quarters of 2025, driving the gross margin up to 54.5% and the adjusted net margin to 30.5%.
At the same time, the niche collector circle attribute allows Kakawow to effectively control channel and marketing costs.
Its cooperation with KOLs/KOCs mainly adopts a product exchange model, requiring no substantial cash outlays, resulting in marketing expense ratios of only about 1% of revenue.
In the world of collectible cards, scarcity always remains the core anchor of value.
This makes it impossible, like ordinary consumer goods, to seize secondary market dividends by substantially increasing issuance volume when the market is hot and popularity surges.
In 2024, when My Little Pony and live streaming card breaks ignited the industry, Hitcard’s revenue grew sixfold, KAYOU’s revenue grew 2.7 times and broke the 10 billion yuan mark, but Suplay, with a 90% increase, was not outstanding in the industry.
"Volume and price control" also requires the company to enforce stricter inventory policies when the market becomes saturated or declines.
In the first three quarters of 2025, Suplay took an impairment of over 36 million yuan on inventories over one year old, effectively writing off over half of its inventory at once.
This model further intensifies reliance on top IPs.
The success of collectible cards must be built on IPs with broad public awareness and popularity. Although Kakawow holds only a few IPs, they include global top-tier IPs such as Disney, Marvel, Harry Potter, etc.
In 2024 and the first three quarters of 2025, its biggest licensed IP contributed 17.8% and 32.3% of revenue respectively.
According to the IPO prospectus, during the record period, the core IP license contributing the most revenue to Suplay has already expired.
The company stated it is negotiating amicably with the licensor, seeking potential cooperation under broader product categories and more favorable business terms, but cannot guarantee the final outcome, the scope, or timing of resumption.
Scale First
For Suplay at this stage, expanding scale remains the core task.
Industry practice shows that strong IP licensors tend to favor top players when choosing partners.
For example, when Pop Mart chose a publisher for LABUBU collectible cards, it picked the more internationally influential brand Topps.
Currently, Suplay has established cooperation with 22 IP licensors. Although there are a few exclusive licenses (such as Hajime Sorayama and the Chinese National Winter Sports Team), the vast majority are non-exclusive.
There is room to improve Suplay’s bargaining position in IP licensing.
In 2024, Suplay’s IP licensing fees accounted for over 10% of total revenue (included in sales costs), while KAYOU, which signed with nearly 70 IPs in the same period, was 7.6%.
Moreover, as cards are large-scale printed products, their profitability is tied to economies of scale. Non-limited products especially need greater sales volume to dilute fixed costs and improve operational efficiency.
In the first three quarters of 2025, Suplay’s significant sales growth already helped lower average unit production costs and boosted gross margin by nearly 7 percentage points to 69.5%.
Looking forward, Suplay plans to further diversify income sources through IP, product category, and channel expansion.
First, in terms of IP strategy, Suplay will focus on IPs with international influence and easy overseas market acceptance, to advance its global layout.
Currently, the company is making moves in the domestic cultural IP field, having announced collaborations with Shanghai Film Studio’s “Shangyingyuan” and CCTV’s Year of the Horse Spring Festival Gala, using unique content to lay the foundation for going abroad.
To support expansion in mature markets such as America and Europe, the company has begun building a localized operations system. In September 2025, Suplay established a US subsidiary, Suplay US, Inc.
On the channel side, it will actively enter into major retail chain networks, equip professional teams in key cities to coordinate distribution, and advance digital infrastructure to build a three-dimensional retail network.
In addition, Suplay will carry out localized product design adjustments based on different markets’ cultural preferences, aesthetic trends, and regulatory environments to enhance overseas market appeal and acceptance.
Second, extend the industry chain around the existing collectible card business.
Suplay’s card storage brand Hobbycase began trial operation of grading and protection services in August 2025, entering the grading and protection segment of card circulation.
Li Lanlan explained that this may develop into a "factory-sealed at production" model in the future—equivalent to adding an official quality inspection process, saving time and labor for players submitting cards for grading, and aiding in long-term card preservation and distribution protection.
For Suplay, this not only may become a new source of income, but also strengthen its comprehensive service capabilities in the card industry chain.
In terms of product category expansion, Suplay is working to broaden its target consumer base, planning to explore TCG cards, consumer-grade cards, and at the same time increase investment in its own IP development and operations.
Currently, the company owns three self-developed IPs: Rabbit KIKI, Uncle OHO, and Shuibo Egg, and has developed trendy toys and derivatives to complement high-end collectible cards around them.
However, the self-owned IP business has declined continuously in recent years: revenue fell from nearly 60 million yuan in 2023 to 40 million yuan in 2024, and achieved only 11.72 million yuan in the first three quarters of 2025, shrinking to 4.1% of total revenue.
"Breaking the circle" to enter the mainstream mass consumer market means Suplay will face a broader consumer base, and also compete directly with more established brands.
Due to long-term focus on collectible cards, the company’s deployment and operational experience in mature offline channels is weaker than top enterprises with well-established distribution systems.
Li Lanlan stated that Kakawow currently mainly uses distributors to expand into live streaming and other online channels; although it previously tried to expand offline markets using IPs like "Tom and Jerry", the effect was limited.
How far its path to scaled growth can go in the future remains to be seen and determined.
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