Aofei Entertainment has made three transformations and is determined to be the Disney of the East

An inconspicuous toy manufacturing factory in Shantou at the time has now become a pan-entertainment industry giant with a total market value of more than 36 billion yuan. Yesterday, Wang Jing, deputy general manager and secretary of Aofei Entertainment, shared with investors the company's past development history and described the company's strategic plan and future layout.

Original title: Aofei Entertainment has undergone three transformations: The pan-entertainment empire

is about to emerge. An insignificant toy manufacturing factory in Shantou at the time has now become a pan-entertainment industry giant with a total market value of more than 36 billion yuan. For more than 20 years, Aofei Entertainment has gone from producing toys and animations, to developing mobile games and shooting movies, to recently playing virtual reality (VR). Behind the seemingly dazzling layout, what cannot be concealed is the ambition of "Oriental Disney".

Yesterday, Wang Jing, deputy general manager and secretary of Aofei Entertainment, shared with investors the company's past development history and described the company's strategic plan and future layout.

Aofei

Animation, which launched on the small and medium-sized board in 2009, has always been regarded by the market as "the number one share of animation in China." At the beginning of this year,"Aofei Animation" changed its name to "Aofei Entertainment". It seems that there are only simple changes, but behind it are the three transformation experiences of the company since its establishment.

When the company was founded in 1993, many toy industry colleagues were vigorously undertaking OEM orders, but Aofei did not do OEM orders. Founder Cai Dongqing insisted on making toys under his own brand and regarded this as the company's core competitiveness.

As the toy industry continued to explore, Cai Dongqing began to notice the influence of animation on children's purchase of toys, and he gradually came up with the idea of doing animation himself. In 2003, the company launched its deployment into the animation industry and moved its headquarters from Shantou to Guangzhou in order to attract animation talents to join. Since then, the business model of "animation + toys" has begun to take shape, and the company's first transformation has emerged.

With the increasingly improved layout of the animation industry, the company has upgraded to an operator of the entire animation industry chain. In 2010, the company obtained the right to operate Jiajia Cartoon TV, becoming the first private enterprise in China to have the right to operate satellite channels; in 2012, the Aofei Animation New Industrial Park covering an area of 100,000 square meters was completed and put into operation in Chenghai. This is the second transformation of the company.

In 2013, Aofei announced the acquisition of the "Pleasant Goat and Big Wolf" brand and team for 540 million yuan, kicking off the company's third transformation. At this stage, the company began to build a pan-entertainment ecosystem with IP as the core and integrating animation, toys, babies, games, authorization, media, movies, etc., established Aofei Pictures and Aofei Games, and also purchased 900 million yuan acquired "Youqi", the largest original animation platform in China. Since then, the company's target customer base has expanded from children to all ages, and a pan-entertainment empire with "IP as the core" is on the horizon.

"To this day, Aofei's business and strategic layout have gone far beyond the scope of 'animics'. At this stage, we have formulated four major development strategies, namely, content is king, Internet, internationalization and technology." Wang Jing said.

The magic of IP

has gone from being ignored to being sought after by thousands of people. The status of IP (intellectual property) has undergone earth-shaking changes in recent years.

In the past, a large amount of high-quality original IP content was buried. Since the past two or three years, IP has received more and more attention."High-quality IP dramas" have become popular. Film and television cultural companies have promoted "developing high-quality IP" as an important strategy. A popular IP can be valued at hundreds of millions.

In Wang Jing's view, the popularity of IP in recent years is a product of the background of the mobile Internet era. The explosion of mobile Internet after 2012 has greatly changed the lifestyle of users, and the number of Internet users has also shown a geometric increase. In this context, once high-quality IP content is discovered, it can become popular on the Internet overnight. The value of IP has been amplified many times in this way.

After Aofei Entertainment entered animation in 2003, the company already has strong animation IP originality capabilities. Coupled with active mergers and acquisitions after listing, the company currently has the largest and most well-known IP group in China.

Wang Jing believes that as a sustainable operating asset of an enterprise, the commercial value of IP will continue to expand and increase value like a snowball. High-quality IP groups are like many magnets that can continue to stick to more users without requiring energy and have very unique advantages.

Compared with IP itself, Aofei Entertainment's most proud core competitiveness is its independent IP creation capabilities, diversified development capabilities and multi-channel output capabilities. "Tens of thousands of IPs are like rocks in mines. After professional vision and team polishing, they can become IP gems. At the same time, multi-industry extension and joint development will further reduce development costs and risks." Wang Jing said.

Technology +IP

If we talk about the most innovative concepts in the scientific and technological world at present, they are nothing more than VR, AI (artificial intelligence), etc. But what many people may not know is that Aofei Entertainment has long had plans in these fields.

In the past year, Aofei Entertainment has participated in five companies related to VR technology, and has now initially formed a complete VR ecosystem. In the future, Aofei will deepen the exploration and integration of technology and pan-entertainment through the "IP+VR" approach. The explosion of a larger market in the future relies on the integration of multiple scenarios between the VR industry and the pan-entertainment industry.

At the AI level, Aofei invested 50 million yuan in "Turing Robot." The Turning OS operating system developed by the company is one of the first batch of artificial intelligence-level commercially available robot operating systems in China and is an absolute leader in Chinese language processing. Wang Jing pointed out that Aofei has the gene of the "IP+" model and naturally has the advantage of connecting users with emotions. In the future, it hopes to promote the integration of the "IP+ smart" industry and extend the core advantage of "children's content first" to "Children's smart terminals first".

"'Technology 'is one of the company's four major strategies, and technology is the most important factor in changing entertainment methods. Disney, the veteran entertainment company, has continuously become a pan-entertainment high-tech company through technological investment and transformation. We must also make a layout around this kind of technology, deepen the integration of technology and pan-entertainment, and maintain competitive advantages in the wave of technology driving industry change." Wang Jing emphasized.

From

toy manufacturing to animation production, to a pan-entertainment group that integrates babies, games, movies, etc., Oriental Disney has always regarded Disney as a benchmark in the development of Aofei Entertainment. This year, it even proposed to be an "Oriental Disney".

This year's release of "The Wilderness Hunter" has become a global hit. In fact, Aofei Entertainment had reached an in-depth cooperative relationship with New Regent Entertainment, the producer of "The Wilderness Hunter", as early as 2014, and participated in the investment of "The Wilderness Hunter". Now it is also Sharing the global box office revenue of this film. In addition, the films "Assassin's Creed" and "008 Bacon Bear" that the company participated in and led are gradually carrying out preliminary publicity and release work.

In addition to movies, in the currently popular field of online drama, the company has also established Aofei Drama Industry to test the waters. At present,"Legend of the Academy Peach Blossom" has been completed and is scheduled to be broadcast during the Spring Festival of 2017;"Zhensoul Street" has started filming.

Since the acquisition of Fangcun Technology and Aiyue in 2013, Aofei Entertainment has also regarded the mobile game business as a major focus. Today, the company has achieved outstanding results in game research and development, operations and market talent construction.

Although Aofei Entertainment has made great strides in many light-asset businesses such as animation, film and television, and games in recent years, the toy manufacturing business on which the company relied for its fortune has always maintained its position as the company's core main business. In the first half of 2016, the toy business still accounts for 62% of the company's total revenue. "Compared with many traditional toy companies, our biggest advantage is that we have our own IP, which can lead consumption and greatly increase the added value of toys. Compared with pure animation, film and television companies, our toy business constitutes one of the largest industrial exports of IP, and can maximize the value of IP in our hands." Wang Jing concluded.

Editor: yvette