Founded in 2000, Viken's brand, dgpower, specializes in CE derivatives design. We have deep cooperation with Disney, Marvel, Pixar, Lucas and other companies. At present, the company has an internationalized professional team, which has mature operational experience in design and development, production, operation and promotion, and after-sales service, and is committed to providing movie and cartoon fans with the best quality derivative products and consumer experience.
Currently, the main products of DQB include mobile power, Bluetooth speakers, USB flash drives, headphones, cell phone cases and other digital products. At the same time, its tentacles are being extended from international to domestic, currently cooperating with entertainment giants such as Aikiye, and is committed to creating its own domestic IP entertainment derivatives.
Entrepreneurship: a passion to open the journey
Although today's Viken has firmly occupied its own place in the IP derivatives market, but looking back on their own entrepreneurial beginnings, Li Zhentai shrugged and told reporters: "The beginning of entrepreneurship is very simple, that is, when I graduated from the university classmates asked me to open a company with him. At that time, young, I think you can break through!"
So, in 2000, Li Zhentai, majoring in marketing, through the small business during the school period to do the accumulation of business experience, and classmates founded Viken - a main integrated systems business computer company. 5 years later, the business changes so that the company began to transform to do the consumer digital products and independent brands of the R & D. But with the fierce competition in the market, Vacon has become a major player in the market. However, with the fierce competition in the market, Viken further transformed the channel by cooperating with Suning and Gome, mainly engaged in the agency business of well-known brands.
"Although the company's scale is expanding, as an agent, (I) know that when the cooperation platform grows, there is always the risk of being abandoned. In the face of increasing costs and decreasing profits, I feel that the survival of the business is constantly being exploited."
Just as Li Zhentai was in distress, the equally beleaguered Marvel took the initiative to find Viken, wanting to cooperate in the development of derivatives and sell them through regular channels by way of authorization.
At the time, Marvel was struggling with the domestic counterfeit market, and most companies were reluctant to take the initiative to represent Marvel in the derivatives development business due to the high cost of licensing. At this time, Vacon not only has the genuine product channel resources of Suning and Gome, but also is a company with independent brand R&D and design capability. The company's main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers.
In the face of the opportunity, Vacon began to look at itself at the bottleneck stage: on the one hand, the company's main agent business is not very profitable and has the crisis of interruption at any time; on the other hand, although the cost of the independent brand is lower, but in the competition with the well-known brands, the price is suppressed and also squeezes out the profit margins. In addition, Vacon's expertise in consumer digital products was a good fit with Marvel's audience. Therefore, Vacon decided to join hands with Marvel to start another business transformation of IP derivatives licensing.
Business Transformation: Developing Derivative Products for Famous IPs
In 2012, Vacon redefined its business with the determination to transform itself. "All of our products are focused on the IP licensing piece. We don't sell agency products with low profit, and we stopped our own brands without brand image. We repositioned ourselves as a professional well-known IP derivatives development company."
According to the company's positioning, the product has become an important element of the enterprise in the market competition and long-term development. So, what exactly are the characteristics of Viken's products and how can they stand out in the market competition?
"This is a process of exploration, we have also taken a detour." Li Zhentai said immediately got up and took out a once-designed product.
"This is a lipstick model of mobile power. The reason why we would be dissatisfied with it is because it just takes a male mold to do a simple pasting. Although such a product also sold quite well at the time, but after comparing the products of many brands at home and abroad we realized: if you just print an image on top (of the product), you will end up in a dead-end street, and you can only fight with others for the price!"
Obviously, this is not what the founding team wanted.
Obviously, this is not what the founding team wanted, and Viken was determined to make a higher level of requirements in the design of the product to ensure core competitiveness in the market.
"The design appeal of all our products is that in the case of full simulation, more functions to do an import, in which case the product is not just a pendant, it is a practical thing."
Li Zhentai is very clear, Viken is doing IP derivatives, the vast majority of the audience for the fans. The products that fans want must fit the IP itself, so the appearance of a high degree of simulation must be an effective means. On this basis, how to embed the product function to become hidden and high quality, this is the test of Vacon.
On a desk full of products, Li Zhentai swung "Thor's Hammer". This Bluetooth speaker is an almost exact replica of the Ip itself, and the process of creating it from scratch is a testament to the demands of Vacon.
When the product was still in the design stage, three rounds of research were conducted on the details of the product using the public number for the fans. Among them, there are two options for the sound hole of the speaker, the first is the full opening of the two hammers, which is more convenient from the product function point of view of the sound, but relatively weak IP concealment; the second option is to focus on maintaining the restoration of the IP itself, the need for sound holes are hidden in the embossed pattern around the hammer. This option would have posed a greater challenge to the design of the hammer's internal structure.
In the end, fans chose option two. So Viken repeatedly worked out the reasonableness of embedding the function while keeping the IP image close enough. Finally, after 8 rounds of debugging, it successfully overcame the limitations of the product's appearance on sound quality and volume. "It's no exaggeration to say that if you want to take this hammer to square dance, the product's function can also fully satisfy you." Li Zhentai said jokingly.
Confidence in the product flows out of Li Zhentai's conversation all the time. When asked how creative companies should maintain the continued competitiveness of creativity? Li Zhentai also gave his own answer.
"I can only say this, the future is anyone's guess. But as of now, first, no one is doing anything close to what we are doing (in terms of products), and second, we are still pushing new products every year, constantly challenging ourselves, so we still have a lot of confidence in ourselves!"
Goal: Feed domestic IP with products
Currently, Viken*** has 31 people, of which the most core is still the design team. "As long as you have good design, there must be no shortage of good foundries in China." Therefore, in the future, while Viken retains its creative design, its business scope will gradually expand to the domestic market, striving for further development of diversified IP cooperation as well as the diversification of IP derivatives.
"What we want to build is a professional derivatives brand." Li Zhentai said. From the former long-term main 3C products for the enterprise is an advantage, the future expansion of the business on the demand for product categories, the actual is a transition from complex to simple, this change is a rapid conversion process for the design team!
Of course, the domestic IP derivatives market is still far from reaching an explosive volume. There are also many systems or phenomena in the industry that have not been effectively managed and improved. For example, the domestic IP license does not include the character image of the star. As a simple example, Viken, which has cooperated with China Hip Hop, cannot develop products with character images of Wu Yifan and Pgone, etc. This is different from foreign IP. This is different from foreign IP.
Therefore, the potential domestic IP derivatives market is both an opportunity and a challenge!
"I think doing IP derivatives is divided into three stages. The first stage is to do business, the second stage is to make products, and the third stage is to be able to help IP to do value. We are now in the second stage and are moving towards the third stage, we ultimately hope that the products made can feed the domestic IP to create value!"
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