Under the background of accelerated capitalization of IP trendy toys, the question of which company will ultimately become the &#34;first stock of card games&#34; remains a focus of market attention.
After the leading industry player Card Game submitted its prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in April, there has been no substantial progress in the listing process to date.
At this time, new news has emerged in the market: the collectible card brand &#34;Hitcard,&#34; established only four years ago, is actively promoting its listing process and is expected to achieve a latecomer advantage.
Unlike Card Game, Hitcard's differentiated path lies in its precise grasp of the increasingly strong commercialization demands of IP copyright holders.
As a company focused on the adult collectible card sector, Hitcard has launched card series based on popular two-dimensional IPs such as &#34;The King's Avatar&#34; and &#34;Battle Through the Heavens,&#34; as well as derivative card series from popular TV dramas like &#34;Joy of Life&#34; and &#34;Difficult to Please.&#34;
In the year following its establishment, the company completed its first round of financing, attracting investment from several industry and capital-backed institutions, including Pop Mart, Sequoia China Seed Fund, and CHINA LIT.
Among Hitcard's many existing shareholders, the industrial synergy value of CHINA LIT is particularly prominent.
In October 2024, based on the successful cooperation with multiple IPs such as &#34;Joy of Life,&#34; &#34;The King's Avatar,&#34; and &#34;Lord of the Mysteries,&#34; Hitcard secured tens of millions in financing led by CHINA LIT.
Taking this opportunity, Hitcard further accessed CHINA LIT's resource pool, which covers over 1,000 IPs, and shared its offline channel network.
The close linkage between IP copyright holders and downstream card manufacturers, jointly tapping into the capital market, signifies that the ecosystem of IP derivatives is moving from simple licensing to deep integration across the entire industry chain.
In the future, as content IPs such as film and television accelerate monetization, the competitive landscape and value chain distribution of the downstream card market may usher in a new round of reconstruction.
<h2>No Card, No Drama</h2>
Film and television cards may be one of Hitcard's most recognizable market labels.
Founder Zhao Yunpeng told Xin Feng that before Hitcard entered the market, there were almost no systematic developments of real-life film and television cards.
In early 2024, leveraging the long-tail popularity of the hit series &#34;Lotus Tower,&#34; Hitcard launched the &#34;Above the Jianghu&#34; series of cards, with the first batch of 800 boxes quickly selling out in a Douyin live broadcast, achieving a total GMV of over 6 million yuan.
The same year, the &#34;Joy of Life&#34; series set a new record with a GMV of 20 million yuan, confirming the commercial potential of the film and television card category.
The filling of market gaps, combined with the explosive growth of Douyin channels and the expansion of supply chain capacity, has jointly driven a significant increase in Hitcard's sales in 2024.
That year, Hitcard achieved revenue of approximately 400 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of over 600%, and is expected to continue growing in 2025.
Currently, Hitcard has achieved 100% self-production and self-sales with a factory of about 20,000 square meters. However, Zhao Yunpeng revealed to Xin Feng that the existing production capacity is expected to be insufficient to fully cover next year's performance targets.
The relatively optimistic expectations may stem from the current trend in the film and television industry, which has seen a development trend of &#34;no card, no drama.&#34;
Yang Tangtang, founder of Card You Jianghu, told Xin Feng that, in his observation, most new IP card authorizations are quickly absorbed by card companies at this stage
&#34;The production threshold for card games is relatively low, and sales channels have been opened up by card game companies in recent years,&#34; Yang Tangtang said. &#34;The industry has a clear expectation of the revenue potential from IP cardization, so all parties tend to rush to sign the most promising IP licenses.&#34;
Hitcard has stood out in the market due to its in-depth interpretation of IP and high-quality design capabilities.
Zhao Yunpeng believes that Hitcard continuously conveys a message to IP holders through its product and market strategies—&#34;We are jointly increasing the value of the IP.&#34; This has made Hitcard the preferred choice for copyright holders in IP collaborations aimed at the adult collector market.
China Literature has also stated, &#34;The reason for choosing to invest in Hitcard is that it possesses high-quality development capabilities, rare rapid production capabilities, and online distribution capabilities, making it an important partner for the collaboration between China Literature's IP and card games.&#34;
&#34;In the top film and television IPs, Hitcard has already covered about 70% to 80% of the film and television card market share,&#34; Zhao Yunpeng said.
Hitcard has now built over 200 IP matrices, covering diverse fields such as film and television adaptations, animation, online literature, games, and domestic trends, launching more than 10 products each month, all of which are limited editions.
In comparison, card game companies only operated about 70 IPs in 2024, with revenue highly concentrated; the top five IPs contributed 86% of total revenue.
However, this &#34;multiple IP, limited edition, high-frequency new releases&#34; operational model, while enhancing market competitiveness, has also increased the complexity of user acquisition and ongoing operations, partially sacrificing profitability.
According to Zhao Yunpeng, &#34;While others can design a hundred card faces to sell over six months or even a year, we might only be able to sell for a month, and next month we must redesign everything.&#34;
&#34;With small production batches and frequent line changes, we might just start printing for half an hour before switching to the next product. Coupled with our pursuit of environmentally friendly materials, this has raised costs,&#34; Zhao Yunpeng said.
To strengthen its core competitiveness, Hitcard intends to enhance its strategic binding with industry players through equity cooperation.
In addition to China Literature, Hitcard's shareholder lineup in 2024 has added Japanese game company Cygames, game development and IP operation company Akatsuki, and the &#34;Nendoroid&#34; figure manufacturer Goodsmile, further enhancing its overseas IP acquisition, operation, and channel capabilities.
Hitcard stated that these collaborations provide crucial support for its overseas IP expansion, with a concentrated launch of new overseas IP products expected early next year.
<h2>Filling China Literature's &#34;Barn&#34;</h2>
Hitcard's rapid rise in the niche market of film and television cards is largely attributed to the increasing commercialization willingness of IP copyright holders.
At the beginning of 2025, China Literature will elevate &#34;IP commercialization&#34; to a group-level strategy, accelerating the diversified release of IP value.
The emergence of blockbuster IPs in the cultural and entertainment industry is inherently unstable.
Film and game content, due to large investment scales, unpredictable adaptation effects, and long development cycles, naturally carries higher risks. In this context, systematic development of mature IPs is expected to become a key support for balancing performance fluctuations
With a vast reserve of IP, the derivative business represented by &#34;selling millet&#34; has brought significant incremental revenue to CHINA LIT.
In 2024, the total GMV of CHINA LIT's IP derivatives exceeded 500 million yuan, setting a historical record, with card products contributing approximately 200 million yuan. Several core IPs, including &#34;The King's Avatar&#34; and &#34;Joy of Life,&#34; achieved substantial revenue growth.
In the first half of 2025, the GMV of the IP derivative business reached 480 million yuan, nearing last year's total.
This achievement primarily benefited from the &#34;timing&#34; of blockbuster content being released in concentration.
2024 coincided with CHINA LIT's &#34;IP big year,&#34; with major works such as &#34;Joy of Life 2,&#34; &#34;With Phoenix,&#34; and &#34;The Great Feng's Night Watchman&#34; being launched in succession, collectively driving the scaled growth of copyright and derivative business revenue.
Secondly, it benefited from the industrial foundation established by the rapid development of the trendy toy industry chain in recent years.
After several years of development, the market has gradually settled a group of partners with core advantages in supply chain, channels, or operations, providing strong support for the efficient monetization of IP.
Against this backdrop, a collaborative model that connects the upstream and downstream of the industry chain through equity investment is gradually becoming the industry mainstream.
In the 2024 financial report, CHINA LIT's investment in non-listed entities exceeded 1 billion yuan last year.
In addition to Hitcard, it also includes investments in European and American card company Crossing Media and AI interactive companionship platform Dream Island.
In July 2025, CHINA LIT completed a strategic investment in the plush toy brand &#34;Super Vitality Factory.&#34; Like Hitcard, it also solidified its relationship with a mature company in a niche field with approximately 10% equity stake.
From an industrial perspective, such collaborations have dual value.
For Hitcards that have &#34;landed,&#34; CHINA LIT, holding a large number of mature IPs, can provide market-validated content assets with a built-in fan base, forming a competitive advantage compared to purely original IPs.
By actively entering the mid and downstream of the industry chain, CHINA LIT can stabilize its revenue structure while seeking more controllable and frequent channels for IP value release.
In 2022, it launched the IP derivative platform &#34;CHINA LIT Good Goods,&#34; which has opened 8 directly-operated stores to date and covered over 3,000 retail terminals through partnerships with key distributors.
At the 2025 Creation Conference, CHINA LIT further initiated the &#34;Global Trendy Toy Co-Creation Plan,&#34; collaborating with top 100 artists to promote IP image development and original incubation, and opening its full-chain capabilities from design, supply chain to global marketing to partners.
This move aims not only to showcase its channel capabilities and platform value but also to nurture and expand the basic IP ecosystem, paving the way for high-quality overseas product launches in the future.
However, on this accelerating &#34;IP giant ship,&#34; whether derivative brands can continue to secure a place remains uncertain.
In Yang Tangtang's view, the long-term reliance on external IP licensing models is unsustainable: &#34;Once downstream profits become sufficiently attractive, how can copyright holders be content with just receiving fixed licensing fees?&#34;
The future direction of Hitcards may depend on whether they can leverage upstream IP while honing their core capabilities in product design, user operations, and channel management, ultimately finding an irreplaceable ecological niche in the increasingly integrated IP ecosystem

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Is there a new path for card games?

- The market is closely watching which company will dominate the "card game first stock" amid the rapid capitalization of IP collectibles.  
- Hitcard, a four-year-old brand, is pushing for an IPO, differentiating itself by aligning with the commercialization demands of IP rights holders and achieving significant sales growth in 2024.  
- With strategic partnerships and a focus on high-quality IP collaborations, Hitcard aims to solidify its position in the competitive landscape of the card market, despite challenges in sustaining profitability.

In the "barn" of CHINA LIT, how many Hitcards can it hold?