As the number one player in China's building block toy market, Blokus has achieved a significant leap in reported profits over the past year.
In 2025, Blokus achieved operating revenue of 2.913 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30.0%; annual profit reached 634 million yuan, marking a substantial turnaround from losses in the previous year.
However, the actual quality behind this &#34;turning losses into profits&#34; still shows a notable gap compared to the market's expectations of it being the &#34;Chinese Lego.&#34;
In 2024, the company incurred a loss of nearly 400 million yuan, primarily due to fair value changes of convertible redeemable preferred shares before its IPO and one-time listing expenses.
With the successful listing in 2025, such non-cash gains and losses will no longer occur. However, excluding this factor, the adjusted annual profit growth of 15.5% clearly lags behind the 30% revenue growth.
A key reason for this is the decline in gross profit margin due to product structure adjustments.
In 2025, the company's gross profit margin fell from 52.6% to 46.8%, a decrease of nearly 6 percentage points.
During this period, Blokus vigorously promoted high cost-performance products, with a series priced at 9.9 yuan contributing 541 million yuan in revenue and sales reaching 122 million units, accounting for 47.8% of total sales.
This low-price expansion appears more like a defensive measure: in the adult and trendy toy sectors, Pop Mart continues to harvest high-margin customer groups with its original IP; in the comprehensive retail sector, TOP TOY occupies the mindshare with &#34;Chinese building blocks&#34;; additionally, niche players like Rolife are also diverting consumer demand in the modeling and aesthetic building segment.
The competitive landscape has yet to be settled, and the &#34;Chinese Lego&#34; label assigned to Blokus in the capital market remains prominent.
However, when dissecting the underlying logic of the business model, Blokus's path is actually quite different from Lego's.
First is the difference in production models.
Lego relies on its own factories and high-precision mold assets globally to build a highly vertically integrated supply chain system.
Its mold manufacturing precision is strictly controlled within 5 microns, ensuring that building blocks produced decades ago can still seamlessly connect with today's products.
Moreover, it is rumored that Lego never outsources the research and maintenance of molds; all scrapped molds are cast into the factory foundation, fundamentally eliminating the risk of design and technology leakage.
In contrast, Blokus currently mainly adopts a &#34;light asset&#34; outsourcing production model, completing the manufacturing process through cooperation with six third-party factories. According to its plan, the first self-owned factory is expected to be completed and put into operation by the end of 2026.
Secondly, there is a significant difference in the IP model.
Lego's core barrier lies in its ability to deeply develop original series and top-tier movie IPs. Blokus, on the other hand, exhibits a more pronounced &#34;IP commercialization platform&#34; attribute, with its growth heavily reliant on externally licensed IPs.
In 2025, the four major series of Transformers, Ultraman, Kamen Rider, and Heroes Unlimited contributed the vast majority of revenue. However, the IP matrix is becoming more balanced, with the Transformers series achieving revenue of 951 million yuan, surpassing Ultraman for the first time to become the largest revenue-generating IP
Although the self-owned IP &#34;Hero Unlimited&#34; has contributed 264 million yuan, the proportion of revenue from licensed IP sales remains as high as 88.5%.
This model, while leveraging mature IPs to quickly acquire customers, also exposes the company to systemic risks such as expiration of licenses, rising renewal costs, and lack of exclusivity clauses.
Going overseas is a key part of Bluco's strategy to break through the growth ceiling.
By 2025, its overseas revenue reached 319 million yuan, a significant year-on-year increase of 396.6%, with the United States and Indonesia becoming major growth markets.
However, Bluco's current overseas expansion is more characterized by &#34;channel expansion&#34;—distributing through international retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target—rather than establishing a strong global community of proprietary content and a direct-to-consumer brand identity.
Currently, the revenue contribution from consumers aged 16 and above has risen to 16.7%, indicating some signs of &#34;breaking the circle.&#34;
However, to benchmark against global toy giants, Bluco still needs to find a path that goes beyond simply &#34;Chinese manufacturing cost-effectiveness&#34; in terms of the vitality of its proprietary IP, cost reduction and efficiency improvement in self-operated factories, and brand recognition in the globalization process

01769

- In 2025, Chinese toy company Bloku achieved significant profit growth, with revenue reaching 2.913 billion CNY, a 30% increase, and annual profit of 634 million CNY, recovering from a nearly 400 million CNY loss in 2024.  
- The company's adjusted annual profit growth of 15.5% remains lower than its revenue growth due to declining gross margins, falling from 52.6% to 46.8%.  
- Bloku's reliance on external IP for revenue, its "light asset" production model, and the need to establish a strong global brand identity are pivotal challenges for its competitiveness against giants like Lego.

The profitable Blokus and the Lego dream that is hard to achieve with a price of 9.9 yuan