How a 70-Year-Old European Classic IP Is Expanding in the Chinese Market

A research team from the Guangdong Toy Association recently visited Ouman Dagao Culture Media (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. in Shanghai. As the only branch of France's Dargaud Group in China, Ouman Dagao handles the two-way introduction and export of the group's IP and copyrights. Relying on its parent company's extensive animation industry chain resources, its core IP Marsupilami is accelerating its landing in China. Facing an increasingly competitive domestic designer toy market and the difficulty of cold-starting new IPs, Ouman Dagao is exploring a path to localize an overseas classic IP.

Dargaud Group is headquartered in Paris, France. It started in publishing and, after years of development, grew into a leading European animation industry chain group, with 60 branches worldwide and more than 40 publishing houses under its umbrella. Its business spans book publishing, animation production and distribution, game development, streaming platforms, offline theme parks and other tracks.

In animation, the group has produced globally renowned works including the 3D version of The Smurfs, The Adventures of Tintin, and the 3D version of Garfield. The theme park it operates in southern France even secured the first Naruto theme park license outside Japan. The group's streaming platform also actively promotes two-way cultural export, bringing the Chinese comic Blades of the Guardians to Europe. France is the second-largest overseas market for Japanese manga outside Japan, and Dargaud Group holds full publishing and merchandise rights in Europe for leading Japanese manga such as Naruto and Hunter × Hunter.

Dong Yan, general manager of Ouman Dagao, explained that as the group's window in China, the Shanghai company's traditional business focuses on the import and export of book copyrights. Its IP licensing business has been carried out in China for only six or seven years and is an emerging segment the group is prioritizing. The team has appeared multiple times at licensing exhibitions in Shenzhen and Shanghai, actively connecting with domestic industry resources. Overseas IPs entering China generally face the practical problem of insufficient local awareness. Most of the group's many overseas IP partnerships come from partners reaching out proactively, while the domestic market requires proactive development from scratch, and the team is learning China's IP operation rules while practicing.

Marsupilami, with a history of more than 70 years, is a classic IP that Dargaud Group is focusing on promoting in the Chinese market, with a highly recognizable image. The IP has historically released five 2D animations, two of which involved Disney in production. Due to restrictions on importing old overseas animations, the old content is difficult to broadcast in China, and a brand-new 3D animated version is planned to launch in China next spring.

"The IP's original content leans toward children, but we don't want to be limited to the children's track," the Ouman Dagao team explained. The Marsupilami image is highly malleable and can transform into different forms and colors, so domestic operations adopt a "children and maternal-infant plus adult designer toys dual-track parallel" strategy, covering family consumer groups while also targeting adult consumer markets such as designer toys, home goods and apparel. Currently, China's traditional children's toy market is slowing in growth, competition in the designer toy track is white-hot, consumption is returning to rationality, and cold-starting new IPs faces many challenges.

Although public awareness is still in the cultivation stage, Marsupilami has already delivered impressive commercial co-branding results. It previously carried out an in-depth co-branding with the curry omurice brand Chinai, which has more than 600 stores nationwide, creating a jungle-themed livestream room and offline display pop-ups, selling 1.5 million set meals in three months, with commercial conversion results exceeding some well-known domestic IPs that involved heavy investment. It has successively launched benchmark pop-up projects at Hangzhou Hubin Yintai and Guangzhou Guangyue Tiandi, verifying the IP's commercial potential.

In terms of toy and designer toy derivatives, Ouman Dagao has reached an in-depth strategic cooperation with Guangdong Kaideng Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., a member enterprise of the Guangdong Toy Association, opening licensing for multiple categories. Unlike the traditional IP licensing model that only signs contracts, Dargaud Group provides licensees with tangible overseas market support: the group's theme park in southern France will buy back co-developed products, and the group's toy company assists partners with sales in the European market, to a certain extent sharing the new product development risk of manufacturing enterprises. Currently, co-developed products have gradually been distributed to domestic designer toy channels, with layouts across multiple price points including 3,989 yuan, targeting expansion to fifty or sixty SKUs, while also testing overseas markets in Southeast Asia and South Korea.

Speaking of the biggest current difficulty, Dong Yan said that although there have already been successful commercial landing cases, the IP's weak domestic fan base and insufficient social media presence are key factors constraining licensees' confidence. Many manufacturing enterprises prefer to choose mature IPs that have already gone viral and carry lower risk. At the same time, the overseas headquarters has content framework constraints, and there are limits on localized secondary creation of IP content and internet memes.

To this end, the team is actively exploring new paths, trying to use AIGC tools to produce short video content and build a presence on social platforms such as Xiaohongshu to fill the content gap. The team has also noticed new models in China such as NFC interactive designer toys and IP secondary creation dissemination, and hopes to learn from mature domestic approaches to push the IP toward breaking out of its niche.

Dong Yan highly recognizes the role of the Guangdong Toy Association's exhibition platforms (Shenzhen Toy Fair & Designer Toy Show & Licensing Show) and media platform (China Toy World) in promoting the industry, and hopes to strengthen cooperation with the association, using its platform to connect with more outstanding manufacturing enterprises and channel resources, and to build a two-way cooperation model of "domestic market sales + European reverse procurement." In the future, it will also continue to participate in industry exhibitions and activities hosted by the association, and explore more possibilities for localizing overseas classic IPs together with the industry.