Cover Corporation - VTubers are coming
build the IP up into an extremely ravenous fandom, graduate them later
If you’re not familiar with Vtubing, I would start there.
This company recently reported. Shares have exploded higher in the last month, but that’s been true of a lot of things. A lot of what I’d think of to just be subprime lenders are also going bananas right now and the people that use credit to make donations to their favorite idols are probably using them.
Disclosure: I do not own any of this company right now. I don’t own many companies at all right now beyond a specific listing and the index funds in other accounts. Yes, I index. I’m never going to liquidate them either. It’s just one of those things that allows me to opportunistically shift weights aggressively more comfortably early (hopefully) in my life.
But on the topic of incentives, IP, and just trying to stop the bleeding, I’ll describe a vicious monster pointing itself at the digital world. This company is churning the pot of some of Japan’s most potent virtual IP that exists right now, and they’re making dairy cows out of extremely strong parasocial relationships.
They’re even savage enough to milk special dates for groups and entertainers within their ecosystem. It’s a corporate paradise of world building to very quickly make fandoms that turn into highly lucrative licensing deals and product sales. It’s like if you could make a few seasons of a TV show of an actor, have that actor run a YouTube Channel and multi-stream sometimes and then use that that to sell a $0.50 USD buckle bag that’s ugly for $100 USD to the people that fell in love with a character a viewer came to know. Everything about these idols image is owned by the company and they treat the idols very well to the foil of their primary public competition (who supposedly doesn’t), so the community loves them. They sell premium ramen in Indonesia because of the image and fans these digital creators have, and this is the type of thing that will only get bigger over time when fostered well. Cover Corp is not just doing well with community building, they look like they have it down to a science.
The salability for all of their customers is high because of how the company is built and the IP takes on a million different forms. Cover’s customers don’t even necessarily buy any product for themselves because they like that product. They do it because they’re in love with the creators and want to support them.