On September 28, 2026, Kayou announced the renewal of its partnership with Zhou Bichang. From their first collaboration in 2025 to this deepened cooperation, the focus of this change has gradually extended from the partnership itself to the stationery category layout behind the brand.

According to data from China Report Hall, the market size of China's stationery industry reached 132.2 billion yuan in 2024, is expected to exceed 150 billion yuan in 2025, and is expected to approach 160 billion yuan in 2026, with a five-year compound growth rate of about 13%. As the industry scale continues to expand, stationery consumption is also extending from basic functions to design experience, cultural expression, and brand identity. Product capability has become an important foundation for enterprises to build long-term competitiveness.

For Kayou, this deepened cooperation is an external manifestation of the changes in its stationery development stage. What supports this change is its long-term accumulation around product research and development, manufacturing systems, and design capabilities. Kayou is exploring a development path that extends from IP value to consumption scenarios, making stationery an important entry point connecting brand capabilities with users' daily lives.

Two-Way Alignment, Matrix Expansion

In December 2025, Kayou officially announced Zhou Bichang as its stationery spokesperson. At that time, what appeared alongside Zhou Bichang was Kayou's self-developed Zero Series gel pen.

Nine months later, the partnership has deepened further. On September 28, 2026, Zhou Bichang and the brand once again joined forces. The Kayou self-operated pens appearing alongside Zhou Bichang are no longer limited to the Zero Series, with more products appearing together.

From "one pen" to "more self-operated pens," this cooperation focuses on the enrichment of Kayou's stationery pen product matrix. What matters more than the "pen pen" pun between the two sides is their alignment in professionalism and quality. This alignment also provides the foundation for the continued deepening of their cooperation.

In the consumer industry, spokesperson partnerships serve the function of brand communication, while the establishment of long-term cooperative relationships requires the brand to have the ability to continuously create value. For Kayou stationery, this value is built on business scale growth, product system improvement, manufacturing capability enhancement, and user awareness accumulation.

From a business development perspective, Kayou stationery has already formed a certain scale foundation. According to Kayou's prospectus, its stationery revenue grew from 20.9 million yuan in 2022 to 513 million yuan in 2024, with a two-year compound growth rate of about 395%. Kayou's stationery product line continues to expand, gradually extending from early products such as stickers and notebooks to more than ten subcategories including pencils, gel pens, notebooks, and folders.

At the industry trend level, the consumption logic of stationery is changing. According to the "2025 Generation Z Emotional Consumption Report," nearly 60% of young people are willing to pay for emotional value, among whom 37.6% are willing to pay for "value resonance" and 23.9% are willing to pay for "quality and originality." Design sense, quality sense, and brand culture are gradually becoming important factors influencing choices. Stationery is beginning to become a new scenario for brands to establish long-term relationships with users.

Kayou's choice to continue increasing its investment in the stationery business at this stage reflects its long-term planning for category development. As an enterprise that started with IP operation and industrial chain advantages, Kayou has accumulated strong content connection capabilities. Entering the stationery field means that IP value further enters daily consumption scenarios. Stationery connects high-frequency usage needs such as learning and office work, and has also become an important carrier for Kayou to reach users and expand consumption boundaries.

Deepening Production and Research, Consolidating the Foundation

Behind the deepening cooperation, it ultimately comes down to the product itself. In recent years, Kayou has continued to increase its investment in the stationery business, extending from basic writing products to high-end design-oriented stationery, and gradually improving its research and development and manufacturing systems.

The Zero Series gel pen is an important embodiment of Kayou stationery's product capability building. According to public information, the Zero Series gel pen controls the average unilateral tip clearance at about 0.014 millimeters, a precision roughly equivalent to one-fifth of the diameter of a human hair. The tip clearance directly affects the writing experience, and behind it involves multiple links such as pen tip structure, component coordination, and production precision.

Public reports show that producing one Zero Series gel pen requires 5 to 6 sets of molds, each set containing 200 to 300 parts, totaling more than 1,000 high-precision parts. The pen tip process alone requires 24 procedures.

Precision requirements also drive the continuous upgrading of the production system. In October 2025, Zhejiang Kayou Animation Co., Ltd. was selected as a pilot enterprise for Zhejiang Province's Future Factory with its "Cultural and Creative Pen Future Factory" project; in March 2026, Kayou was further selected for the provincial-level digital workshop list. In the intelligent production workshop, the entire process from raw material warehousing to finished product delivery has achieved digital management, and the assembly process can complete the full-process assembly of a pen in 1.2 seconds.

From product precision to production systems, Kayou is extending its pen-making capabilities to links such as research and development, manufacturing, and quality management, providing support for the sustainable development of the stationery category.

While products are made refined, investment in the manufacturing system is equally critical. In 2022, Kayou set stationery as a strategic direction, established research and development teams in China and Japan, and invested 2 billion yuan in Yiwu, Zhejiang to build a modern pen manufacturing factory. As the stationery business advances, Kayou continues to improve its research and development, manufacturing, and quality management systems, and its testing center has obtained CNAS accreditation.

Product capability has also further extended to the design level. In April this year, the KAYOU+ Series high-precision mechanical drawing pencil, independently developed and produced by Kayou stationery, won multiple product design awards including the "Red Dot Design Award." Continuous international design recognition means that the competitive dimension of Kayou stationery has further extended to design experience.

In terms of product layout, Kayou continues to enrich its stationery categories. The Zero Series focuses on basic writing experience, the KAYOU+ Series explores design-oriented stationery, and IP co-branded products integrate IP resources such as Nezha and My Little Pony into daily usage scenarios. As a result, Kayou stationery has gradually formed a complete capability chain from product research and development to manufacturing, and then to design and IP application.

Linking IP, Expanding Space

To understand the strategic value of Kayou stationery, it is necessary to observe it within Kayou's overall business structure.

According to the prospectus, Kayou achieved revenue of 10.057 billion yuan in 2024, and its share of China's TCG market reached 71.1% in the same year. As its original business continues to develop, stationery is becoming an important incremental part of Kayou's business structure, opening up new category space for Kayou.

The strategic significance of stationery is not only reflected in revenue increments, but also in the fact that while Kayou continues to expand its IP matrix, it is gradually forming an independent category path centered on product research and development, design, and manufacturing capabilities.

As of the end of 2024, Kayou had signed 70 IPs, of which 69 were licensed IPs, with IP procurement expenditure of 768 million yuan in 2024. By 2026, the number of IPs signed by Kayou had increased to more than 100, with domestic IPs accounting for more than one-third. As the IP matrix continues to expand, stationery has richer content application space, and at the same time, through products such as the Zero Series and KAYOU+, it further extends product value to daily stationery consumption scenarios.

Channel reuse is another advantage of the stationery business. As of the end of 2024, Kayou had 217 distributors, covering 31 provinces across the country, and had 32 offline flagship stores and 13 online self-operated stores. This mature channel network provides a ready-made operating foundation for stationery products to enter more consumer markets. This channel system can directly serve the stationery category, with marginal costs lower than building independently.

Overseas layout is also advancing simultaneously. In 2025, Kayou successively entered the Malaysian, Indonesian, Japanese, and North American markets, and in December opened the world's first overseas flagship store in Bangkok, Thailand.

The landing of overseas channels echoes this deepened cooperation, and the stationery category has become one of the product lines in Kayou's globalization layout to enter overseas markets first.

Conclusion

From the first cooperation in 2025 to the deepened cooperation in 2026, the change in external signals is only a starting point. More noteworthy is that over the past year or so, Kayou stationery has completed continuous accumulation from single-product layout to category building, with product research and development, precision manufacturing, design innovation, and channel expansion gradually forming synergy.

This also makes the significance of stationery to Kayou clearer. It inherits Kayou's existing IP operation capabilities, while expanding new value space through independent products and manufacturing systems, and entering broader consumer markets along with overseas channel layout.

When product capability becomes an important foundation for long-term competitiveness, the upgrade of the spokesperson has a more solid commercial support. Kayou's stationery ambition ultimately lands on the precision of a pen, the accumulation of a manufacturing system, and the brand's continuous expansion from IP value to broader consumption scenarios.

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