Summary: In September 2026, Qiagu She in Lixia District, Jinan, launched a "guzi" consignment service and rolled out the "Qiagu She ACG Circular Platform" mini-program; by early October, the mini-program had listed over 2,100 items, and within just over a week of the consignment service going live, the top consignor had already sold 115 items. Sellers set their own prices, pay an 18% service fee after a sale, with a minimum of 1 yuan per item, and pay nothing if the item doesn't sell.

Key Points

  • Qiagu She launched its "guzi" consignment service in September 2026 alongside an online mini-program, with the top consignor selling 115 items.
  • Offline consignment charges an 18% service fee on the sale price, with a minimum of 1 yuan per item and no charge for unsold items; the mini-program hosts over 2,100 items.
  • By the end of 2025, Xianyu's ACG, fandom, and gaming users surpassed 160 million, with annual ACG consumer numbers up 47% year-on-year.

So-called "guzi" comes from the English word "goods" and refers to merchandise derived from content IPs such as manga, anime, games, and idols. Buying merchandise is called "eating guzi" in ACG circles, while selling off idle items is called "releasing guzi."

In the past, players dealing with idle standees, cards, and figures mostly listed them on second-hand trading platforms. This path was not easy for sellers: photographing, pricing, answering inquiries, confirming condition, packing, and shipping were all indispensable, plus coping with buyers who changed their minds and haggled repeatedly. For low-priced small items, the time spent on communication, packaging, and shipping sometimes exceeded the value of the item itself.

Offline consignment offers another solution. Sellers simply hand their idle merchandise to the store, where staff register, display, and sell it; buyers can view items from different IPs, in different conditions, and at different price points all in one place, without having to search repeatedly across multiple platforms, and with reduced risk of photos not matching the actual item.

A reporter saw in the consignment section of Qiagu She in Lixia District, Jinan, that cards, charms, and other merchandise from different IPs were neatly displayed, attracting young consumers to stop and browse. "Today's newly added consignment IPs include 'IDOLiSH7' and 'Arknights,'" a staff member said, noting that store merchandise turns over quickly. "During the National Day holiday there was heavy foot traffic, and guzi sold well."

The consignment process is designed as an online-offline联动: consignors first enter item information in the mini-program and book a time to visit the store, then complete review, pricing, and packaging at the offline store, after which items are sold both online and offline simultaneously. Opening the "Qiagu She ACG Circular Platform" mini-program, the reporter found over 2,100 items in total, divided into categories such as bookmarks, badges, paper goods, and apparel merchandise. "I just came to look around for fun, but I didn't expect so many IPs—as I browsed, I ended up 'eating' quite a few good guzi," said Li Han, who was picking out merchandise.

Pricing power stays with the consignor. According to staff, as long as items are genuine and uncontroversial, they can be consigned; prices are set by the consignors themselves, and after an item sells, the store charges an 18% service fee on the sale price, with a minimum of 1 yuan per item, and no fee at all if it doesn't sell.

Qiagu She's experiment is not an isolated case. In August 2026, the country's first Xianyu ACG and trendy toy circular store opened at Shanghai Global Harbor, stocking tens of thousands of figures, IP cards, and trendy plush toys. Consignment services at offline guzi stores are also rising: some stores use "grid shop" consignment, where consignors' idle items are displayed by grid; others offer a "Xianyu price comparison" service, helping customers adjust prices based on online platform rates. Trendy toys, streetwear, and sneakers are likewise entering similar circular channels.

In Shandong, channels and infrastructure for circular consumption are growing in tandem. On the channel side, about 50 circular stores from the two major platforms Zhuanzhuan and Aihuishou have opened in shopping malls such as Qingdao MixC, Lokecheng, and Licang Wanda, and card "buy-and-take" stores combining purchasing and consignment have also appeared in malls in Jinan and Qingdao. Data shows that within Qingdao, annual transactions of second-hand goods such as second-hand phones and second-hand clothing amount to about 20 billion yuan, driving about 47 billion yuan in new product consumption. On the infrastructure side, Zhuanzhuan has built the country's largest second-hand service and inspection center in Qingdao, conducting quality checks on over 20,000 items per day on average.

Policy signals are equally clear: the National Development and Reform Commission's "15th Five-Year Plan for Circular Economy Development" explicitly proposes to "standardize the development of second-hand goods circulation and trading"; the Ministry of Commerce and eight other departments propose to "develop second-hand goods circulation and build a 'reduce—recycle—reuse' resource circulation system."

From a single guzi store to the nationwide warming of circular consumption, the chain unfolds across multiple links. By the end of 2025, Xianyu's ACG, fandom, and gaming users surpassed 160 million, with annual ACG consumer numbers up 47% year-on-year. The value of offline consignment is seen as reducing trust costs: information asymmetry often leads to "bad money driving out good," especially in transactions of non-standard second-hand goods, where buyers struggle to tell authenticity and sellers struggle to prove it; offline consignment stores use the "presence" of physical space to let buyers inspect condition on site and compare prices in one place, turning trust from "relying on luck" into "having a storefront."

Source: Checking Out New Consumption | Idle "Guzi" Goes Circular · Originally published 2026-10-04