With the recent rise of Blind Bags and Collecting, K-pop has been booming all throughout the world, especially finding popularity in the States. Various K-pop idols have found themselves performing in sold-out venues, as well as selling millions of CDs, t-shirts, and a very important piece of merchandise called photo cards.
These pocket-sized cards display pictures of the members of the group and are a staple in the K-pop community. Randomized photo cards arrive packaged in CD boxes, which have become like trading cards for the K-pop community.
Most people participate in group orders to collect photocards. It helps eliminate the chance of pulling duplicates in your albums.
“I started collecting photocards around February of last year just out of boredom, and that was how I discovered group orders,” said senior Kiersten Francisco, “I had seen a seller post some very small photocard sets that included the ones that I needed for my own collection, so that was how I began hosting my own group orders.”
Francisco is known as the Group Order Manager (GOM) which essentially acts as the middleman between the seller and receiver.
“I wholeheartedly view this as a service rather than a business because I don’t make any profit off any orders regardless of how much time I dedicate, or how much of my own money gets put into it,” said Francisco.
The process always starts with the GOM who tries to gain interest over a subject. Francisco specifically will tend to make a post on her Instagram to see which products people would be interested in. Once enough people have shown interest, a group chat is made.
In these group chats, people, the GOM or in this case, Francisco, will send a form so people can claim their item of choice. Once the item is collected they pay “initials.” Initials are the base cost of the item itself.
Once initials are all paid, the GOM buys the items of choice. Once the GOM is notified the items are on the way, EMS fees are sent out. EMS fees are the charge to pay for international shipping.
Once the items arrive, Francisco charges the joiner’s DOMS or Domestic shipping. This is to cover the price for shipping from the GOM and the joiner.
In March 2023 Francisco’s interest in group orders started. Wanting to build upon her own photocard collection, she joined a GO for Stray Kids photo cards. Thus, starting her personal interest.
Soon afterward, she started to ask people to join, which she didn’t know was frowned upon at the time. But after getting turned down, she started to promote on her social media page. Over the last two years, she’s grown to now have over 5k followers
If you want to participate in one of Kiersten group orders or want to watch her packaging videos, follow her at @bbokavi on instagram and Youtube.
