[EXPLANATION] Where's Pristin?

[Kami the II.]

On January 29th, 2017 the enormously-successful product of Produce 101 IOI disbanded. Attention immediately turned to the next steps of former members with many expecting a wave of successful new GGs. But those expectations faded as various new units underperformed: Gugudan's charms drowned in Sejeong's popularity; Weki Meki's debut single was roundly mocked; DIA seemed an afterthought from the get-go. These groups all had talented members but none managed to capture IOI's magic.

 

Except, perhaps, for Pristin. Pledis wisely promoted the non-IOI members as Pledis Girlz during IOI's reign, giving them a boost of recognition and showcasing their numerous talents. "Wee Woo" did pretty well for a debut, receiving a positive response from both knetz & inetz and sols 160,000 singles. Things were looking bright with the growth of a solid fanbase. Many were identifying Pristin as one of most promising rookies of 2017 & 4 separate rookie awards proved them right

 

And then they vanished for 9 months, with 0 promos. When they returned, it was  a subunit with the most popular members only. The whole Pristin hasn't released music in over a year, and Pledis seems to have no plans to change it. So what happened? Why would this company fail to promote a group which seemed so promising? That's a question I've heard a lot on this forum, and I decided to crunch some approximate numbers to return with an answer.

 

Below are Pledis groups' average number of:

(1) album sales   (2) single sales   (3) peak  position of the title tracks on Gaon 

for 2017-18 releases

 

SVT -- 400,000 / 251,000(?) / #14 

NU'EST W -- 279,000 / 370,000 / #3 

Pristin -- 36,000 / 90,000/ #71 

 

This is fairly telling: The BGs make up the vast majority of the Pledis' sales, with SVT leading in physicals while NU'EST W leading in digitals. Both are pulling in a significant amount of money.  As for Pristin, their numbers aren't terrible, they sold more albums than (G)I-DLE's debut (~25,000). The difference is, (G)I-DLE performed much better digitally, selling many more singles and reaching #12 on Gaon with Latata & even higher with Hann while Pristin's second release We Like showed a decline.

 

The point is,  Pristin weren't a significant source of profit for the company and were probably rather costly because of their super long training periods. Using the numbers that have been circulating around, I did rough calculations.  Pristin might have cost Pledis as much as $5M this point:

 

M: Million   B: Billion   W: Won

Judging by the article above (where?) it looks like a trainee's yearly cost is 50M W to a company. 10 members trained for a total 60 years (7+3+4+4+6+8+4+8+9+7) means Pledis has invested about 3B W into Pristin pre-debut. Composer costs excluding self-compositions (25M W), two MVs (300M W), marketing and jackets (250M W), music shows (2B W)** Adding things together, we get my rough total of 5,5B W. This is a rough $5M

**Based on the article, music show promotions cost about 100M W per member for a 6-week promotional period. Pristin had two of those as 10 members = another 2B W

 

 

Pristin has likely generated around $1-1.5M  in income so they might not generate enough profit to offset the high cost of their music show promotions even as a 10 membered group

 

So, if Pristin is super expensive to promote, how about cutting the number of members in half, focusing on the most popular ones? That's exactly what Pledis seems to have tried with Pristin V. Unfortunately, they couldn't chart or to generate any significant sales, resulting in another loss for the group.

 

Another common way to offset the financial loss is through CF deals and other forms of promotion. Pristin's had a couple of these, but you know who's had more? Kyulkyung. See, Pristin doesn't suffer from the Gugudan problem, where one member eats up all the attention (through no Sejong's fault). But Kyulkyung might be more  profitable to Pledis on her own than Pristin OT10

 

China is a huge market, and Kyulkyung has just made her solo debut there. She's already popular at home and is definitely seen as a star. She has been fairly active in China being on multiple TV shows including "Idol Producer" this spring. Pledis may be thinking, that they should cut their losses and make as much bank as possible off her without investing further cash into a money-negative idol group.

 

Anyway, I should say once again that much of the content of this thread is speculative, and just my own attempt to understand why Pledis would seemingly ignore a well-regarded and promising idol group. Maybe I'm totally wrong and my estimations are all inaccurate. My only hope is to provid a little insight into what Pledis might be thinking...

---

Source: https://www.allkpop.com/forum/threads/wheres-pristin-pledis-finances.224841/

I'm posting this article here with the allowance of it's writer. I cut some parts since the original one was even longer. Hope you enjoy it

[Queen Of Thots]

I want to cry. They had so much potential and hype and pledis killed it with waiting too long to comeback with we like (which was a horrible song) and didn’t manage to build up on the momentum with weewoo.

 

Such a waste of the girls talent

[Rie 2.0]

They had so much potential and hype

[Kami the II.]

I want to cry. They had so much potential and hype and pledis killed it with waiting too long to comeback with we like (which was a horrible song) and didn’t manage to build up on the momentum with weewoo.

 

Such a waste of the girls talent

 

Omo, your Suzy DP 

Hope you get her badge soon !!!

 

[Guest]

time was wasted, the kyla's scandal happened and more time was wasted

[makicl]

their biggest mistake was their debut song ...why pledis let them composed it .That was the beginning of their failure

[TENTASTIC]

They deserved better :(

[Kami the II.]

their biggest mistake was their debut song ...why pledis let them composed it .That was the beginning of their failure

WDYM?!?!

It was a bop & did well for a debut song. The mv of Wee Woo still has the highest views among the post IOI groups'...

[vitaminplus]

their biggest mistake was their debut song ...why pledis let them composed it .That was the beginning of their failure

Im not sure what you mean that was their only good song 

[alcyone]

We Like was a train wreck. Their last album, Schxxl's Out was the worst of the year. Wee Woo's album was the best but then they committed career suicide with their next releases + Kyla's mess.

[Oodles]

I was shocked a bit thought you actually came up with this lol.

[Hopkinz]

Why are people saying Wee Woo was amazing and We Like was "career suicide." So dramatic, they're about equal in quality (I actually like We Like a little better 

Despite doing well for a debut, I remember there were also a lot of people who HATED Pristin's debut, calling them wannabe Twice and thinking it was super mediocre.

Get It remains the superior bop and that's the tea.

[itouch]

The only thing that matters is "no Kyla, no pristine"

[yeobbun]

Now pledis has to manage IZONE too. 

[Kami the II.]

I was shocked a bit thought you actually came up with this lol.

I'm too dumb lazy to write such a long ass essay. Even shortening it took me 2 hours due to my lack of fluency in English...

[singnotes]

....is anyone surprised that Pledis mismanaged them though? :/ Anyway, I agree with the last part of the post a lot. Jieqiong can pretty much out-earn the whole group by herself if Pledis shifts her to China. But I don't know what they're doing tbh. Pristin had a ton of potential. They need to just regroup and decide what they're doing about Pristin's future as a group sometime soon instead of just letting the members rot like they did with After School. 

[起承轉�]

It's funny to think that Pledis was formerly known as "only girls, we don't need boys", now it's "only boys, we don't need girls".

 

I hope IZ*ONE can reborn that great "only girls" era.

[Kami the II.]

It's funny to think that Pledis was formerly known as "only girls, we don't need boys", now it's "only boys, we don't need girls".

 

I hope IZ*ONE can reborn that great "only girls" era.

When? Wasn't the only group they have was After School?

[cheese2]

When? Wasn't the only group they have was After School?

hello venus

[Kami the II.]

hello venus and son dambi

Isn't Hello Venus under Fantagio tho? 

[The Supreme]

oh my..I miss 'xiyeon

[team snack]

Why are people saying Wee Woo was amazing and We Like was "career suicide." So dramatic, they're about equal in quality (I actually like We Like a little better

Despite doing well for a debut, I remember there were also a lot of people who HATED Pristin's debut, calling them wannabe Twice and thinking it was super mediocre.

Get It remains the superior bop and that's the tea.

Hate is a strong word but many people did hype them up as the next coming of Twice. And isn't their comeback title track was composed by BEP?

 

Edit: It's WJSN not Pristin that was given a BEP song

[abra]

Isn't Hello Venus under Fantagio tho? 

It was a collaboration between Pledis and Fantagio, and then they separated and the Pledis girls left HV.

[起承轉�]

When? Wasn't the only group they have was After School?

Son Dambi sis, Son Dambi.

[StyleStartSbenu]

This is basically the answer to the question " why isn't this group coming back often? why are they taking so long between releases? why did they go on hiatus, what happened to them? "   Because they're not operating at a profit and the company isn't sure that continued attempts would likely lead to success.

 

Its the sad reality of Kpop that a lot of people aren't fully aware of that most company and most groups operate at a loss. Cube and FNC both operate at a loss. FNC only showed profit this last quarter because they sold off FNC AD Culture to SM. So even the "big" non big 3 companies are still not technically doing well.

 

Everything is so oversaturated right now in Kpop, all one needs to do is to look at one of the charts of girl group sales to see how top heavy everything is. You have Twice at the top, then the big4 and then Lovelyz doing well in physicals but no public recognition, and cosmic girls basically in the same boat, Apink holding on, and then a big gap after that.

 

Then you have the issue of how most idol group contracts are give or take 7 years, but if a smaller company that doesn't have the luxury of constantly taking losses on a group just to appease fans or hope for lightning to strike, they have a very difficult situation they are in. Any other company in an industry where their product isn't people, if you have a product that flopped, you scrap it and get to work on something else.  It's a bit harder to do that in Kpop. That's why we see so many groups go on "hiatus" and then disband once everyones contracts are up.  You can see MBK was really pushing to make DIA work last year when they had 3 or so very fast consecutive comebacks, but then a big gap until the newest one. MBK has no other choice but to try to make DIA work, if DIA doesn't work, MBK is dead in the water.  Whereas in contrast Pledis was basically saved by Seventeen.

 

And as a response to OP, while Pristin has sold better album sales than Gidle, that doesn't matter at all, because due to Gidle's chart positions, they're a known entity by the general public now, whereas Pristin really isn't. When you're in the nugu / mid tier of album sales, public recognition is far more important. Because that will lead to CFs, festival gigs, TV appearances, you name it.  Just like how Momoland hasn't really started selling too well in physicals yet, but they're basically in with the in crown in the sense that they're being invited to a lot of events and are basically considered an established group now. Take EXID as another example, their sales aren't amazing anymore and their songs aren't charting as well as they used to, but the group is super established in the industry so they're still invited to everything.  Pristin is nowhere on that front, and that front is the most important to breaking through to everything else.  Album sales differences are only really important once you are towards the top and people outside of hardcore kpop fans already know who you are.