Low Prices, Homogeneity, Serious Volume, How to Accelerate The Breakout of Domestic Building Block Brands?

In the past, the domestic block brand is small and scattered, mostly OEM, now many brands in the original design, supply chain, technology to seek innovation, and quickly open up the market, occupy a place in the industry. At the same time the track is hot to attract a large number of players to enter the game, new brands are emerging, the old brand blocks continue to plow, in the face of the continued heating of the block track, which brands can ride the wind and up? Which brands can break the shackles of industry homogeneity competition?

In many toy categories, blocks are undoubtedly one of the most popular players in recent years, among which, Senbao, Qiaohe, Puzzles, Bruco, and Wekki and other domestic block brands are highly favored by capital, and Internet majors are also scrambling to enter the game. 2021 December, Qiaohe mortise and tenon blocks received tens of millions of financing from Little Red Book; last December, Puzzles also completed a Pre-A round of financing, the investors for the true fund, Sequoia China Seed Fund. In February this year, Senbao blocks completed a series A financing of hundreds of millions of yuan, and among the investors were Alibaba, Head is the Way Fund and Hong Hui Capital.

In addition, Top Toy, a brand of tide play under the name of CREATIVITY, has long been playing the slogan of "Chinese blocks", and the flagship store of Toptoy tide play blocks was launched on Tmall in April this year. Recently, spark thinking launched the first self-developed square monkey block toys; and car model leading Starlight Entertainment is also in the code of this track, has launched a series of Pagani puzzle blocks, BMW and Lamborghini creative assembled car, Ferrari F1 assembled car, Audi R8lmsgt3 assembled block car and many other block assembled toy products.

According to the "Tmall Trendy Toys White Paper", as of 2021, Taobao, Tmall blocks category, has piled up a market of tens of billions of dollars. For the building block boom, many industry insiders said, on the one hand, the building block category both educational, educational and fun attributes, in line with parents to develop children's intelligence, enhance creativity needs, and therefore gain consumer favor.

In addition, by the general environment, the past major overseas market toy manufacturers choose to export to domestic sales, itself in product development, branding advantages. For example, in China's toy capital of Chenghai, not only has a number of listed companies such as Ao Fei Entertainment, Starlight Entertainment, Shifeng Culture, and modeling design, raw material supply, mold processing, parts manufacturing, assembly molding and other clear division of labor in the huge industrial chain. According to a number of block enterprises in Chenghai, Chenghai block brands in 2022 has more than 100.

Domestic blocks have a bright future, the market potential is huge and sustainable mining, has become the industry consensus. However, the domestic blocks will also face an indisputable fact, LEGO's education of the market for a long time, want to stand out from it, is not an easy task. It is reported that this year, Lego decided to raise prices worldwide. Among them, China part of the set of products since August 1, 2022 began to increase, Europe and other countries in September began to increase prices rose between 5% and 25%. Involved in the price increase of more than 100 products, an increase of about 5%-25%.

It is worth mentioning that at the same time as the price increase in LEGO, some domestic blocks announced a price reduction, on July 30 this year, the trendy play brand TOP TOY under the name CREATIVE announced that its "Chinese blocks" has been on the shelves of the trademark product price reduction of 5% -25%, effective immediately.

From the market development point of view, LEGO in the building block market is dominant, but from the point of view of product form, LEGO product categories are not exhaustive, such as military IP is the focus of the building block IP series, but LEGO took the initiative to give up this kind of IP, which undoubtedly gives each toy enterprise the opportunity to grow hard. We can see from the information of CITIC Securities, the ancient style of the national tide + heavy weapons is the current direction of domestic blocks IP, which in 13 domestic block brands, 10 (77%) has the ancient style of the national tide series of products, 8 (62%) has the heavy weapons series of products.

Obviously "blocks + IP" play has become a major trend in the trend market. However, this trend has led to the rise of popular IPs, which is accompanied by increasingly homogeneous products and fierce inward competition.

We take the aerospace culture and creativity class blocks as an example, according to incomplete statistics, the China Aerospace Science and Industry Group "aerospace culture and creativity" IP licensing companies involved in as many as seven, including Ao Fei Entertainment's Wise blocks, Senbao blocks, Enlightenment blocks, Bangbao blocks, Keeppley, Le Cube, card building blocks, etc.. Both the shape and design, or the price gap between products is not large.

Let's look at the other side of the industry, the rise of Chinese blocks, capital added, the national tide blocks continue to strengthen brand awareness, play tide play characteristics, the market began to emerge a number of new players, such as the coincidental blocks established in November 2020 by focusing on the traditional Chinese mortise and tenon structure, the circle of numerous fans, has launched a series of ancient Chinese terracotta warriors, and the Samsung Pile Museum co-branded pile of four hi and ancient gods and goddesses In addition, Qiaohe also launched a tribute to the 1949 mortise and tenon model products and mortise and tenon furniture, architecture and other peripheral products; Punch is the launch of the phenomenal "collection of blocks" Astro See-through Mecha, as well as retro TV blocks that can be put into cell phones to cast the screen products.

At the same time, the old players are also expanding horizontally, expanding the target circle. In addition to the building blocks for children's growth needs, Bruco also focuses on small particle building blocks for teenagers, combining with hot IPs such as Ultraman, Naruto and Yeroli to create Bruco 10cm movable building block products; for adults, Bruco has launched the Forbidden City culture series Taihe Temple, Zhonghe Temple, and the three-body "Water Drop - Battle of Armageddon". products.

Building blocks are becoming the next windfall, but the difficulty of this category is also so obvious, before a hundred years of building blocks brand Lego, after the value of the "design and mold" capital investment test every entrant. So, who can achieve the bend in this block race? Who can capture the hearts and minds of this generation of consumers?