New Players Are Ready To Take Off, The Block Toy Industry Sshered In A New Change?

Along with the rapid development of China's toy industry, the cake of domestic building blocks is rapidly getting bigger. 2021, the size of the domestic building block market is 20.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of up to 15.06%. On the one hand, the market has spawned LEGO, an industry giant, for many years, few have been able to shake its position. On the other hand, in recent years, local blocks and IP co-branding, blocks + STEAM education, as well as mortise and tenon blocks and other Chinese traditional toys have become popular overseas, tearing an opening from the mature market and creating a new blue ocean.

 

1.Overseas brand position is strong, domestic brands run out of acceleration

According to Euromonitor, 2021 LEGO in the global and Chinese building class toy market share of 71.9%, 48.6% respectively, which also means that, compared with LEGO in the global market up to 71.9% dominance in the Chinese market, there is still some room for local building block brands to break out. In terms of quantity, in the children's building block brand TOP20, the domestic brands occupy 17.
In this track, more and more domestic brands have a significant increase in sales scale and growth rate, and began to grab a seat in this track. In addition, a number of block companies also revealed that in 2022 only in Guangdong Chenghai block brands have exceeded 100.

 

2.The national trend of the wind, Bruco, keeppley, coincidental mortise and tenon brands are competing for power

In the domestic market, the category of building blocks is considered one of the largest nuggets of the toy market. 2021 toy industry market size of 85.46 billion yuan, and building block toy industry market size of 20.8 billion yuan, accounting for about a quarter of the entire toy market.

 

For domestic brands, how to close the distance with foreign leaders? In terms of brand development path, it is roughly divided into several categories.

 

One category is the traditional block brands that continue to break through themselves and seek innovation on behalf of Enlightenment and Sambo blocks; in the early days, Chinese people generally believed that blocks were toys for children to play with. But overseas, all ages play with blocks, and many players will play from childhood to adulthood, and then introduce the blocks they play to the next generation. Today, the building block category is no longer just a toy for children, and expanding the target consumer group has become the choice of many brands.

 

In June 2022, Qimon blocks for brand change and upgrade, its products also to the whole age group expansion, authorized IP including Ultraman, QQ flying car, Pokemon, etc.. In the Double 11, the total number of consumers on the Alibaba e-commerce platform of Qimon grew by 20% compared to last year, and its Qimon Ultraman series of products brought the brand more than 1 million growth of interested people. The company's other major brand Keeppley, is positioned as a building block tide play, focusing on small particles, and with the Forbidden City, Doraemon, Pokemon and other IP co-branding, the development of the past two years is also relatively strong, its monthly sales on the Tmall flagship store over a million.

 

For the development of the company, Qimon Toys head Zhan Kada has said, "Although the business operation was affected by the epidemic to some extent, we still achieved 28% sales growth in the first eight months. At the same time, the first half of this year, we enjoy the amount of R & D expenses plus deductions of more than 7 million yuan."

 

And Morpho blocks also extended from focusing on children's toys to a larger age group. Especially since 2019 to create a series of wandering earth, the explosive, Senbao IP cooperation on more IP features, both the great power class of Shandong ship, space culture and innovation, fire army culture and innovation, China Ship Arts and other IP resources, but also SpongeBob SquarePants, the blade of ghost extinction, family and children such well-known film and animation IP. currently, the company IP licensed products account for about 40% of the total.

 

Of course, including the successful breakthrough from the large particle children's building block category, Bruco, 2022, Bruco product matrix from infants and children to expand to young people, adults, multi-age. For adults, Bruco has tried small micro-particles, and created the collection-grade blocks "Taihe Temple", "Water Drop - Battle of Armageddon" and "Tianhe Core Module". For teenagers, the main focus is on small particle blocks, combined with Ultraman, Naruto, Yeroli and other hot IP, to create Bruco 10cm movable blocks products.

 

Another category of cross-border or up-and-coming representatives of spelling Qi blocks, not yet, coincidental blocks; compared to some brands targeting the children's field, the spelling Qi blocks established in 2020 to go the other way, to create adult-oriented, collection-grade blocks, including Astro semi-transparent mechs, retro TV sets, Wulin Wai Wai Tongfu Inn, Popeye and other IP products. Among them, the fire of Astro Boy semi-transparent mecha blocks let the 2-year-old Punchy blocks directly out of the circle.

 

Not and blocks is to emphasize the product design, boutique, playability and other characteristics, such as around the "Alice in Wonderland", "Cinderella" and other fairy tales, to create a fairytale town series of products; and an apartment series, the four seasons after the garden series, Christmas series and

other blocks with their own characteristics of the theme of the scene.

 

The company has created a unique "Chinese" style of block toy play, applying the traditional mortise and tenon techniques used in architecture and furniture to block toys; in January 2022, it received tens of millions of yuan in angel round financing from Xiaohongshu and Plum Blossom Venture Capital.

 

In addition, there are blocks + STEAM education play more let it jump out of the definition of toys, with the market prospects can be tapped, such as children's science and technology brand Pretty Valley, focusing on STEAM education, providing children with programming robot toys assembled blocks.

 

From a comprehensive point of view, the reason why new brands can break through, in addition to the capital support, new brands from the entry of the choice of differentiated positioning, unique design is also a decisive factor. The category of building blocks as a toy market evergreen seed player, in this 10 billion market, who has the most potential to become the Chinese Lego? When players are aiming at traditional IP, how can domestic blocks build their own core competitiveness? Welcome to discuss in the comments.