Six Emerging Channels of China's Toy Market

1. Trendy department store

Trendy department stores are also called boutique department stores, which is a popular name in the industry. The general name of the enterprise is "trend retail collection brand" and "trend collection store". This channel is generally opened in shopping malls, tourist attractions and other places, and sells a variety of products, covering cleaning and cleaning, beauty makeup and skin care, household daily use, parent-child mother and baby, kitchen supplies, clothing bags, digital 3C, trendy toys, snacks Beverages and other categories can basically meet the daily purchasing needs of consumers.

Compared with traditional department stores, trendy department stores highlight the word "trend", and the products they sell must reflect the trend, keep up with the trend, and satisfy the preferences of young consumers. From the perspective of toys, trendy department stores require products to be of good quality, high in appearance, and prominent trendy elements, such as suitable IP, Internet celebrity products, etc. On this basis, the price of the product should not be too high, and the characteristics of cost performance must be highlighted.

 

2. Trendy toy store

The trendy toy store is what the industry often calls a trendy toy store, also known as a trendy toy collection store. Compared with trendy department stores, the products of trendy play stores are more focused, mainly in toys, cultural and creative products, etc. Although both are toy sales stores, trendy toy stores have different positioning from traditional toy channels, and their target consumers will be older, mainly consumers over 14 years old.

From the category point of view, the products sold in Chaowan store cover blind boxes, figures, BJD dolls, assembled models, sculptures, cotton dolls, movable dolls, building blocks and other toy categories, as well as badges, key chains, charms, earphone bags and other products. No matter what kind of category it is, it fully reflects a characteristic, that is, the IP attribute-including various content IPs and designer original IPs, and most of them are non-young IPs, and the audience is mostly young people.

 

3. Membership supermarkets
Supermarkets are a very familiar channel in the industry. There are also precedents for supermarkets to implement membership system. However, membership in traditional supermarkets is free of charge. The benefits are shopping points, which can be used as money or exchanged for products. The full name of the membership supermarket is a paid membership warehouse supermarket, which is a large-scale retail format that takes membership as the threshold for shopping. There are two notable features of this format, that is, membership needs to be purchased for a fee, and product display adopts warehouse-style shelves.

To put it simply, membership-only supermarkets have barriers to entry, and not everyone can go shopping. For example, the annual membership card fee of Sam’s Club is 260 yuan and 680 yuan; the Metro membership is 199 yuan/year, etc. Therefore, the consumer groups targeted by membership supermarkets are no longer the general public, but mid-to-high-end consumer groups who are capable and willing to pay for services. The difference in target consumer groups makes membership-based supermarkets more stringent in screening products, paying more attention to branded, genuine, and high-quality products, and at the same time, the price of the products should not be too high

 

4. Discount store
In the past three years, the epidemic has accelerated many business formats, and discount stores are one of them. The so-called discount store refers to a small supermarket format with simple store decoration, limited services and low commodity prices. This format is somewhat similar to the temporary and outdated product processing areas in shopping malls or supermarkets in the past. The difference is that today’s discount stores are mostly developed in the form of brand chains, with a unified brand name, similar decoration style, and similar selection of products, such as Hao special sale, sweeping cat, and hi tegou.

In addition, the product types of discount stores are also more diverse, not limited to food and beverages, but also many daily necessities, entertainment and leisure products, such as toys. For the toy industry, discount stores are not a channel for the majority of toy manufacturers to focus on layout and cooperation, but they are recognized by the industry as a good place to stock toys.

 

5. Convenience store

Convenience stores are definitely the representative channel for the counter-trend development channel under the epidemic. The first is the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, which shows that in 2021 and 2022, among the retail units above the designated size, the growth rate of retail sales of convenience stores will rank first for two consecutive years, higher than that of supermarkets, department stores, specialty stores, and specialty stores.

Secondly, compared with other channels, the number of domestic convenience stores is growing rapidly. A few days ago, the China Chain Store and Franchise Association announced the list of "Top 100 Convenience Stores in China in 2022". The list shows that as of the end of last year, the top 10 convenience store brands had a total of 109,485 stores, an increase of 6,212 compared to 2021.

Specifically, Meiyijia added 3,840 new stores and Lawson added 1,175 new stores, which are the top two brands in the number of stores. Kunlun Haoke, Tianfu, Furong Xingsheng, 7-ELEVEN, Quanquan & more all have hundreds of stores. However, the number of stores of Easy Joy, Hongqi Chain, and Family Mart has decreased.

Convenience stores are small but beautiful, small and refined channels. Although the area of each convenience store is small, the advantage is that there are many stores, and selected products can be distributed quickly. Therefore, it has become a key distribution channel for the majority of toy manufacturers.