Wen 丨 play generations
In recent years, "cotton dolls" have quietly become popular among young girls. Carrying a transparent baby bag and taking pictures with cotton dolls is becoming a "way of travel" for young women. Cotton dolls have also become one of the popular models on the toy collection cabinets for little girls, the bookshelves in college girls' dormitories, and the desks of young white-collar workers.
"Quite perfunctory for the necessities of survival, and a thousand dollars on spiritual necessities" With the rise of young consumers, new consumer demand has led to the upgrading of spiritual consumption. Cotton dolls are already an emerging category closely related to trendy toys.
Starting from the second half of 2020, Chao talk #Cotton Beauty Doll # has long occupied the TOP 1 of the Weibo Super Talk community "Tide" category list. By the end of 2021, the super-talk has been posted nearly 2 million times and read more than 10 billion.
According to the survey statistics of the "2021 Cotton Doll Player Insight Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") of the micro store, in recent years, the number of consumers related to cotton dolls has increased significantly, and the number of online purchase users in 2021 will reach one million, and the user scale in 2017 will only be tens of thousands; the online transaction volume of cotton dolls will reach 1 billion yuan in 2021.
A large number of young women constitute the "raising baby" army, 98% of the "raising baby" group of the micro-store platform is female users, of which 43% are post-00s, 26% are post-95s, followed by post-90s, post-80s and post-05s. Cotton doll lovers have 8.73 per capita.
This year, a variety of offline sales channels related to cotton dolls have appeared in the mainstream business districts of first- and second-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou. Not only have cotton doll franchise stores appeared, but also many brand stores including TOP TOY, X11, Cool Tide Play, Jiumu Miscellaneous Goods and other brand stores have also introduced cotton doll categories.
On platforms such as micro-stores, Taobao, and idle fish, cotton doll trading is active. According to the data of the micro-store platform, the online order volume and payment amount related to cotton dolls doubled for two consecutive years in 2018 and 2019, and the number of orders and online transaction amounts increased by more than 200% and 150% year-on-year.
Thanks to the two-way drive of consumption-side expansion and supply-side upgrading, the cotton doll market is ushering in rapid development.
"Cotton dolls" are popular: 8.73 "baby dolls" per capita of enthusiasts
Cotton dolls refer to doll dolls about 10-20 centimeters, the main body made of polyester fiber, it originated in South Korea and belongs to the product of the idol economy. At an EXO concert in South Korea in 2015, a fan brought a cotton doll based on the image of the member, which quickly became popular among fans and enthusiasts because of its cute and healing image.
After being circulated to China, the role of cotton dolls in the eyes of players is also undergoing subtle changes, from the early rice circle peripheral products, gradually developed into a set of cute economy, spiritual consumption, social attributes, cultural attributes are equal to one of the personality tide play products.
In the eyes of many players, "cotton dolls" are like "their own dolls".
"Baby circle" has a set of "jargon", "naked baby" refers to dolls that do not contain clothing, the person who initiates the cotton doll pre-sale is called "baby mother", the process of buying dolls to receiving goods is called "picking up the baby", and the process of taking the doll out to dress is "birth", "ee" is the abbreviation of "aunt", referring to the name between the users of the doll circle...
"Baby mothers" will not only change the doll's clothes with the change of seasons, but also give the doll a holiday and take the baby out to eat together. Different occasions can also change different styles of baby clothes, shopping to wear Hanfu, JK uniform, school wear "uniform", graduation has "bachelor's uniform", New Year's Eve has "holiday robes", "wedding" wear wedding dress.....
According to the psychological portraits of users surveyed by the micro-store report, the main reason for liking cotton dolls is "soft and cute appearance/healing cuteness", "emotional sustenance" and "collection brings happiness", accounting for 85% and 58% and 55% respectively, and 29% of the respondents enjoy "sharing the happiness of the baby", and 20% of the respondents enjoy the "happiness of experiencing cultivation".
"At first, when I saw the cotton doll when I brushed Weibo, I was immediately moved by the cute soft cuteness, so I fell into the pit", which is the way a large part of the fans entered the pit. According to reports, Weibo and Douban groups are the most important cotton doll topic discussion and exchange platforms. There are a lot of "baby raising" topics active in the Douban group: how to bathe dolls? How to make a good baby film? Do you want to start with the new doll clothes? How to raise fried hair dolls?
People can be beautiful, and so can "babies". "Baby friends" will do it themselves or find a special handicraft room to refine the beauty of the baby", or even "bone reshaping". On social media, there are a large number of "rua baby" tutorial tips, referring to "using certain techniques to rub dolls to improve their appearance", including modifying "peach buttocks", pinching faces, setting up skeletons, and even bathing, cutting bangs, blushing, local blemish treatment, etc. The amount of cotton doll-related notes on the Little Red Book is 150,000+.
According to the micro-store report, cotton doll lovers have 8.73 per capita. As the pit deepens, it will pursue "people thriving", play generation interviews found that the per capita of 20-30 people who have been in the circle for a long time. "Cotton doll players are out of the soft cute style of love, dressup, out of the street and other different ways of play bringing fun and attraction, with the attention to cotton dolls, plus the surrounding good Amway, will continue to invest," said senior player @ Xiao Soft.
The desire to collect is also one of the important driving psychology. Play generation interview players found that IP attributes are more likely to stimulate fan collection behavior, and are not very sensitive to the half-year pre-sale cycle.
Platforms such as Weidian, Taobao, and Idle Fish are active with a large number of consumers. Compared with the relatively balanced state of gender in the tide, cotton dolls are a category exclusive to women. The report notes that male gamers account for less than 2%. Players are relatively concentrated in the eastern coastal areas, with Zhejiang, Guangdong and Jiangsu ranking in the top three.
The sales and scale of the emerging "spiritual necessities" have doubled
Cotton dolls are different from traditional plush dolls, it has stronger emotional sustenance attributes and social attributes. When you buy your first cotton doll, you will enter the fan base, and everyone will share their experience in dressing and dressing up.
A large number of fans gathered together to form a circle culture. In the "Tide Play" sub-list of Weibo Tide Things, the topics "Cotton Beauty Dolls" and "Cotton Dolls" both entered the top three, of which "Cotton Beauty Dolls" has long occupied the first place in the "Tide Play" sub-list and the "Tide Things" overall list.
"It's not just the tide play show that makes people queue up in the early morning, but also the cotton doll show." At present, cotton dolls have initially formed a circle group and are expanding. In July 2020, the first large-scale cotton doll exhibition in China was held in Hangzhou Weidian Park, and related exhibitions, pop-up mobs and other activities have landed in Hangzhou, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Beijing, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Wuhan and other cities.
Cotton doll entry threshold is not high, from the product unit price point of view, it is reported that the average price of cotton dolls on the micro-store platform is 62 yuan (naked dolls, dolls that do not contain baby clothes). In the offline retail channel, the price will be adjusted to more than 100 yuan due to cost factors.
"Baby clothes" is one of the biggest expenses in the future, other expenses include: accessories, doll house/furniture, baby bags for travel clothes, skeletons, blush hairstyles and other beauty items. For players who pay attention to the way they dress, a naked doll will usually have at least three or four sets of clothes.
According to the report, the online order volume and payment amount of cotton dolls doubled for two consecutive years in 2018 and 2019, with a year-on-year growth rate of more than 200% and 150% respectively.
In the Jingdong flagship store of a fashion play retail brand, the sales of a cotton doll exceeded that of the well-known Japanese comic IP blind box, ranking in the top three in store sales.
Weibo hot search #00 after the way to save money how to #, some netizens said, "you can have no clothes to wear, children can't, for the sake of people Ding prosperity continue to buy babies." College students who play generation interviews reveal that they usually use part-time work to earn money to pay for hobbies such as "cotton dolls".
"The necessities of survival are quite perfunctory, and the spiritual necessities are thrown at thousands of dollars", the consumption attitude brought by young people also reveals a trend of new consumption, cotton dolls and blind boxes, handmade, model play, spiritual consumption, emotional consumption, psychological consumption attributes have become an important driving force.
Merchants soared 20 times, the industrial chain was in its embryonic stage, and foreign trade factories transformed into "baby factories"
Before 2020, cotton dolls are in the "power generation for love" stage, most of them are converted from fan enthusiasts to individual businesses, and after 2020, more and more new market participants will pour in.
According to reports, the number of cotton doll merchants with transaction records has reached nearly 10,000 by the end of 2020, an increase of more than 20 times in 3 years. The total number of fans of the Top10 merchants on the micro-store platform is close to 3 million.
In August 2021, the WeShop App launched the first online museum of cotton dolls, containing more than 13,000 cotton dolls. This also reflects a certain market situation: there are many image designs, but the output of each design is not large.
Many entrepreneurs said that the core of market competition is still original design. "Similar to the designer brand in women's clothing, if the designer's design style is well recognized, then his brand will also be more recognized by everyone," said @Li88, an entrepreneur who invested in the cotton doll market in 2020.
Baby clothes entrepreneur @ ball ball every month will personally go to the fabric wholesale market to learn about the latest changes. "For players, cotton dolls are like children, and we have adopted higher standards in the selection of fabrics, focusing on the texture of the hand, and some fabrics are even baby-grade." On the one hand, many entrepreneurs deepen the original design, on the other hand, optimize the supply chain capabilities, and improve in production and processing, quality control and other links.
At present, cotton dolls are still a "cute culture" as the mainstream market. In recent years, the iteration of popular styles has accelerated, and in just a few years, it has moved from "Korean style" to the popular wearing style of domestic young people, and many styles such as "Hanfu", "JK uniform" and "Lolita" have appeared.
Cotton doll is a market that highly relies on the pre-sale C2B model, similar to the process of "grouping": the baby mother finds a painter to initiate customization, draws the manuscript, and the factory proofs according to the drawing; the baby mother relies on proofing to initiate the group on the social platform, the consumer pays with the group, the baby mother places an order to the factory, and finally the factory ships to the consumer. From the opening of the group to the product to the hand, the duration may be as long as half a year.
With the growth of order volume, in the past year, the market has gradually unbundled the pre-sale model, forming a mix of pre-sale and spot sale. Three or four years ago, the phenomenon of "overdue orders", "quality control overturning" and even "running" brought about by the "grouping" model has now turned better.
With the introduction of spot sales, some of the previously suppressed consumer demand has been released. "Everyone's acceptance of spot is generally relatively high." There are cotton doll-related entrepreneurs who have accumulated 200,000 community fans in less than two years, and the sales scale has increased by nearly 10 times.
In the eyes of some practitioners, the industrial environment related to cotton dolls has gradually turned to maturity. In the past, orders were small, a large number of foundries relied on scattered handicraft workshops to complete production, and hundreds of orders were difficult to match to factories with relatively mature production capacity. Nowadays, more and more brands are looking for factory oem or owning their own handicraft workshops.
Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province, can be said to be "global plush toy factory". According to a 2017 report, the supply of plush toys created by Yangzhou City accounts for half of the national total and one-third of the global total. The plush toy industry chain in Yangzhou integrates raw materials, design, manufacturing, e-commerce, logistics and other links. Enterprise investigation data shows that in the past three years since 2019, the number of registered toy-related enterprises in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, has been 3007, 5817 and 3321 respectively.
But the original capacity is not a seamless fit. "Cotton dolls have higher requirements for craftsmanship, including embroidery, head shape, facial features, body shape, hair and other details, including artificial labor, processes and standards are improving", some manufacturers revealed that the transformation from the plush category has experienced a long period of running-in and adjustment.
The upgrading of market demand has led to the adjustment and upgrading of the supply chain, and the industrial chain has integrated multiple links such as brand cooperation, product research and development, production and logistics, quality control and after-sales service, and the overall is in the stage of gradually forming an industrial chain collection.
Industry insiders revealed that in the past two years, affected by changes in the foreign trade environment, some supply chain enterprises have turned their attention to emerging markets in China. "At present, the company has shifted its focus to the cotton doll category, and we have also cooperated with garment factories and accessories factories." Specializing in the design and development of plush products, the relevant person in charge of "Harol Dolls" said, "We judge that the cotton doll market will enter a period of rapid growth, and it is expected that there will be an explosive growth this year", so it is planned to increase production in 2022, last year's monthly orders were about 30,000, and we aim to have more than 100,000 orders per month in the second half of this year."
"Young Business Opportunities": Niche markets to be broken
Compared with the blind box market, cotton dolls are a newer and more niche category. Its consumption ecology is also moving closer to the tide play, and the emerging offline franchise channels, as well as retail channels such as tide play and cultural and creative groceries, have become one of the channels for cotton dolls to go to the mass market.
There is also a small amount of high premium in the "baby circle", but the "hype" phenomenon is much less than that of other tide play categories. Circle culture also shows greater inclusiveness.
In the eyes of some practitioners and players, cotton dolls are a category with a mass base among young people. With the characteristics of low entry threshold, high repurchase rate, diversified derivative consumption, and strong emotional connection, the cotton doll market also has great growth potential.
The cotton doll market is still in its early stages, and the play generation believes that there are many problems at this stage:
1. The craftsmanship and quality standards of cotton dolls are higher than those of traditional plush dolls, and the advantages of "China World Toy Factory" have not been fully exerted. In the initial stage of industrial chain integration, in the face of a significant increase in demand in the short term, the supply side appears to be "underprepared".
2. The supply chain does not yet constitute a barrier to competition. Low threshold, a large number of merchants influx, but the style is limited, especially the propertyless dolls, differentiation and competition barriers are not prominent.
3, need to get rid of the "derivatives" and "peripheral" thinking. On the one hand, we will further strengthen visual recognition, and carry out visualization, symbolization and IP around the original image design. On the other hand, it finds unique cultural concepts and continues cultural output to form a trend-leading force.
4. There are more than enough profit margins, but the unit price of customers is difficult to break through and improve, subject to the consumption power of a large number of student groups, and also subject to the state of not breaking the circle.
5. The Matthew effect is obvious, and the volume of the head and the middle tail of the merchant is largely differentiated. "Enclosure of self-germination" and "incense inside the wall", the industry as a whole has not yet entered the right track of large-scale market operation, and lacks the necessary market impetus.
6. A large number of merchants are in the state of "designer style, no designer brand", and the branding is insufficient. Copyright protection "vacuum".
As a trend culture carrier, cotton dolls have strong cultural compatibility and are also a "medium" for communicating with young people. At present, cotton dolls have been combined with public welfare innovative forms, traditional culture and intangible cultural heritage crafts. For example, at an intangible cultural heritage traditional craft doll design competition held in September last year, the contestants used a large number of intangible cultural heritage crafts including ethnic minorities in Yunnan-Guizhou region, including horsetail embroidery, flat embroidery, patchwork embroidery, batik, brocade and so on.
Cotton dolls are still a niche market to be broken. Industry insiders said that compared with the blind box tide play, cotton dolls are still on the eve of the outbreak.