Text | Internet those things
The building block toy market has once again ushered in financing.
On February 10, Senbao Building Blocks completed a series A financing of hundreds of millions of yuan, including Alibaba, Toutou Dao Fund and Honghui Capital.
But even so, with the current strength of Senbao bricks, there is still pressure to resist the head brand, which is an indisputable fact.
Most of the market is in the hands of the big brother of the building block market, "Lego", and Lego's market share of Chinese bricks in 2021 will reach 42.3%. Among them, sales also rode through the dust in the first half of 2021, with sales of 4.672 billion yuan far exceeding similar peers.
According to research firm Research And Markets, the global building block toy market is estimated at $7.3 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach $10.4 billion by 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 5.1%.
In the domestic market, according to the "2021 White Paper on the Development of China's Toys and Baby And Child Products Industry" released by the China Toys and Baby Products Association, in 2020, the national toy retail scale was 77.97 billion yuan, an increase of 2.6% over the previous year.
Among them, consumers buy the most toys with patchwork blocks, accounting for 16.2%, roughly accounting for a quarter of the global building block market.
While the market is optimistic about the development prospects of the building block industry, it also means that Senbao bricks will face more intense market tests.
The exploration of Senbao bricks survives
Looking back, Senbao bricks, as one of the hottest domestic building blocks brands at present, the transformation from the main plastic toys to building blocks seems to be the most difficult and correct thing That Senbao bricks have done in recent years.
It is true that in the early days of the brand, Senbao bricks from the product to the C-end, almost all of the targets are child consumers. Even if it is not too difficult to turn from a plastic toy, it is obviously difficult to make a big blood change from beginning to end in the context of 200 million children.
At first, Senbao bricks were not clear about the domestic brick market environment and consumer demand, and initially adopted a small-scale, rapidly iterative business strategy, relying on low prices and quantities to complete the first wave of capital accumulation.
In terms of products, in order to create star products as the positioning, in 2017, the black gold plan, steel empire, dragon fury super police series, etc. once listed, they received good market feedback.
However, as more and more manufacturers enter the building block market, Senbao Brick realizes that in the past, this development model was doomed to failure in the face of post-95 and post-00 users who completed consumption upgrades.
Therefore, in 2018, Senbao bricks changed their strategies, in order to benchmark different products to different age groups, Senbao bricks penetrated into different consumption circles through IP.
In 2019, Senbao Bricks launched yahama, Petorbilt and other technology series.
The whole series, whether from the appearance design, or from the extreme parts, Senbao bricks almost to the extreme, but also increased the difficulty of assembly.
However, there are still places that are criticized by consumers, in order to pursue the perfection of the shape, ignoring the most basic firmness, as well as the catastrophic scene of the sticker fully open, these are the common problems of the entire technology series.
After the 2019 Spring Festival file "The Wandering Earth" was screened and the box office reached 4.6 billion yuan, Senbao Bricks reached a cooperation agreement with the copyright owner in a timely manner to obtain the authorization of the "Wandering Earth" small particle bricks.
In terms of the IP advantage of the sense of technology, Senbao Brick divides the building block model of "The Wandering Earth" into more than 200 pieces, 800 pieces, 1500 pieces and 3700 pieces to attract consumers of different ages.
In addition to the "Wandering Earth" license, Senbao Bricks chooses to cooperate with more live-action movie IP (Chinatown Detective 3, Emergency Rescue), Celebrity Team IP (Jackie Chan DC Team), KOL (Xiaoling Toys) in IP licensing products.
In 2020, the sales created by live streaming with goods accounted for about 20% of the sales of Senbao Bricks' entire e-commerce section, and the popularity of the "Wandering Earth" series and Shandong Ship series products in live broadcasts made Senbao Bricks more determined to take the road of IP authorization.
Advantages and hidden dangers of the "IP-led" model
From the past for children, to now for all ages, Senbao bricks at the same time in product innovation continue to move forward.
Senbao Bricks also actively engages with some excellent niche designers at home and abroad, hoping to differentiate some niche but talented designers and help them get more exposure opportunities.
At the beginning of 2021, Senbao Brick launched military products such as 052D guided missile destroyers, 055 destroyers, and Dongfeng 21D anti-ship ballistic missiles, which were warmly sought after by consumers.
In the future direction, in order to comply with the needs of the market, Senbao Bricks will take the cultural and creative licensing as a key project for future development, complete IP capture from the upstream market, and establish an IP moat belonging to Senbao Bricks.
The way Senbao bricks play is actually close to lego's model, through cooperation with IP to launch different series of products, so as to attract consumers to buy.
However, Senbao Brick ignores that the cultural and creative licensing IP can indeed accurately lock the consumer psychology of some consumers, but it cannot cover all building block enthusiasts.
In addition, the original IP attribute of Senbao building blocks is not strong.
At the same time, in the past two years, mainland toy-related enterprises have also increased by more than 1.2 million for two consecutive years. Among them, nearly 1.22 million new ones were added in 2019, an increase of 129% month-on-month, and more than 1.25 million new ones were added in 2020, an increase of 3% month-on-month.
When the large-scale emergence of China's local brick brands will enhance the premium space through original methods, it will also penetrate profits upstream, which will face greater market pressure for Senbao bricks with licensed IP.
More notably, in the first half of 2021, LEGO opened more than 60 new LEGO authorized stores around the world, 40 authorized stores opened in China, and lego Group also mentioned in this year's semi-annual report that its business in China maintained strong double-digit growth.
At the end of 2021, the 300th brand retail store was settled in Haining, Zhejiang. Behind this, the sinking path from first-tier cities to provincial capital cities to third- and fourth-tier cities reflects LEGO China's strategic thinking.
To this end, in the short term, the offline market Senbao bricks or will be squeezed by the head brand.
Yield cannot fill the design gap
According to reports, at present, Senbao bricks in the relatively mature building block market, has more than 6,000 sets of existing abrasives, Senbao bricks on the building blocks requirements of the international first-line manufacturers, while equipped with 24-hour automated production workshop, the annual output of up to 9.6 billion pieces.
However, it should be noted that the development direction is placed on product production, and there is nothing wrong with increasing the market scale, but the single product of the building block industry has long determined the importance of patents.
LEGO bricks have a high copyright barrier splicing system, and its stitching method and presentation effect are walls that local brick companies cannot currently break through.
The problem of building block intellectual property rights is a relatively new and frequent industry problem in recent years, but the determination of appearance infringement of building block products is somewhat different from the ordinary method of judging the appearance infringement of a single product, and the former is very complicated.
First of all, building block patent applications include invention patents and appearance patents.
The invention patent specifically focuses on the building method of the building block, and if a new technical solution is proposed for the combination of the various components of the building block and the patent authorization conditions are met, the utility model patent may be obtained.
In other words, China's local building blocks cannot directly copy Lego's stitching method, and they must independently develop a splicing mode. For example, when Bruke launched the Forbidden City series of building blocks, he used the idea of building beams of ancient Chinese buildings to build and combine.
Secondly, if a new scheme is proposed for the appearance and shape of the building blocks, a design patent may be obtained, which is also the most common infringement dispute.
For Senbao, forming its own unique building style and design requires more time and effort. The same is true for domestic building block brands.
Young people basically buy building blocks for building or collecting, and when a building block is built well, it may most likely lose more value.
Fortunately, gifts between young people, or facing the situation of choosing gifts for children, building blocks are becoming the choice of more and more young people.
At the same time, young people living alone have become common, and the "time-killing weapon" of the building blocks may not have arrived. With the further diversification of building block use scenarios, the spring of domestic building blocks may not be far away.
Sembour, are you ready?