Chinese tide play "conquer" Akihabara

Produced | Tiger Sniff Commercial, Consumer and Mobile Group

The author | Miao Zhengqing

The title image | Visual China

Chinese tide play is "conquering" Akihabara and Itaewon.

On March 21, Park Hye, a 23-year-old South Korean girl, bought a Dimmo blind box at the Coex mall in Samseong-dong, Seoul. This is the 9th Chinese tide play she has bought in the past six months. She said she had a bit of bad luck because when she went to smoke the blind box, there was only one "box" left in the whole set, and when she opened it, she found that it was her existing "frog gardener". Park Hye's girlfriend who lives in Itaewon is even more fanatical, and because of the frequent unpacking of the whole box, the girlfriend had to customize a special glass box from China that can be backlit and place more than 200 Chinese tides to play.

1150 kilometers away, Akihabara regular, 20-year-old Japanese girl Shinko has become a fan of Chinese tide play through the Japanese Amazon, in Japan "Hualiu" is a hot word in 2021 (Chinese cultural trend), and buying Chinese tide play is the new trend of Japan's "Hualiu girls". In February this year, Xinzi specially purchased a set of Tang Feng shi female theme tide play. Due to the limited pocket money, Xinzi cherishes this set of tide play very much, and she will carefully wipe it every week, and even arrange for the tide play to "team up and bask in the sun".

After the epidemic, China's local tide play brands have further set their sights on overseas. On March 28, Bubble Mart announced its 2021 financial report, and its international business grew significantly, up 85.2% year-on-year. "In the next 10 years, the international business will be one of the most important points of power of Bubble Mart." Boo Mart vice president and president of Bobble Mart's international business Wende said. The latest data from 52TOYS, another tide play head company, shows that in 2021, the total sales of its tide play products on Amazon in Japan increased by 300% year-on-year.

China Tide Play Went Overseas entered a new climax in 2017~2018, when Bubble Mart, 52TOYS, TOP TOY, TOYCITY, LAMTOYS began to try overseas business, and the epidemic made China Tide Play Go to sea speed up. Statistics from the 2020 Cross-border Export Consumption Trend Report show that the volume of blind box overseas online transactions in 2020 increased by 400% year-on-year. Data from Amazon and Shopee show that in 2021, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Southeast Asia, and North America have become china's hip-playing markets with higher growth rates.

But the challenges facing China's tide to play at sea are still great. For example, as of now, overseas business is only a "small dish" played by major local trends, and the "Chinese mainland wholesale and other income" accounted for only 3% of bubble mart as an example. Also, China's tide play needs to face the "localization" challenge in the process of going to sea.

"Going to sea is not simply to export products that are loved by the domestic public overseas, but it needs to start from the product level." 52TOYS founder Chen Wei said.

An investor who is deeply involved in young trends pointed out another layer of logic behind the tide to play out to sea. "The weakness of the consumer market is affecting many tracks of new consumption, and making efforts overseas means that the tide play circle has laid out the incremental market in advance." The person believes that from the history of the development of the toy industry in Japan and the United States, expanding overseas is the only way, but this means that the design ability, supply chain control, and market response speed have been comprehensively improved, and for today's Chinese tide play brands, it has not yet reached the moment of "swallowing the North American market in Japan and South Korea", "more like a new army that lands on the beach, occupying the bridgehead first." ”

China Tide Plays Out to sea

The post-00s generation has become the driving force of the Chinese tide to play out to sea.

In 2018, Chinese mainland students abroad reached a record high of 662,000 (as of 2018), an increase of 8.8% year-on-year. Compared with the previous wave of studying abroad, two variables are crucial: students born in 2000 have become the main force of studying abroad, and the destinations abroad are more diverse. According to the data, the total number of Chinese students studying in the United States from 2017 to 2018 increased by only 3.6% year-on-year, and Japan, South Korea, Europe, and Southeast Asia became the new choices for many post-00s to study abroad.

Post-00s international students have brought a tidal play culture to their destinations. From 2017 to 2018, it coincided with the critical period of China's local tide playing with overseas markets, when the "dividend" of domestic e-commerce traffic had a downward trend, and the dividend of overseas e-commerce was obvious.

Ai Qi (pseudonym), a post-00 girl who studied in the United States in 2018, is a typical example. Before going abroad, she has become a trendy collector, with an average of more than 10 blind boxes drawn every month, and after going abroad, she continued to maintain her blind box collection hobby through e-commerce channels and "daigou", and influenced Korean and Indian classmates in the same dormitory. Ai Found that young Korean girls can easily become "deep fans" of Chinese tide play. "They are extremely fond of the blind smoking model, and they are more excited when they find that they can sell high prices in the second-hand market, compared with Japanese girls who are more cautious, and Indian girls are less interested in the second-hand market."

It is worth noting that this wave of post-00s international students is deeply influenced by the domestic new traffic world and has a deep insight into the "grass planting philosophy". This has evolved into a "spontaneous grass planting trend" for international students to play around the tide: on platforms such as Instagram, Chinese students like to share blind boxes and national trends, and they often have a natural sense of network when sharing the tide - taking pictures, describing the tone, and leaving just the right blank space.

A person in charge of an MCN institution that has long been engaged in cross-border e-commerce content told Tiger Sniff that in the matter of traffic planting, the Chinese team and the Chinese young generation have a "dimensionality reduction advantage" in the international scope. It is reported that the popular content on Tik Tok and SHEIN is mostly "OEM production" for Chinese content teams, and the Japanese and Korean e-commerce circles also rely heavily on "Chinese content teams" to produce promotional materials and marketing programs after 2020, in fact, the "content creation centers" of the Japanese, Korean and North American e-commerce markets are in Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

From this comes the familiar path of the tide to play out to sea: a large number of Chinese consumers post content on platforms such as Instagram and Tik Tok, and gradually evolve into niche KOCs, and these KOCs are extremely powerful. Statistics show that the cycle of the surge in sales of Chinese tide play on platforms such as Amazon is the same frequency as the cycle of the surge in Chinese tide play content on Instagram and Tik Tok. The cultivation of grass by Young Chinese people has ultimately affected a wider range of consumer groups: taking Amazon data as an example, about 40% of china's overseas sales are composed of Chinese students and Chinese, while about 60% are composed of foreign friends.

After the epidemic, the local tide play began to go to the sea 2.0, through a larger scale offline entities (vending machines, stores, dealer outlets) to increase the penetration of overseas markets. Up to now, the domestic mainstream tide play brands have "offline presence" in the four core regions of North America, Japan and South Korea, Europe and Southeast Asia.

U.S. stock analyst Liu Bin described the value of this offline expansion to Tiger Sniff: toy companies rely heavily on offline entities, consumers need real feelings, physical touch to form strong consumer confidence, and offline stores can also become the station of the community, further creating a circle of social networking. "This is the secret of the rise of Lego international big-name companies, and it is also the key strategy for Chinese local tide play companies to go to sea today."

This offline expansion enters a new intensity in the second half of 2021 and the beginning of 2022. In January 2022, Bubble Mart officially opened in London, England, and according to Bubble Mart related sources, they will open a fourth store (and a flagship store) in South Korea this year.

Richer points are increasing the penetration of China's tide play.

In Seoul, Park Sun participated in a "toy offline party circle" of young Koreans who teamed up to buy various toys and collectibles and shared them through the SNS platform. After Bubble Mart opened its first store in South Korea, Park Sun and others began to use it as a new option for monthly gatherings. When it is necessary to develop new "circle members", she will bring her friends to this kind of Chinese fashion store.

A key detail is that the local tide play that has risen in the Chinese market has absorbed the experience from Chinese young people: because China's post-95 and post-00s themselves have obvious characteristics such as circle socialization, experience, interest symbols, etc., China Tide Play will deliberately evolve based on this when opening offline stores. And this underlying logic has been passed down overseas - in most of the offline stores or pop-up stores of Chinese fashion brands, the clerks will show "Chinese-style service": accurately remember the name of each toy, pay attention to social distance to whisper communication, encourage customers to increase the length of staying in the store, willing to help customers take photos and share...

"In a brutal market, Chinese brands have been honed to be more effective, and when they go to sea with these genes, they have dimensionality-reducing attributes." Liu Chang, a new consumer analyst and concerned about the overseas market, gave an example: Compared with foreign traditional toy brands, Chinese tide play brands pay more attention to e-commerce data, information technology means, new traffic marketing, and community building.

But the advantages of these playing layers are not enough. Taking the Japanese and American markets as an example, as the most developed toy market in the world, there is a very rich and mature toy category ecology, as well as a strong toy and IP culture. In terms of product strength and cultural influence, China Tide Play is still far from overseas top players. And, every Chinese trend play brand is facing the key challenge of "localization": after all, here, "national tide" is not a panacea.

Overcoming "Soil and Water"

Bubble Mart's core IP Labubu has a boyfriend named Tycoco, whose image is a skeleton. At that time, Bubble Mart launched a music forest series, and as a result, in different markets, it encountered "different reactions" brought about by cultural differences. In Mexico, Tycoco, whose partners saw the skeleton image, was overjoyed, while in Europe, some consumers had limited acceptance of the skull image.

Something similar has happened to other homegrown hipsters.

A tide play company founded in 2017, launched a tide play for the Northeast Asian market around 2020. This tide play is based on the Spring Festival during the Spring Festival, so there is an element of "Spring League" in the image, when the designer created inspired by the traditional Chinese red Spring League, this product sold well in the Chinese market and the Japanese market, and the result was poor sales in the Korean market. Market researchers later found that in South Korea, people are accustomed to using "spring leagues with black characters on a white background" during the Spring Festival, and Koreans have limited acceptance of the orthodox Chinese red spring leagues.

The key challenge that cultural differences pose to China's hipsters is the complexity of SKUs. Bubble Mart insiders told Tiger Sniff that according to Bubble Mart's observation, consumers in the Southeast Asian market pay more attention to well-known IP products, such as the tide play originating from Disney IP; and in the North American market, men are more acceptable to IP, these products are mostly collector's editions, limited editions, and extra-large; and in Europe, consumers are more interested in genie and animal IP.

The difference in market maturity is also increasing the difficulty of going to sea. 52TOYS related people said that in Japan and the European and American markets, due to the rich toy culture and high market maturity here, children grew up playing with Various Forms of Toys such as Transformers, GI JOE, Barbie dolls and Lego, which led to local consumers generally have higher requirements for the "creativity and playability" of toys.

This difference and difficulty means that local brands need to be thoroughly "localized" to truly take root in the local market. In Bubble Mart, the group headquarters will first analyze more than 200 countries and regions around the world, and after considering factors such as "economic level, disposable income, and cultural consumption preference", Bubble Mart will divide more than 200 "markets" into A, B and C grades. Based on this analysis, Bubble Mart took the approach of first Asia and then Europe and the United States. Through B-end channels such as distributors, it is the key to developing overseas, and gradually transitions to the DTC model - a more rapid market response model for C-end user users.

It is reported that the DTC model in 2022 will be the key direction of Bubble Mart, "In the European and American regions, we will directly enter the market to study and analyze the differences in the market, and find business models and products that are more in line with the Western market." It is worth noting that Bubble Mart is further "localizing" its organizational structure, and relevant people have told and demand that they will put more operational-related functions overseas and strengthen the construction of local localization teams.

In the process of China's tide playing out to sea, overseas exhibitions are becoming a key channel.

In 2015, 52TOYS went overseas for the first time, and at the San Diego International Comic-Con that year, 52TOYS gained a wave of overseas fans through booths and products. There was a local boy of about 15 years old at the time, hovering around booth 52TOYS and hesitating to buy it, interestingly, at Comic Con San Diego for the next two years, the kid continued to appear at booth 52TOYS and eventually bought the product in the third year.

Bubble Mart's going to sea is also closely related to the exhibition. In China, Bubble Mart will hold an international trend art exhibition (PTS) every year, and Bubble Mart will bear part of the participation costs of overseas designers and exhibitors, in an exhibition, overseas customers proposed to introduce Bubble Mart products into the market of his home country, which has become an opportunity for Bubble Mart to develop overseas. In 2018, Bubble Mart officially established its overseas business center, and went overseas for the first time a year later.

It is worth noting that whether it is a domestic exhibition or an overseas exhibition, a large number of deep fans will gather in a short period of time, which means that Chinese local brands can "establish contact" with a large number of accurate target users in a short period of time. A large number of local dealers and toy store owners will also choose partners through the participation, which has also become one of the shortcuts for Chinese brands to go to sea.

However, the problem of "water and soil dissatisfaction" is also lingering in overseas exhibitions. Some designers told Tiger Sniff that toy shows and comic shows in North America, Japan and other places gathered top tide play collectors and players, and everyone's taste was very picky. "Some domestic hot products are not necessarily popular at international exhibitions."

But this kind of "cross-border exchange" is crucial for the tide to go to sea. A veteran who has been engaged in tide play for nearly two decades said that toys will eventually achieve communication and resonance through "real-world contact", and after the recovery of the epidemic, Chinese brands are bound to participate in overseas exhibitions, hold overseas meetings and open overseas stores more frequently. "Only by going to their hinterland can we verify the competitiveness of China's tide play."

At present, what lies in front of China's local tide play is a test around "patience". Many industry insiders said that in the matter of tide playing out to sea, Chinese brands are still in the initial stage and cannot be impatient, and the key to the success or failure of the final decision to go to sea is still the logic of the bottom of tide play: "Whether the toy itself is fun enough and interesting enough." ”