Gifts / Sports & Toys

It is reported that Senbao Building Blocks has recently completed a series A financing of hundreds of millions of yuan. The investors include Alibaba, Touto Shidao Fund and Honghui Capital.

Senbao Building Blocks completed hundreds of millions of financing, and Alibaba participated in the investment

The predecessor of Senbao Building Blocks was established in 2003, mainly engaged in plastic toys, and began to enter the field of building blocks in 2013. At present, Senbao has more than 6,000 products, and its well-known IP licenses include "The Wandering Earth", "Emergency Rescue" and "Detective Chinatown 3". Its business scope includes cultural and educational technology development, animation product design, toy research and development, online games, electronics. Games and software development, etc.

After entering the building block market, Senbao adopted a small-scale and rapid iterative business strategy, and completed the initial accumulation by relying on low prices and shop volume. Single products such as the black gold series received positive feedback from the market. As more manufacturers entered the building block market, Senbao's original development model gradually lost its competitiveness among post-95 consumers. In 2018, Senbao began to get rid of the dilemma of product homogeneity through joint ventures. The product development and launch jointly with "The Wandering Earth" was completed within a month, thus obtaining cooperation opportunities with well-known IPs such as Shandong Jian Wenchuang, Aerospace Wenchuang and Gongting Wenchuang.

The reason why we chose to co-brand with the national brand IP is mainly for the consideration of consumer groups. The majority of anime IPs are figurines enthusiasts, and the overlap with the consumer groups of building blocks is low. In the national wave of cultural and creative boom that has emerged in recent years, building blocks have gotten rid of the "toy" label, and the consumer group has broadened to 15-35 years old. In order to further meet the market demand, Senbao building blocks mainly choose military, court and Chinese sci-fi IP, and the products will also be adjusted according to changes in sales channels.

According to a report by research firm Research And Markets, the global building block toy market is estimated at US$7.3 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach US$10.4 billion by 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 5.1%. According to the survey data of the "White Paper on the Development of China's Toys and Baby Products Industry in 2021", in 2020, building block toys are the most popular, accounting for 16.2% of sales, followed by plush fabric toys, accounting for 14.9% of sales , dolls and mini-dolls ranked third, accounting for 12.6%.

Compared with LEGO international brands, Chinese building block brands started late, but in terms of brand positioning and tonality, many brands are seeking differentiated competition. In the process of product research and development, Senbao keeps the details of the object as much as possible by developing special particle parts. Senbao has more than 6,000 sets of abrasive tools. By configuring a 24-hour automated production workshop, the annual output can reach 9.6 billion pieces. In order to ensure the fit between products and consumer needs, Senbao adopts the C2M production model, regularly communicates with KOLs in the building block circle and conducts market research, so as to lock IP resources as soon as possible.

Looking at the development of the industry in terms of product prices, the data shows that during the period from August 20 to September 20, 2020, the popular marketing attributes of typical educational and scientific toy building blocks are: small particles, plastic/plastic materials, assembly functions And the building block module is square. With the economies of scale brought about by industrial mass production, the price of building blocks has dropped. Building blocks below 45 yuan accounted for more than 70% of them, of which 22.51% were products with a unit price of less than 4.6 yuan. Therefore, merchants launched low-priced building blocks toy toys. Potential to capture consumers.