Gifts / Sports & Toys

Lego, a well-known international building block brand, recently announced that due to rising costs, it will raise the price of some of its products from August this year, and nearly 100 popular products will increase in price by 5%-25%. In fact, in the past 618, some domestic merchants who represent LEGO have revised product prices and reduced their discounts.

As soon as the news came out, a large number of building block players said that they could not afford it. At the same time, the topic of "will you find a replacement for Lego's price increase?" also appeared on Weibo hot search. Will this become an opportunity for local building block toys? In recent years, a large number of domestic building block brands have emerged in the market, including some manufacturers who are mainly engaged in children's building blocks, and have begun to gradually develop trendy plug-in building blocks to realize the quality and branding of their building blocks.

According to the sales data of domestic building blocks brands, the sales of Mengqidian from January to May this year increased by more than 54.4% year-on-year; the sales of Keeppley increased by more than 244.3% year-on-year; Senbao building blocks increased by more than 50% year-on-year. The above-mentioned domestic building blocks The growth rate is much higher than that of Lego.

Since the word "national tide" entered the public eye, Chinese-style design has become a new favorite in the consumer market. In recent years, this trend has also hit the toy industry, officially opening the era of national fashion play. According to the "2022 Toy Consumption Report" released by Jingdong Supermarket in May, the national tide building blocks, IP tide play blind boxes, programmable robot STEAM Toys have become the top three choices for gift-giving. At the same time, they are highly playable and trendy collectible building blocks, and they are even more popular in the domestic toy market. In addition to reflecting Chinese culture and traditional genes, Guochao building blocks are combined with current trends to form a design style full of fashion and Chinese charm.

01 New opportunities in the building block market: Keeppley leads the domestic building block?

In the past few decades, foreign brands have become the industry leaders with strict manufacturing quality control, advanced design concepts and joint publicity, and domestic building blocks that lack competitiveness are often just replacements for high-end products. Analyzing the top 10 building block manufacturers in the Amoy department in March 2022, it can be found that Lego, Pinqi and keeppley have a large proportion in the price range of >560, while the high-end products of other domestic manufacturers account for a small proportion. , and even many manufacturers have not developed high-end products.

From 2020 to now, the price of domestic building blocks has also fluctuated. The most obvious change is that domestic merchants have gradually developed high-end products in order to expand customers of different age groups. The data shows that the doubling of monthly sales within two years is only Bruco, which is second to Lego, has an average price of 250 yuan in March 2020, far exceeding the average price of most domestic merchants.

One of the reasons for the popularity of trendy play is IP licensing. Lego is most famous for its "IP+" strategy, which has attracted a large number of internationally renowned IP exclusive licenses. With the independent innovation and development of domestic manufacturers, while retaining the price advantage, it also improves the quality and diversity of products.

Common linkages include film and television, animation, and games. In recent years, as young people have gradually paid attention to military, aviation, museums and other fields, domestic building blocks have also developed related IP cooperation. For example, Senbao's Wandering Earth, Shandong Ship and Aerospace IP; Lizhi Building Block's Chinese Street View series, Journey to the West series; Keeppley's Forbidden City Palace Culture series.

Among the IP keywords about building blocks on Tmall and JD.com, the most frequent ones on Tmall are Ultraman series, Crayon Shin-chan and Sun Wukong; on JD.com, Harry Potter, Peppa and the Minions.

02 The audience of domestic building blocks is transformed, and the market size of adult trend building blocks is steadily increasing

Analyzing the changes in the trend building block market from 2018 to 2022, it can be found that the overall trend is steadily rising, reaching the recent peak of sales in January 2021, with sales exceeding 1.14 billion yuan, and there is a sales peak near the annual winter and summer vacations. Analyzing the growth rate of the building block market in 2021, the growth rate was obvious in Q1 and Q3, and declined in the rest of the period.

In terms of brand composition in the domestic building block market, Bruco's sales are ahead of most domestic brands, and there is a significant increase around the November shopping festival. The brand of Enlightenment, which just joined the building block market in 2019, keeppley, Focusing on trendy building blocks, it will start to exert its efforts in the second half of 2021 and achieve a substantial increase in sales. In 2021, it will achieve a year-on-year sales growth of 650.62%. In terms of innovation and research and development, on the one hand, domestic building blocks closely follow the national trend, design a large number of historical buildings and modern technology with Chinese characteristics, and also actively cooperate with various fields in IP cooperation.

Today, the sales volume of the Keeppley Tao series has reached the monthly sales level of one million, which is one of the fastest growing brands in the domestic building blocks of the platform. The GMV of the Keeppley flagship store is already twice that of the Enlightenment flagship store. Keeppley released related building blocks on the Mars landing day in May last year, and the products sold 100,000 on that day.

In fact, the building blocks on the market are mainly divided into two types: children's building blocks and trendy building blocks. For a long time, domestic building blocks mainly stayed in the stage of children's toys. The main reason is that the adult toy consumption has not been cultivated and formed at that time, and at the same time, it lacks the power of hard-core original products, so it is difficult to explore the adult collection toy market. However, as LEGO entered the Chinese market aggressively around 2012, some established manufacturers gradually realized the broad market of trendy building blocks.

According to the relevant data from the magic realm market, and analyzing the comments of Chinese building block brands in the past two years, the proportion of friends who buy gifts has gradually increased, which shows that domestic building blocks have gradually begun to transform their consumption audiences.

03 The new trend of domestic building blocks, Xiaomi enters the field of smart fashion play

Although domestic building blocks are developing rapidly and have great market potential, LEGO still occupies more than half of the market share, and other domestic brands can only compete for the remaining part. Moreover, domestic building blocks have many early references and serious homogeneity. The competition of IP cooperation is fierce, and development is urgently needed. new way to play. At the same time, the building block industry has high technical requirements and high market risks.

Domestic IP has great potential, but the degree of development is not enough, and continuous research and development is not possible. The overall structure still cannot be separated from common shapes and forms, which also leads to players' interest coming and going quickly.

How to jump out of the inherent LEGO format and create a building block toy that is Chinese from the outside to the inside? Coincidence Building Blocks was founded in 2020 and is dedicated to Coincidence mortise and tenon toys. At present, it has launched several products, opening up a unique "Chinese" building block toy road, applying the mortise and tenon techniques traditionally used in architecture and furniture to building block toys. .

In January this year, Coincidental Building Blocks included the tribute series of the P-51 fighter jet, the "Hero" tank and the first domestic car. The crowdfunding amount on Modian.com reached 253,800 yuan, which exceeded the target amount by nearly 5 times.

Xiaomi, an Internet company focusing on the research and development of intelligent hardware and electronic products, has also entered the field of smart trendy games. Xiaomi mainly focuses on building block sets such as sci-fi, mechanical sets, and robots. At the same time, it uses intelligent AI to realize that its products can be connected to APP. Smart remote control.

On the current Tmall Taobao platform, building blocks have built up a market of tens of billions of dollars, and the toy market has a very obvious trend of becoming an adult. According to the magic mirror market intelligence, the cumulative amount of 618 building blocks this year has increased by more than 100% year-on-year.

For domestic building blocks, becoming a "Lego replacement" is not the end. If you want to get out of the circle, you can't just stop at the secondary creation of classic IP. Similar to the most classic minifigure sequence of the Lego building block system, in addition to the IP joint authorization, domestic brands must also create their own concept of trendy building blocks.

How far are we from the freedom of domestic building blocks? Right now, in the blue ocean of trillions, domestic building blocks are seizing the desktop economy of young people. You might as well give the domestic trendy building blocks some time, and look forward to the next domestic "Lego" or "Bubble Mart" that creates a global social and cultural phenomenon.