Gifts / Sports & Toys

If the global economy was mostly affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic in the past two years, this year will add the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Even the "World Economic Situation and Prospects in Mid-2022" issued by the United Nations mentioned that due to the disruption of the global economic recovery by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, a huge humanitarian crisis has been triggered, which has increased the prices of food and commodities, and has intensified worldwide. Inflationary pressures, and cut global economic growth to 3.1% in 2022.

The world economy is affected, and my country's toy exports are naturally not immune. According to customs data, from January to June this year, my country's toy export value was 21.3997 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 24.7%. This growth rate is much higher than the 13.2% growth rate of my country's international trade exports in the first half of the year. However, the operating conditions of gaming companies are not so optimistic, and companies ranging from listed companies to small, medium and micro enterprises are facing different problems.

The data point of view has risen overall, Southeast Asia has grown, and Europe has fluctuated greatly

According to the statistical table published by the General Administration of Customs, there will be differences in data due to differences in calibers. For example, the "Amount Table of Export Commodities to Some Countries (Regions)" counts the data of "Chapter 95 Toys, Games or Sporting Goods and Their Parts and Accessories" ; The "Value Table of Main Trade Modes of Some Exported Commodities" counts the products in the series of Customs Commodity Code Tariff No. 9503. Although there are differences in the statistical caliber of the data, through these data, we can still understand the general situation of my country's toy exports in the first half of the year.

1. Exports to Russia and Ukraine have fallen sharply. Judging from customs data, in the first half of this year, my country's exports to the EU, France, Italy, and Spain increased, while exports to Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, and Ukraine generally declined. Among them, the export value to Russia fell by 32.29%, and the export value to Ukraine fell by 62.7%. The impact of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict on the economy was obvious.

2. Exports to the 8 ASEAN countries and the Americas generally increased. ASEAN is my country's important trade partner and an important region for toy exports. According to customs data, in the first half of the year, my country's exports to the eight ASEAN countries achieved positive growth, especially to Myanmar, India and Malaysia.

According to customs data, the United States is still the largest importer of toys in my country, and has achieved more than 30% growth in the first half of the year. Another notable growth country in the Americas is Argentina, which also increased by more than 30%.

3. General trade is the main business, and the proportion of cross-border e-commerce has declined. Although the export of toys has encountered many difficulties in the past two years, general trade is still the main way of exporting Chinese toys. The rapid development of cross-border e-commerce in the past two years is a new growth point for toy exports, but its proportion has declined. According to customs data, in the first half of this year, the export value of other trade (cross-border e-commerce included in other trade) accounted for 20.48% of the total export value, down 4 percentage points from the same period last year.

In fact, cross-border e-commerce is not very easy. A person in charge of a gaming company said that Amazon’s mechanism adjustment last year had a great impact on Chinese sellers, and many large and medium-sized sellers suffered heavy losses. Although the toy category sellers were not affected so much, it still hurt everyone's confidence, so this year, cross-border e-commerce customers are more cautious and conservative in placing orders.

There is more than one cross-border e-commerce platform Amazon, but other platforms are either regional, or not large enough, and their coverage is not wide enough. Therefore, even if sellers develop other platforms, they cannot make up for the vacancies.

From the perspective of playing enterprises, the performance is good or bad, and the operation faces many difficulties

"Our customers are mainly from Europe and the United States, and the orders in the first half of this year are much less." Shen Runnan, general manager of Shantou Super Toys Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Super Toys"), said that in the past, customers were divided twice a year. Place an order, each order is 80,000 to 100,000 pieces. This year, customers are very cautious and conservative. They are divided into small orders, placed quarterly or in one or two months, and then followed up in small batches.

The Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the epidemic have had a greater impact on the export of Subo toys. It is understood that Subo Toys has special customers responsible for distributing goods to Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Russia and other countries. "Affected by the war, our orders in Poland have been stopped. In addition, there are also many cases of delays in the shipping schedule due to the epidemic. For example, a Belarusian customer's order was delayed from the end of last year until June this year. Shipment was completed." Shen Runnan said that orders in the United States have also been affected to some extent, but they are better than those in Europe. "Now the shipping schedule is relatively fast, and the freight is not nervous. Coupled with the decline in the price of raw materials during this period, our overall cost has also decreased, so we will appropriately give profits to customers."

Since the epidemic, although it is impossible to communicate with customers face-to-face and recommend new products, Subo Toys still insists on product development and opens the market with new products. Shen Runnan told reporters that in the first half of the year, Super Toys launched two new products: a remote-controlled intelligent voice dialogue robot and a remote-controlled stunt dance robot dog. Among them, the stunt robot dog has also launched a pink girl version. "In girls' toys, there are relatively few remote control products, and ours is unique. In the first half of the year, we attracted some new customers and won new orders with these two new products." In Shen Runnan's view, although this year The overall situation is not ideal, but new products with features and selling points can not only make customers shine, but also add some confidence to enterprises, customers and the market.

Aojieni Silicone Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Aojieni")'s main products are silicone and wood educational toys for infants aged 0-3 years old. Zeng Yanmei, manager of the company's marketing department, told reporters: "Compared with the second half of last year, this year's containers will be easier to order; the sea freight has also adjusted, but the adjustment is not particularly large. Exports have no particular impact, and we mainly ship by air and rail." She also mentioned that Ogerni's customer base is mainly B2B, and since the epidemic has been expanding new customers through platforms such as Alibaba and Google and new markets.

According to the "2022 Semi-Annual Results Forecast" of the listed company Guangdong Gaole Co., Ltd., the company is expected to lose 53 million yuan to 68 million yuan in the first half of this year, which is a further increase than the loss in the same period last year. One of the reasons for the change in performance is that "due to the continuous impact of the epidemic, the company's overseas customers are slow to collect payments, the aging of accounts is prolonged, and the company's provision for bad debts for accounts receivable has increased."

The layout of the exhibition hall from the perspective of online helps the digital transformation of the production area

As a major feature of Chenghai toy production area, the toy exhibition hall is an important way for many factories to contact foreign trade customers, and it is also a barometer to reflect the foreign trade situation. The Hongteng exhibition hall under Guangdong Hongteng Business Exhibition Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Hongteng") is a relatively representative toy exhibition hall in Chenghai District, and has received buyers from more than 140 countries and regions across the country. Huang Weiteng, chairman of the company, said: "The overall situation this year is slightly better than last year, but most of the customers are domestic buyers and trading companies. In addition, factors such as the epidemic and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine have seriously affected exports, and many manufacturers have been abandoned. , the overall market is sluggish, and toy manufacturers are also facing difficulties. Therefore, some manufacturers reduce their booths or temporarily do not participate in the exhibition, which has a great impact on the exhibition hall.”

In response to the situation that foreign buyers cannot purchase products in China, Hongteng applies cloud computing, big data, mobile Internet and other digital technologies to move the offline toy exhibition hall to the online, and launches the "Xiaoniaoyun" platform to solve the problem of trading enterprises at home. Office and global customers cannot come to China to purchase toys and other problems. Huang Weiteng said that at present, the "Xiaoniaoyun" platform has multiple servers around the world, and can switch between 12 languages at will. Since the platform was launched, 8,410 independent websites and exclusive apps have been generated, and a total of 11,428 purchase orders have been received from around the world, including about 3.05 million products and 11,651 production plants.

In view of the relatively difficult operation of toy manufacturers in the past two years, Hongteng adopted the method of entering the exhibition hall to send "Xiaoniaoyun" members, combining online and offline to improve the exposure of enterprises and products. "In addition to the exhibitions in the offline exhibition hall, we also help the settled enterprises to promote and publicize in multiple channels by shooting small videos of booth products, detailed pictures of products in Chinese and English, and live broadcast of manufacturers' products." Huang Weiteng said.

According to reports, Hongteng will be based on the basic situation of the toy industry cluster and the construction of the "Xiaoniaoyun" platform in the future, with "industrial Internet park + industry platform + specialized, special and new enterprise group + industrial digital finance" as a long-term operation idea, continue to Optimize foreign independent stations and exclusive APPs, so that the orders paid by global merchants at independent stations can be understood in real time through the background. At the same time, the interaction between the business center and the data center will realize the businessization of all data and the dataization of all businesses, broaden the data dimension of the toy industry, extend the data link of the toy industry, and realize the quality improvement, cost reduction and efficiency increase of industrial clusters. , gain, thereby driving the digital transformation of the entire toy industry cluster and realizing the high-quality development of the industry cluster.

From the perspective of logistics, container prices have fallen and transportation is relatively smooth.

Forest Global Logistics (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Forest Logistics") is an enterprise dedicated to providing reliable and customized global logistics services for cross-border e-commerce customers. Its business includes FBA head-way services, dedicated line packages and overseas warehouse, etc. According to Wu Shidan, the company's CMO (Chief Marketing Officer), container prices have declined since the beginning of this year. For example, the average price between Shenzhen and Los Angeles in early July was US$6,500/container; the price between Shenzhen and New York was US$9,000-9,500/container. ; Shenzhen-Europe price is about 9000~9500 US dollars / cabinet. The timeliness has also improved a lot compared to last year, and sellers can choose cost-effective channel products according to their needs.

Wu Shidan believes that the reasons for the decline in container fees are mainly due to changes in supply and demand, the impact of domestic epidemics, and changes in platform operations. "The consumption power of the United States continues to be sluggish now, and the high shipping costs cannot be maintained at all." He also said that although the market position is not as tight as before, some ports in the destination country and region are still somewhat blocked.

It is understood that the toy customers that Forest Logistics cooperates with are mainly sellers of cross-border e-commerce or companies that sell their own brand products overseas. They are not only responsible for logistics and transportation, but also help companies handle customs clearance procedures and help international trade companies go overseas in compliance. In the past, when there were a lot of toy exports, because countries had stricter requirements on the quality and customs clearance of toys, the company also set up a special line for toys.