Gifts / Sports & Toys

If the global economy was mostly affected by the COVID-19 in the previous two years, this year will be added to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Even the World Economic Situation and Outlook in 2022 issued by the United Nations mentioned that the global economic recovery was disrupted by the Russian Ukrainian conflict, which led to a huge humanitarian crisis, increased food and commodity prices, increased inflationary pressures worldwide, and reduced the global economic growth rate to 3.1% in 2022.

The world economy has been affected, and China's toy exports cannot be spared. According to customs data, from January to June this year, China's toy exports amounted to 21399.7 billion US dollars, up 24.7% year on year. This growth rate is far higher than the 13.2% growth rate of China's international trade exports in the first half of the year. However, the operating conditions of enterprises are not so optimistic. From listed companies to small, medium and micro enterprises, they all face different problems.

Overall rise in data perspective, growth in Southeast Asia, ups and downs in Europe

The statistical tables published by the General Administration of Customs may have data differences due to differences in caliber. For example, the "Table of Value of Category Seals for Exporters of Some Countries (Regions)" shows the data of "Chapter 95 Toys, Games or Sports Goods and Their Parts and Accessories"; The "Table of Main Trade Methods of Some Export Commodities" shows the products with customs commodity code and tariff code 9503. Although the statistical caliber of the data is different, we can still understand the general situation of China's toy export in the first half of the year through these data.

1. The export volume to Russia and Ukraine declined significantly. From the customs data, in the first half of this year, China's exports to the EU, France, Italy and Spain increased, while those to Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia and Ukraine generally declined. Among them, exports to Russia fell by 32.29%, and exports to Ukraine fell by 62.7%. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine had a significant impact on the economy.

2. The export volume to the eight ASEAN countries and the Americas increased generally. ASEAN is an important trade partner of China and an important region for toy export. According to customs data, in the first half of the year, China's exports to all 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 China, with an increase of more than 30% in the first half of the year. Another country with significant growth in the Americas is Argentina, with an increase of more than 30%.

3. General trade dominated, while the proportion of cross-border e-commerce declined. Although toy export has encountered many problems in the past two years, general trade is still the main export trade mode of toys in China. The cross-border e-commerce, which had developed rapidly in the previous two years, was a new growth point of toy exports, but its proportion declined. According to customs data, in the first half of this year, the export volume of other trade (cross-border e-commerce transferred into other trade) accounted for 20.48% of the total export volume, a decrease of 4 percentage points over the same period last year.

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

Amazon is not the only cross-border e-commerce platform, but other platforms are either regional, or not large enough in scale and coverage. Therefore, even if sellers develop other platforms, they cannot fill the gap.

From the perspective of playing the enterprise, there are good and bad performances, and the operation faces many difficulties

"Our customers are mainly from Europe and the United States, and the number of orders in the first half of this year is much less." Shen Runnan, general manager of Shantou Subo Toys Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Subo Toys"), said that in the past, customers placed orders twice a year, with 80000 to 100000 pieces each time. This year, customers are very cautious and conservative. They are all split into small orders. Next order will be placed quarterly or one or two months, and then follow up in small batches.

The conflict and epidemic situation between Russia and Ukraine have a great impact on the export of Subo toys. It is understood that there are special customers responsible for distributing goods to Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Russia and other countries. "Affected by the war, our orders in Poland were stopped. In addition, there were many delays in shipping due to the epidemic, such as a Belarusian customer's order was delayed until June this year." Shen Runnan said that orders in the United States have also been affected, but they are better than those in Europe. "Now the shipping schedule is relatively fast, and the freight is not tight. In addition, the price of raw materials has declined during this period, and our overall cost has also declined, so we will appropriately give customers a profit."

Since the epidemic, although it is impossible to communicate with customers face to face and recommend new products, Sobo Toys still insists on product research and development to open the market with new products. Shen Runnan told reporters that in the first half of the year, Sobo Toys launched two new products: remote control intelligent voice dialogue robot and remote control stunt dance robot dog, among which the stunt robot dog is the girl version of the pink series. "There are few remote control products among girls' toys, so this one is quite unique. In the first half of the year, we attracted some new customers and obtained new orders with these two new products." In Shen Runnan's view, although the overall situation this year is not ideal, new products with characteristics and selling points can not only make customers shine, but also add some confidence to enterprises, customers and the market.

The main products of Ojani Silicone Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Ojani") are silica gel and wood educational toys for children aged 0 to 3 years. Zeng Yanmei, the manager of the company's marketing department, told the reporter: "Compared with the second half of last year, the containers will be easier to order this year; the sea freight also has a callback, but the callback is not particularly big. In fact, the rise in sea freight caused by the shortage of containers has no special impact on our exports, and we mainly use air transport and railway transport to ship goods." She also mentioned that Ojani's customer base is mainly B2B, and since the epidemic, it has been expanding new customers and markets through Alibaba, Google and other platforms.

The semi annual performance forecast for 2022 of Guangdong Gaole Co., Ltd., a listed company, shows that the company is expected to lose 53 million yuan to 68 million yuan in the first half of this year, which is more 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 have been slow in collecting payments, the aging of accounts has been prolonged, and the company's provision for bad debts of accounts receivable has increased".

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

As a major feature of Chenghai toy production area, toy exhibition hall is an important way for many factories to contact foreign trade customers, and also a barometer reflecting foreign trade situation. The Hongteng Exhibition Hall under Guangdong Hongteng Business Exhibition Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Hongteng") is a representative toy exhibition hall in Chenghai District, which has received buyers from more than 140 countries and regions in China. Huang Weiteng, the 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, the epidemic situation, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and other factors seriously affect exports. Many manufacturers have been abandoned cabinets and orders. The market is generally depressed, and toy manufacturers are also facing difficulties. Therefore, some manufacturers reduce their booths or temporarily do not participate in the exhibition, which has a significant impact on the exhibition hall."

In view of the fact that foreign purchasers are unable to purchase products in China, Hongteng has applied cloud computing, big data, mobile Internet and other digital technologies to move offline toy exhibition halls online, and launched the "Skybird Cloud" platform to solve the problems of home office of trade enterprises and the inability of global customers to purchase toys in China. Huang Weiteng introduced that at present, the "Xiaoniaoyun" platform has multiple servers around the world, and can switch 12 languages at will. Since the platform was launched, 8410 independent websites and exclusive APPs have been generated, and 11428 purchase orders have been received from all over the world, including about 3050000 products, covering 11651 production plants.

In view of the difficult operation of toy manufacturers in the past two years, Hongteng has taken the way of entering the exhibition hall to send off members of "Skybird Cloud", combining online and offline to improve the exposure of enterprises and products. "In addition to the exhibition in the offline exhibition hall, we also helped the settled enterprises to promote through 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.

It is reported that in the future, based on the basic situation of toy industry cluster and the establishment of the "Xiaoniaoyun" platform, Hongteng will continue to optimize foreign independent stations and exclusive APP by taking the "industrial Internet park+industry platform+specialized new enterprise group+industrial digital finance" as its long-term operation idea, so that orders paid by global merchants at independent stations can be learned in real time through the background. At the same time, we will combine business middle office and data middle office interactively, realize all data business, all business data, broaden the data dimension of the toy industry, extend the data link of the toy industry, and achieve the improvement, cost reduction, efficiency increase and gain of the industrial cluster, so as to drive the digital transformation of the entire toy industrial cluster and achieve high-quality development of the industrial cluster.

From the perspective of logistics, the container price drops and the transportation is relatively smooth

Big Forest Global Logistics (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Big Forest Logistics") is an enterprise committed to providing reliable customized global logistics services for cross-border e-commerce customers, including FBA first course services, special line small bags and overseas warehouses. According to Wu Shidan, CMO (chief marketing officer) of the company, the container price has declined since this year. For example, the average price between Shenzhen and Los Angeles in early July was 6500 dollars per container; The price between Shenzhen and New York is 9000~9500 dollars/cabinet; The price between Shenzhen and Europe is about 9000~9500 dollars/cabinet. The timeliness is also much better than last year, and sellers can choose cost-effective channel products according to their needs.

As for the reasons for the decrease of container costs, Wu Shidan believed that it was mainly due to changes in the supply and demand relationship, the impact of domestic epidemics and changes in platform operations. "The consumption power of the United States continues to be low, and the high ocean freight can not be maintained at all." He also said that although the market position is not as tense as before, some ports in the destination countries and regions are still blocked.

It is understood that the toy customers of Big Forest Logistics Cooperation are mainly cross-border e-commerce sellers or enterprises selling their own brand products overseas. They are not only responsible for logistics and transportation, but also help enterprises to handle customs clearance procedures and help international trade enterprises to go to sea in compliance. In the past, when toys were exported in large quantities, because countries had strict requirements on toy quality and customs clearance, the company also opened special toy lines.