2023-06-26 04:56:00
With the Chinese increasing demand for milk powder, baby diapers, and infant and toddler care services, a new trend has emerged in China’s baby products sector.
Rapid development of the child economy
Tourism in China witnessed a boom during the 2023 Labor Day holiday, as the ((Report on the conditions of the Chinese cultural and tourism market during the 2023 International Labor Day holiday)) issued by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism indicated that 274 million people took trips within China during this holiday, An increase of 70.83% compared to the previous year.
More than two dozen comprehensive children’s gyms affiliated with the company stopped classes and training during the holiday because a large number of trainee children went on tourism travel with their families, said Yue Xiaochen, executive vice president of Baopiwang Company of Wanda Group, who is in charge of the company’s children’s garden business and intellectual property. This situation is completely different from the past.
Despite the negative impacts of the post-epidemic period, a large number of children visit Wanda shopping malls, especially going to Baobeiang company halls. Baobiang has held 900 activities, such as cartoon movie screenings, parent-child sports, and handicraft training classes, in many regions of China, attracting more than 70,000 participants.
China’s child economy is characterized by “one child playing with a family”, which leads to increased consumption. In an early learning center in a Beijing shopping mall, some children were reading books, others were playing block games or bouncing on a trampoline before class, and parents accompanied them to serve them food and alert them to any danger. This is what happens in almost all children’s halls.
Ms. Zhang, who works in the field of technology and information, said that she does not have much time to accompany her child following work. She believes that the Early Learning Center is an ideal place for her, so she enrolled her child in music and sports lessons at the Early Learning Center in the shopping mall, where she can take care of her child, eat and shop easily.
Mr. Huang takes care of the curriculum of the lessons at the Early Learning Center. He said that the center’s lessons help his child to think artistically.
Regardless of the exact reasons and objectives, most of the big shopping malls have indoor playgrounds, early learning centers and toy car halls for children, and they are visited by a large number of children and their parents on holidays.
According to the seventh general census of the population in China, the number of children between the ages of zero and 17 years will reach 298 million by 2020. With the progress of the Chinese economy and the renewal of the educational concept, the Chinese interest in raising children has increased. Despite the significant impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Chinese economy and consumption pattern and methods, many Chinese have not reduced their spending on children’s education.
With the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, Yue Xiaochen said, the childhood experience sector has quickly regained vitality, and it can be said that this sector has great recovery strength. Since the adjustment of the epidemic prevention policy at the beginning of 2023, and on the occasion of the Spring Festival and the winter school holidays, the childhood experience sector has rebounded rapidly. For example, Baobiwang has held more than 9,300 different and wonderful activities, involving nearly two hundred thousand people from 102,000 households.
((Results of the general market survey and strategic advisory report for financing the children’s consumer industry 2020-2026)) indicated that the amount of child-related spending accounted for regarding 30% of the total expenditure of the Chinese household in recent years. According to data from the Yingshi Group Research Center, the children’s consumption market has reached regarding 4.5 trillion yuan (currently one US dollar equals 7 yuan), and the growth rate of the total children’s consumption value is expected to exceed 20 percent in the next five years.
Upgrading the childhood experiences sector
Yue Xiaochen has been in the baby supplies business for fifteen years and has conducted in-depth research on large, medium and small size indoor childhood experience programs in China. According to her, the inner childhood experiences industry took off around 2008. With the increase in the number of shopping centers, especially the formation of shopping circles at a distance of three to five kilometers in the vicinity of residential areas in many Chinese cities, shopping centers have become an important part of the daily life of the Chinese. In 2014, the Wanda Group decided to create a new children’s company and make the childhood experiences sector a driving force to attract more customers, including children, their families and residents in the vicinity of shopping centers. Benefiting from the favorable conditions of Wanda Group, Baobiwang, which was founded in 2014, has achieved rapid development and has an annual per-store income of regarding ten million yuan.
With the increase in competition since 2018, and especially the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020, the work of many of those involved in this industry came to a sudden halt. Yue Xiaochen added that in the baby items sector, children need to experience it themselves. Her company has launched a lot of online activities to make up for losses due to store closures. Therefore, Baobeiang has gradually improved over the past years.
The number of Baobiang stores in different regions of China has reached 400. In addition to the establishment of Baobeyang Park, the company has also upgraded its products and introduced fun lessons and activities to enhance children’s multiple abilities.
In August 2022, a Guinness World Records official announced that Baobiwang received the highest number of pledges in a campaign to protect a single species of animal. After Baobiwang received the Guinness World Records certificate, the first edition of the World Watchers Cartoon Festival (“Team Under the Sea”) was successfully concluded. Baobiwang has organized world record-breaking activities for five consecutive years, involving more than 100,000 children. The theme of the activity in 2022 was “Protecting Biodiversity, Starfish in Action” seeking to spread biological information, inviting more children to care regarding the ecological environment, and protecting animals.
Baobiang has won 19 awards at the national and international level, and the number of registered members has reached 18 million. On November 17, 2022, Baobiang was recognized as the Best Enterprise in Chinese Toy Industry and 2022 China Model Toy Enterprise.
The need for healthy development
Children see that entertainment is not an additional matter, but a necessary subject for them. Childhood experiences are also the need of parents. In fact, the children’s consumer market is invisibly protected, Yue Xiaochen said. For example, the one-time cost of childhood experiences in large cities was 150 yuan per person, and increased by regarding 10% or 20% following the pandemic. Despite changes in the consumption of Chinese youth, the number of child consumers has remained stable.
New demands drive the continuous improvement of the children’s supplies sector, so children’s barbershops, picture book halls, fitness halls, car racing halls, etc. appeared. Today, many investors aim at financing the baby economy, and they are trying to find new points of profit.
Most of the children playing in the indoor children’s garden are three to five years old, said Yue Xiaochen. Depending on their psychological development, these experiences cannot meet their needs. Plus, with school classes increasing, they don’t have much time for fun. She added that compared with the hotel and cinema sector, the competition in the child economy is very intense, the relevant standards have not been formed, and the projects of various companies are very similar. In this context, Baobeiang is exploring the best mechanism to improve the childhood experience sector and enterprise upgrading.
In recent years, various indoor children’s parks with delicate services and exquisite facilities have appeared in China. These new gardens quickly became very popular. In order to face the amplification of the impact of its shocks in the children’s market, Baobiang pays attention to upgrading equipment, providing projects according to the requirements of children of different ages, and improving product functions in order to increase customers’ reliance on its company.
The children’s consumer market in China arose from the need for children’s supplies, and then expanded to the field of education, so retail trade and education services were the basis for this market. As for the childhood experiences sector, it emerged late and gained high commercial value over the past two decades.
Yue Xiaozhen has witnessed the growth of the children’s sector in China, and she believes that this sector is still in the initial stage, but it is characterized by high vitality and has huge potential. At the same time, the concept of parents of children who define consumption projects is changing. However, parents are the decision-makers regarding children’s consumption, and parents’ opinions on consumption are constantly changing with changes in the economic market. Everyone who works in this sector must face this situation very seriously.
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