How big is the imagination of children's clay?

Creating their own world out of colorful plasticine is fun for every child. During the summer vacation, the Pediatric Institute Club also noticed that many training camps have DIY clay-related games and crafting courses. Many toy stores are also using colorful clay modeling to attract the attention of children and parents.

According to the "2019 China Toy Trend Report" released by the Chinese and Foreign Toys All Media Center, handmade DIY toys are more and more popular among parents and children at home and abroad because of their large creative space and strong parent-child interaction. Among them, as a kind of children's DIY toy that has become popular in recent years, ultra-light clay is favored by children and handicraft enthusiasts because of its good feel and strong shaping ability.

01

The Big Four in Children's Clay

Children's clay, also known as Super-Light Clay, is a recently developed children's toy. It is easier and more comfortable to knead, more suitable for modeling, and the work is very cute. It was popular in Japan at first. It is a new type of environmentally friendly, non-toxic, and naturally air-dried handmade modeling material that originated in Japan.

Compared with plasticine, which was invented in the last century, it is safer and more environmentally friendly. Therefore, ultra-light clay has gradually replaced plasticine and has become the first choice for children to play.

However, there are still many problems in the development of ultra-light clay: looking at the products on the market, the entire industry is still in the stage of a mixed bag and an inefficient price war. Most of them are still in the stage of selling raw materials; and due to the price war, many small workshops have a weak awareness of quality and hit the market with inferior and low-end products. Bad money drives out good money, and corporate profits are low, eventually forming a vicious circle.

At present, the number of preschool children aged 0-6 in my country is about 90 million, and there are more than 10 million newborns every year. The huge user group, even if calculated according to the unit price of 50 yuan, will have a market size of several billions every year.

Since children's clay itself does not have a high threshold for product characteristics, domestic brand clay has become more and more popular in the market in recent years due to its cost-effectiveness. As far as the current sales situation is concerned, local brands far exceed foreign brands.

02

Three players and five trends

According to the underlying logic of industrialized business, if you want to stand out in a field, you need to focus on three aspects:

1) Effectiveness of operations

2) Cost leadership

3) Differentiation

In the past, it was considered that only one of these three points could be chosen. It would be difficult and cheaper to do better, and it would be difficult to differentiate if it was cheaper. However, with the explosion of innovation and digital applications, many brands have moved towards: Cheaper, better, and more differentiated.