Small fans also have big business opportunities, the "world toy capital" behind the road to the sea.

In Shantou, Guangdong Province, in addition to the Chaoshan food that has been frequently featured on social media in recent years, there is also a huge toy industry belt hidden. It is located in Chenghai District, Chaoshan interior, in this less than 400 square meters of land grew out of nearly 20,000 toy companies, the birth of five listed toy companies. Taking advantage of the heat wave of reform and opening up and China's rapid economic development, tens of thousands of job opportunities have been created.

In recent years, with the upgrading and transformation of China's foreign trade, many industrial belts with Chinese characteristics are also constantly exploring their own way to the sea. Chenghai Toy industry Belt, as an advantageous industrial cluster adjacent to the Pearl River Delta, is also constantly thinking about its own future in the wave of economic change.

Thinking and change

Shantou Chenghai toy Industry cluster was born in the late 1990s. Due to its geographical location close to Hong Kong, Shantou, as the hometown of overseas Chinese, attracted many Hong Kong businessmen and overseas Chinese to return home for investment. They brought the hottest toy industry in Hong Kong at that time, quickly occupied overseas markets with ultra-low prices, and at the same time, they gave full play to their geographical advantages to replace the toy industry belt in Zhangzhou Anhai, becoming the "town of China's toys".

However, the disorderly expansion in the early stage has also buried a time bomb for the further development of Chenghai toys, and Chenghai toys have become synonymous with "low-end" toys.

In recent years, the continuous rise of comprehensive production costs has led to the continuous spillover of industrial belts, and the low-price advantage has faded. If we cannot enhance product competitiveness from the aspects of brand, culture, innovation, etc., then the industrial advantages accumulated over the years will eventually degenerate.

Shantou Yixuan Toys Co., LTD. (hereinafter referred to as: Yixuan), as a toy company established in Chenghai for more than ten years, has cut in from the niche subdivision circuit of home toys and achieved the transformation and upgrading from product OEM to independent brand construction. Among them, it also condensed the industrial changes of the entire industry for more than ten years.

When asked when to begin to consider the transformation, the staff of Shantou Art Xuan told us: "Art Xuan began to operate more categories involving desk lamps, music boxes, piggy banks, clocks and other partial home gifts, relatively small in the Chenghai industrial belt." But the category is less, the later development is limited. The founder, Mr. Lin Shenghong, began to consider how to further enrich the product and upgrade the transformation."

A small electric fan, open the big market

At that time, the country introduced the policy of peak electricity consumption, and the electricity consumption time was adjusted for some areas, and the electricity consumption of residents and enterprises was staggered. Because of the reason of off-peak power consumption, many residents will prepare charging LED small desk lamps for emergency use. In this case, LED portable light sales surge, while the portable charging small fan market is still a blank, which means that portable fans will have a huge market after the launch. Lin Shenghong, the founder of Yi Xuan Toys, saw a new opportunity at this time.

After investigating the various types of charging fans on the market, Lin Shenghong found that the charging fans on the market are relatively large and not easy to carry, so in 2013, he began to develop the first portable fan. Its brand "elegant color" was also born.

The staff of Art Xuan told us: "At the beginning, the portable fan category did not have any examples to refer to, so a lot of diversified styles were tried in the design of the fan." Cartoon cuteness, fashion trends, minimalism, basically everything you see on the market now, we've tried it all." After a market survey and continuous trial and error, Yixuan Toys positioned the new brand "elegant color" user portrait for young groups over 20 years old. This group has a certain consumption power, and value product design and product texture. According to different trends, "Elegant Color" has designed products in Macaron, Morandi and this year's popular dopamine color to further fit the current fashion trend. The staff told us: Before each market, the whole research and development team will do a lot of design attempts, including a variety of colors and shapes. After the early positioning, the market reaction of the final confirmed version is very good! Rich colors and shapes have also become a highlight of the "elegant color" brand.

Small fans also have big business opportunities, the "world toy capital" behind the road to the sea. Photo source: Shantou Yixuan

After tasting the success of "elegant color", Yixuan Toys continued to pursue the success and created a sub-brand for children and girls under the age of 20, "One meter", which focuses on cute and cute style. Different from the "elegant color", the sub-brand "One meter" uses more cute animal shapes in the shape, coupled with high saturation color matching. It soon opened the consumer market, and because of the high matching degree with many animation IP, it received many customized orders from overseas.

Facing overseas, taking over cities and territories

From the traditional source industrial belt factory, to the creation of independent brands for fine operation. The road to the brand of Yixuan toys lies in the keen insight into the consumption trend and consumer orientation of the entire market. They do not conform to the traditional but constantly adjust the entire product design according to the current fashion trend. Break the traditional supply chain "immutable" industry dilemma. Continuously enhance their own design and production capacity to complete the upgrading and transformation of the industry.

Today, Yixuan Toys has dozens of production workshops, will launch dozens of new products every year, all styles of daily output can reach tens of thousands of units, products covering portable fans, LED portable lights, hand warmer, music box and other categories. And sold to Europe, America, Southeast Asia and other overseas markets. The offline sales channels are mainly business super, and the online layout is Amazon and Alibaba International station. Multi-channel and multi-market rollout.

In the process of entering overseas markets, there is a huge challenge for the traditional supply chain, that is, consumers in different countries have different demands for products. Consumers in the European and American markets value product quality and environmental protection qualifications, and need relevant product qualification certificates. Southeast Asian consumers, on the other hand, focus more on price. For the consumption differences in different markets, through the strong control of the back-end supply chain, we can quickly adjust the specific product design according to the market. In response to the needs of some cooperative cross-border sellers, Yixuan also told us that we can cooperate to develop products more in line with each other's markets according to the specific requirements of sellers, and the sales and marketing team can also develop marketing plans suitable for each other.

From OEM, ODM to have an independent brand and a strong R & D team, Yixuan, as a supply chain manufacturer with more than ten years of production experience, has seen business opportunities from the subtle points, achieved a gorgeous transformation from traditional to modern, and provided a set of excellent examples for reference for the transformation and upgrading of more industrial belt in the future.

Yixuan Toys said that in the future, it will continue to do a good job of brand building foundation, improve brand image, and further enhance brand value. At the same time, we will unite with more cross-border sellers to make Chinese products popular all over the world, and realize the real industry and brand to go to sea!