When trendy toy figures have become the favorite of more and more young people, it has become a new consumption boom to give these “babies” a comfortable and personalized “home”. Trendy toy storage is no longer just simple storage, but also a way for enthusiasts to express themselves.
Where did the blind box dolls drawn by young people go to settle down?
On Xiaohongshu, there are more than 20,000 notes about “Labubu storage”, including “trendy old wizards”, as well as trendy toys and new ones, and the point of discussion is no longer around how to prevent Labubu from eating ashes at home, but how to see the hardcover room of the “baby” in the prime position of the room as soon as you enter the door.
With the new round of outbreak of rubber dolls led by Labubu, the popularity of blind box dolls has also continued to rise, and storage boxes, display cabinets, these seemingly useless accessories, not only carry the role of simple storage, they have gradually become a window for a new generation of young people to display personalized collections and self-worth expression. Wang Ning, the founder of Bubble Mart, once said that in modern society, what makes people feel satisfied must be non-rigid products.
Under this opportunity, a group of merchants and manufacturers bet on this trend track, and a manufacturer told “Tianxia Online Merchants” that storage box products can produce 20,000 orders per day, and the current production capacity has peaked and is in short supply, and it is predicted that such a sales peak will be maintained before the start of school.
The peripheral business of the trendy play has brought the first pot of gold to many young entrepreneurs, but all categories have a life cycle, some merchants predict that this type of product will have a three-year growth point, Labubu will also give birth to the next phenomenal IP, in this “golden track” will also pour into a large number of new players, with the big waves, the old players who remain are the real kings.
Giving a “baby” a home is a serious matter
For trendy figure lovers, it is more exciting to go home and “settle down” for them than to draw the “baby” home in the store. This is a personalized “reconstruction” of the doll’s survival scene.
Compared with the traditional storage method, the storage of trendy toys is more like “settling down for the baby”, different sizes, sizes, colors of trendy toys need to be configured with different “house types”, there are single rooms, terraced houses, and stacked villas, under the new wave of consumption of young people’s “exquisite raising ‘babies'”, all kinds of trendy toys storage boxes are prevalent on the Internet to meet diversified needs.
Under the consumption trend, Taobao has also derived a series of supporting storage products related to trendy toys, such as trendy toys storage boxes. According to the data, Taobao’s handmade storage box increased by more than 200% year-on-year.
Yiwu merchant Zhuochao daily necessities has begun to develop storage products related to blind box trendy toys since 2021, and the other party said that there has been a toy storage concept since the beginning of plush toys, and in recent years, due to the explosion of Bubble Mart, there has been a concept of “small storage”. On Taobao, the storage price of a store’s hot-selling double-layer trendy toy is 67 yuan, which can accommodate 4-5 small figures, and it is estimated that the “daily rent” of the figure is only 1 cent.
Buying storage products is just the beginning, and players hope that their dolls can “live” comfortably. On Xiaohongshu, you can see a large number of notes on the reconstruction of the “baby room”. In fact, toy storage has always been a tricky problem, especially now there are more and more varieties of trendy toys, from enamel to cute grains, if you don’t want to find a “good place to live” for them, you will feel that you are collecting in vain. Based on this, there have also been “trendy toy storage bloggers” on social media, who are not only trendy toy lovers, but also a good hand in trendy toy storage.
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For example, a netizen stored Labubu in an IKEA acrylic photo frame, surrounded Labubu into a circle, made a picture frame Labubu, and hung it on the most conspicuous wall of the home. Another netizen designed the doll storage and transformation into a part of the home soft decoration, he designed a doll wall, hung all the dolls on the wall, and faced this “valuable” wall every day, saying that every day when he went out was like designing “OOTD (daily wear)”, thinking about which doll to take out to play. On Xiaohongshu, a player named “Astro Boy” unboxed the blind box to make a refrigerator magnet, and then made it into a blind box clock, which won high praise. On social media, blind box storage has always been a hot topic, constantly giving birth to new content.
Behind them, an emerging track based on the interests of young people has been opened, and countless new and old players have poured into it to launch a nugget boom around derivatives.
From trendy shoe storage to trendy toy storage
With the expansion of China’s trendy toy market and the continuous expansion of consumer groups, the storage demand for “settling down for babies” is booming.
This track is already very crowded. In 2014, Chaoshan boy Chen Zineng opened a Taobao store called “GOTO”, specializing in sneaker washing, storage and other products. The brand logo is a thumbs up gesture, which means: “Just do it.” ”
At that time, GOTO started with sneaker storage, until 2019, they smelled a trend of blind box storage, when the market size of China’s trendy toys has exceeded 20 billion yuan, especially the head merchants such as Bubble Mart are only one step away from listing, GOTO keenly captures the huge potential of “trendy toy storage”. In April 2020, GOTO decisively launched the first trendy toy storage box with “building block bear” as the core around the indoor scene, which became a hit as soon as it was launched.
Chen Zineng, the manager of GOTO, pointed out: “Sneakers and trendy toys have similarities with artworks on some levels, carrying community culture and emotional value. Essentially, young people pay for love. This insight became the cornerstone of GOTO’s transformation.
Rodin emphasized that GOTO’s early insights came from their close connection to the private domain community of sneaker enthusiasts to capture the emerging demand for trendy toy storage. “On the other hand, based on the data insights of the Tmall industry, we have determined this upward trend, starting from basic blind box storage, and continuing to iterate to advanced products that integrate smart lighting and voice-controlled devices.”
It is reported that GOTO currently has nearly 100 SKUs (minimum stock keeping units), covering different colors, sizes, and functions, and they have unexpectedly found a “new crowd” in the process of product expansion. In the past, sneaker collections were mostly boys, and the proportion of women in the trendy blind box collection group was higher, which also allowed the brand to have a more comprehensive audience, and for women, they developed the “macaron series” that exploded on the whole network.
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Of course, no merchant will give up tracking popular IPs. Taking the top-tier Labubu as an example, the team innovatively added rings to the basic figure box, and explored rotating, sliding doors and other forms, aiming to maximize the display effect and accurately meet the needs of collectors to “show their babies”.
In the past 618 promotion, the GOTO figure storage category increased by 76% year-on-year, far exceeding the same period last year, and the annual sales of the figure box category will also exceed 30 million yuan; Rodin said that the category has been growing since its inception in 2020. Among them, the G macaron figure display box with a unit price of 260 yuan has sold more than 30,000 pieces, ranking among the top 1 figure storage box categories during the 618 period.
In order to better cater to the preferences of consumers, on the one hand, they will co-create with users, such as finding Lina Belle’s collectors to jointly develop and upgrade products.
On the other hand, in terms of creating a scene atmosphere, GOTO has strengthened the “display” function of the storage box, such as co-branding with IPs such as NetEase’s “Onmyoji”, integrating into theme scenes such as forests, and continuously upgrading intelligent interaction, voice control and lighting systems to create an immersive “sense of atmosphere”.
The factory produces 20,000 orders per day, and the production capacity has peaked and the supply exceeds the demand
In Yiwu, the industrial belt of blind box storage, the non-stop production line day and night can better confirm the outbreak of this plastic product.
The “super factory” Yiwu Zhuochao daily necessities on 1688 is a typical representative of this industrial chain. But the slight difference is that in this traditional factory, nearly a thousand blind box dolls are exquisitely placed, and even the workers on the production line are very familiar with these characters.
Fang Zhen’an, head of factory operations, said that the current production peak is the peak of production, and all the production capacity of the factory can achieve 20,000 pieces per day and about 600,000 pieces per month, of which Labubu’s protective cover occupies the core production capacity, because of the high demand, they have experienced the peak of production capacity and short supply.
“Wholesale customers, the order volume is between 5,000 and 10,000, and the delivery time is generally about three days, and if the quantity is 100,000 or more, the delivery time will be close to one month.” Fang Zhenan said. Years of production and sales experience have also given Zhuochao daily necessities a more refined stocking experience. In the survey of user consumption habits, they found that users’ storage behavior usually occurs in two stages, the first is when they are first used, and the second is when the new doll is moved. For example, not long ago, Bubble Mart launched a wave of Labubu’s new products, and they judged that in about three months, after the release of the next new IP, there would be a large amount of storage demand.
“We will not stop production until the end of the summer vacation, and we will ensure continuous delivery.” Fang Zhen’an believes that summer is a time when students are on vacation, and it is also an upward node in blind box consumption, which is the peak season. It is reported that since last year, Zhuochao daily necessities have completed sales of more than 30 million yuan in blind box storage alone.
Regarding the rise in performance, Fang Zhenan believes that it still captures the emotional business that young people pursue today. At that time, Zhuochao daily necessities started from the storage of plastic products, and actually began to focus on the field of trendy toy storage last year.
In this track where thousands of people are competing, micro-innovation is necessary to break through, and their thinking dimension is to make a sense of difference, and to innovate in terms of usage scenarios and appearance forms. The travel scene is a key direction of Zhuochao daily necessities, and they see the current scene of young people “traveling to raise babies”. “This storage case needs to be highly transparent and drop-resistant, and it will add a layer of filter to the product, which is more like the current popular ‘pain bag’.”
In order to better restore its “beauty”, Zhuochao daily necessities are also thinking about the appearance of storage, making a 3D three-dimensional storage protective case that is more suitable for dolls. “It fits the doll very well, only 0.1-0.2 mm away, which will make Labubu look more textured.” Fang Zhen’an said.
Some merchants predict that there will be a three-year explosion period in the trendy toy storage industry, and this emotional business has been favored by the market. Next, GOTO will try to integrate the gameplay of trendy shoes into trendy toy storage, do personalized customization, and do city restrictions, and Zhuochao daily necessities will continue to focus on C-end retail while doing wholesale, and will also extend from blind box storage to two-dimensional product storage in the category.
When trendy toys gradually become the daily consumption of the public, the baby walls of young people will be richer and become a scenery that lights up life
