Many young mothers have such an experience, seeing a mother and baby store, they are always dazzled by the display of quality and appearance, even if they try to restrain themselves, they can't hold back the fanatical desire to buy. I have to admit that in the era when rich children are deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, the maternity, infant and child industry has experienced a rare dividend period in history
As a well-known garment business district of Zhengzhou Railway Station in six central provinces, there are thousands of pregnant and infant merchants, who are important participants in the industrial chain and enjoy huge market dividends.
However, a fact that cannot be ignored is that in the context of the declining demographic dividend and the decline in fertility, although the sales scale of the maternal and infant market is growing every year, the growth rate is declining.
In the case that the growth of the sales scale of the maternity, infant and child market has become a consensus, and the decline in fertility rate is a fact, how should the pregnant and infant merchants located in Zhengzhou garment business district adjust their business ideas, better adapt to the current complex market environment, find an operation model that matches their own situation, and become the "winning general" of the industry?
The pros and cons of the maternal and infant market
Over the years, the maternal and infant market has been like a dark horse in the industry, with strong growth momentum and envy of other industries. The expansion of the market size has benefited from the changes in the parenting concept of the new generation of parents and the improvement of residents' spending power.
From the point of view of consumer groups,Unlike most post-60s and post-70s parents whose child-raising standards are limited to food and clothing, post-80s and post-90s parents are more in pursuit of scientific parenting and refined feeding. The change in feeding methods has given birth to a blue ocean market with a scale of over one trillion yuan.
Compared with the careful planning of post-80s mothers, the new generation of mothers, mainly born in the 90s, generally hold the concept of "birth" and "raising" need to be intensive. They are more fond of trying new things, and they also advocate a scientific view of parenting, and post-90s mothers are becoming the new mainstream of consumption.
According to the report of iResearch, in 2021, post-90s consumers will account for more than 60 of China's maternal and infant population6%, replacing the post-80s group to become the main user in the maternal and infant field. This generation is generally more educated, more willing to spend money for their children, and often more subjective in improving their material life.
This group often has the consumption characteristics of focusing on the appearance, efficacy and quality of products. When they become the backbone of maternal and infant consumption, the demand for maternal and infant consumption will also escalate again. As a result, the maternal and infant market will be further developed in the direction of high-end and refinement, giving birth to more market opportunities.
In terms of per capita income,The huge consumption power contained in the maternal and infant market comes from the growth of people's income. According to the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, compared with previous years, although the growth rate has slowed down recently, it is still increasing overall. In 2022, China's per capita disposable income reached 36,883 yuan, an increase of 2 over the previous year9%。
The increase in per capita disposable income and the improvement of the consumption power of mothers, infants and children have supported the steady upward trend of the maternal and infant market. After nearly 40 years of development, the product categories of China's maternal and infant industry have shown exponential growth, from the two categories of diapers and milk powder in the first ten years to thousands now.
With the increase of categories, the market size is also expanding rapidly. According to a report by Zhiyan Consulting, the overall consumption scale of China's maternal and child industry will reach 4 in 202271 trillion yuan, an increase of 8 from 20215%。
iResearch predicts that China's maternal and infant market will continue to maintain a stable growth trend in the future, and will become a blue ocean market with a scale of more than 5 trillion yuan by 2025.
However, one of the biggest challenges for the maternal and infant market is the decline in the number of newborns.
Statistically, from 2017 to 2022, the number of births in China has declined for six consecutive years. In 2022, there were only 9.56 million births in the country. And judging from China's demographics, there is no sign of a reversal in the short term. This also means that the maternal and infant market is entering an era of stock competition from the incremental competition in the past.
Expand product line and increase market share
The transformation of the market will inevitably affect any link in the maternal and infant industry chain. Changing business ideas and seeking a new way out will become a top priority for the maternal and infant industry.
For maternal and infant operators, the most personal feeling in recent years is that the business of "single product is king" has become a thing of the past. The term "category wins" is starting to gain traction. Therefore, more and more pregnant and infant merchants have begun to expand from a single category to multiple categories.
The maternal and infant market is rich in categories and large in scale, and there is a certain space in each market segment. For merchants, the expansion of product lines will undoubtedly bring more market opportunities and development space.
Bangjun learned from a maternity, infant and child merchant who has been operating in the Zhengzhou World Trade Center (hereinafter referred to as the "World Trade Center") for many years that in recent years, more and more merchants have been adding "categories". Others do it, you don't do it, you may be eliminated, the first expansion and then adjust the business model is the current common choice of pregnant and infant businesses.
One of the main characteristics of the maternal and infant consumer group is the diversification of demand. Extending the product line to expand into all categories can be said to be a good strategy to deal with the decline in the birth population.
In the past two years, the number of large stores in the maternal and infant format of the World Trade Center has risen sharply, and the internal logic of store expansion is the inevitable reaction after market feedback. More and more business cases have confirmed that rich product display and convenient customer purchase have become the internal requirements of brand development.
As a typical representative of the horizontal expansion of the product line, the five-layer maternity, infant and child merchants of the World Trade Center currently not only have a wide variety of maternal and infant products, such as toilet paper, laundry detergent, cream paper, wet wipes, disposable cotton soft towels, diapers and other categories, but also many brands of infant and child clothing.
Yiya Premium World Trade Center Image Store.
In the product portfolio formulated by Yiyayoupin, categories such as pumping paper and wet wipes are set as explosive products, and then the sales of other products are driven by explosive products.
Because pumping paper and wet wipes have the characteristics of high consumption frequency, large consumption and wide market coverage, they can often play a role in bringing customers to stores. With the trust and endorsement in the previous cooperation process, other categories are easily accepted by customers, so as to drive the sales of the whole store's products through traffic products, and realize the mutual drainage between products. This product setting model can be said to have an immediate effect on improving store performance.
At the same time,A rich product portfolio that can meet the one-stop shopping needs of customersIt greatly saves their time in selecting products and brings customers a more convenient and fast shopping experience.
With a full range of products and a pleasant shopping experience, Yiya Youpin has won the favor of more and more powerful customers and has developed into a new benchmark in Zhengzhou's maternal and infant market.
Different from the first and other formats, the life cycle of maternal and infant users is short, the iteration is fast, and there are natural shortcomings. However, broadening the vertical expansion of the yardage type can greatly weaken the consumption pain points of maternal and infant users, meet the extensive long-tail needs of users, and greatly extend the life cycle of users.
Ka Bang Boom Business World Trade Center Image Store.
For example, the store began to comprehensively expand its product line two years ago, and used to only make 0-2 years old infant and children's clothing, but now the cotton clothing has been expanded to 130 yards, and the maximum size of home clothing is 160 yards.
In recent years, the sales of 52 and 59 size confinement clothes in the market have declined significantly, but because of the extension to young children and middle children in advance, the performance has not only not been affected by the decrease in the number of newborns in the past year, but has grown against the trend. At the 2023 autumn and winter order fair, the sales volume of a single product exceeded 100,000.
In the final analysis, whether it is horizontal expansion or vertical expansion, a rich product portfolio will undoubtedly be of great help to increase store sales. As long as we adjust our business thinking in a timely manner, we can tap unlimited market opportunities.
From the perspective of the industry, although the number of births is declining, it does not mean the disappearance of the maternal and infant market dividend. With the rise of the new consumption power of the post-90s, the future market is likely to shift from "volume increase" to "price increase", which still contains huge market potential.
For pregnant women, infants and children, keeping the stock to increase the appropriate enrichment of the product line and homeopathic development may not be the best strategy to deal with the future market. In the face of the blue ocean of the industry that is about to usher in a scale of 5 trillion yuan, are you ready?