Adult Products Survey: Why does a seemingly huge market become a pioneering swamp?

[Guide] Several entrepreneurial teams have tried to develop related adult products, but so far there is no successful case, because it is too difficult, the apparel industry, consumer electronics business play is difficult to copy into the adult supplies industry.

2014 before the Spring Festival, a Sunday afternoon, a warm sunny day, a male clerk standing in the three Li Tun Soho C B1 shop looking forward to customers, after a long wait, a group of young men and women were laughing at the shop door, in less than 1 minutes, they took 4 photos in the shop, and then laughing away , without buying any products, the following hours continued to be empty.

The name of this shop is called "powerful Sex Shop", is the most successful Chinese brand marketing adult products store, founder Zhang Mengning (Ma Jiajia) has become the topic of the career of the theme of the people, its bold marketing style and business philosophy by many media, she himself began as "internet thinking "The representative frequently appears in each kind of General Assembly, the related speech ppt in micro-bo, the micro-letter platform to be countless times forwarding and sharing.

Although powerful Sex shop's clerk had disclosed to Tencent technology that the store's best business was 8 to 10 on weekends, this weekend night may be an exception, with few customers coming. A young man working at the shop, dozens of metres away, claimed that the shop was not very well, because there was no Chinese sign, and he had mistakenly thought it was a fashion shop.

According to Tencent Science and technology, has been widely reported by the media is located in Gaobeidian Xinglong Street powerful Sex shop experience shops have been closed, the store opened in 2013, in the year of October, easy shop and 58 with the city has been the transfer of shop information, But until now the relevant shops have not yet a Ma Jiajia, and he refused to respond to Tencent technology related interview questions, only that it is not their team's business model.

Of course, the depressed adult stores are not just powerful Sex shop, in the street shop near Taikoo Wui Street, three Li Tun Soho, an adult shop with an orange adult did not get a lot of customers from the daytime city of Hee-hee, until only a few guests arrived after nightfall.

Interestingly, the most internet thinking of the "powerful Sex shop" online mall is still in the process of construction, and orange Adult store door of the electronic billboards are constantly flashing their web site--a very expensive single letter beginning of the domain name.

"Ma Jiajia in the marketing of some of the practice is very interesting, but want to rely on a few ppt to subvert the adult supplies industry is not realistic, after all, they are only the lowest level of the industrial chain distributor." According to the industry, the traditional line of adult goods industry in the online channel business as early as 2007, 2008 began to try network channel sales, but the outside publicity is not enough, for several years this industry has basically completed the main channel from the line to the line changes.

Clearly, in the eyes of the outside world, the industry is not close to the rescue of Internet thinking, even know the internet, and more importantly, the market has already said goodbye to the line in the years ahead of the high growth period, perhaps in the brand marketing there are some entrepreneurial opportunities, but compared to electronic products, The difficulty of starting a business in this market is exponentially doubled.

Seemingly huge market

In the end, there is still no one can say clearly how big the market is for the adult goods industry. Taobao Adult products store in the circle, the general view of sex toys and AIDS market only 2 billion of the scale, and the founder of the Spring church Shudegang that, apart from condoms, the Chinese market for adult products is about 30 billion yuan.

Tencent Technology has been unable to obtain the Chinese adult products market Size Accurate figures, however, no matter which respondents, are accustomed to the family planning supplies (condoms, contraceptives) in the market size of adult products excluded from the calculation, the reason without him, these have been accepted by the General family planning supplies and not much imagination space, ultra channels tend to stabilize, Brands and shares are also hard to change.

Then put aside the family planning supplies of adult products market is a rapid development of the market it? Durex to Tencent Technology, at present, in addition to condoms, the company's other categories in the Chinese market is still in need of education stage.

According to industry insiders, China's sex products market originated in 1993, when the country's first store of sex goods opened, attracted media attention, was defined as the reform of the concept of China after the reform and opening-up, and was regarded as a symbolic symbol by the sex industry wife, followed by the rapid development of offline channels, although the market size is small, But the profits are odd.

But then the whole industry went into a slump, until about 2007 years, with the rise of the electric business, the entire adult products industry has experienced an explosive growth, the Internet allows Chinese consumers to protect privacy based on private procurement of related products, however, because of the characteristics of the electric business industry, After this stage, industry profits have started to decline gradually.

The peak of adult supplies electric business has passed

The Shudegang of the spring Hall has experienced the evolution of the adult products market from line to line. He had joined in 2007 through the way to expand the line under the channel, the scale has been done with 100 of the line to join the store, but because of management difficulty is too large, limited revenue and many other issues, in 2009, Shand just stopped joining business, refocus back online.

"We are not so openly to go to the offline store to buy, which is not the same as foreign markets." "In the eyes of Shudegang, this is a major reason for the current domestic market aggregation of sex goods."

This is consistent with the observations of Tencent technology for several consecutive days, although the Chinese have ceased to smell sexual change at the marketing level and in social media, it is not uncommon for people to linger in adult shop stores like shop-goers, and almost all large adult-product chains have their own online malls, The orange-colored adults mentioned above are also among them.

Shudegang revealed that the online adult products market in the past few years the rapid rise of the other reason is the changes in the consumer population, the mainstream consumer population has from the early to solve the generation of demand for forums users, to seek to improve the quality of life, and even the users. The latter is more accustomed to online shopping. And the price of online sales is more favorable.

This is good for IPPF supplies, but bad for adult supplies. Some people in the industry believe that, in the increasingly difficult to monitor the sex industry in the reality, the male-dominated consumer groups are often able to use low prices to solve the conventional demand, which is also the reason for the limited market increase in adult products.

So how does the online adult shop survive? Entrepreneurial team Omyg Honey Tease female restaurant owner Xiao Su (a pseudonym) told Tencent Technology, offline retailers usually 5 yuan to buy the price of AIDS drugs, but to consumers when the price has exceeded 50 yuan. Shudegang also revealed that, because the line store per day a small number of users, so a single product gross margin set is very high, usually offline price is about 3 times times the line.

Why is the market for adult products still quiet?

Ma Jiajia The imagination of the market for adult products, and in this era of the emergence of Internet brands from dried fruits to garments to essential oils, the market for adult supplies looks like an untapped virgin land.

"China is the world's most abundant toy factory manufacturing resources, there is enough technology level and manufacturing capacity, but the brand resources are very scarce, wholesale and retail links are small and scattered." Shudegang told Tencent Technology.

Like other industries, China soon became a big producer of adult goods, with nearly 99% of its products sold overseas. After the 2008 financial crisis, the European and American market consumption capacity decline, Guangdong and other areas of the sex products manufacturers will focus on the domestic, part of the factory from a simple OEM to try to build brand.

However, almost all attempts are drubbing. Although there are many so-called domestic brands at the adult products show, these brands have not been precipitated at the consumer level.

It is not surprising that it is difficult to create a brand of adult products in this relatively conservative country. Even condoms and contraceptives and other birth control products advertising, until today can not arbitrarily in the mass media, not to mention all kinds of AIDS aids and sex toys.

So is it going to change the status quo by bypassing the regular mass media, and the similar Ma Jiajia teams that rely on Internet marketing?

A person in the industry said that by substituting factories, brand makers, channel and bottom distributor of the industrial chain, Ma Jiajia is just a bottom distributor, even if one day Ma Jiajia rely on good publicity to become adult supplies in the "Di-Tong", is still not the protagonist of the industry, not to mention the current physical stores in the flow of people, As well as the growth of the physical stores of the rental situation, the entity adult supplies store prospects are not optimistic, "a few PPT is very eye-catching, but in the industry, and not many people concerned about, but is a number of electric business platform more people to discuss." ”

The swamp of the entrepreneur

Since the adult shop is difficult to develop, then from the product is a more suitable choice? According to the industry, including the Ma Jiajia of several entrepreneurial teams have tried to carry out the development of related adult supplies, but so far there is no successful case, because the difficulty is too big, clothing industry, The consumer electronics industry's entrepreneurial play is hard to copy into the adult products industry.

In Guangdong, from smart watches to laptops to smartphones and even smart appliances, can find a complete upstream and downstream hardware suppliers, in Shanghai, can easily find a copy board and reverse crack talent, as long as there is input, create or even copy new electronic products is not a problem, but the adult products industry is not so many rich workers , even the designers who have worked on behalf of the factories themselves are difficult to describe professionally.

Industry insiders revealed that in China's foundry every year to launch a variety of 5,000 new sex toys, but most of them are shoddy, such as product bending radian and shape has not been artificially tested. For a long time, a large number of domestic adult supplies can only be used as low-end goods exist, want to make achievements in product innovation is difficult.

In addition, although the domestic large-generation factory also engaged in high-end adult products for the foundry business, but mostly for the European and American markets, even if the generation of factories can accumulate experience, the issue of race is still difficult to cross, suitable for the European and American ethnic adult products for Asians are often not appropriate, and the local lack of ergonomic people willing to engage in this industry, So a lot of time to buy back from Japan product plagiarism, but because of material and process problems, it is difficult to make good products.

Card in front of the entrepreneur, in addition to product design and development issues, there are security issues and medical device approval number two major problems, compared to cosmetics, this is a more difficult to cross the gap, the vast majority of the generation of factory products are difficult to obtain security assurances, product heavy metal or benzene exceeded in this industry is not news, This means that the application of the medical device approval document is a problem.

An entrepreneur who tried to create a brand in the field said to Tencent technology even if you find a high quality upstream and downstream supplier, look for the human engineering experts in this field, design the perfect product, and in the case of low cost, open the mold successfully, find the first generation factory for your production assembly, Finally obtained the medical device approval number, and after a series of marketing so that the brand has a certain reputation, the result is your product price will be sold with Taobao brand Japanese brands flat, still difficult to obtain consumer support.

The whole market increase is not big premise, adult supplies this seemingly unlimited market how to avoid becoming the swamp of entrepreneurs, still need to find a solution.