Text | Financial hoe (chutou0325), author | Small shovel
When the sound of three children is higher than the wave, there is another message in the “Law on the Protection of Minors” promulgated on June 1 this year, that is, child seats.
Article 18 of the newly revised Law on the Protection of Minors clearly stipulates that guardians should “take measures such as equipping children with safety seats and educating minors to obey traffic rules to prevent minors from being injured by traffic accidents”.
Did you put your child in a car seat when you drove him out?
To sit, or not to sit, who is fighting with whom?
In 2015, as soon as Chen Cheng became pregnant with her child, she began to do her homework on car seats. At that time, there were almost no domestic brands, and after doing some homework, Chen Cheng placed a Britax order in Meiya and waited across the ocean for two months before sending it home.
When she was preparing to return to the city after confinement in her hometown, the child who had just reached the full moon was “tied” to a safety seat by her. Of course, the child was crying, and Chen Cheng tried all his tricks to coax the child. She knew that there was no need to collide, as long as she braked sharply, the small meat ball in her hand that had just reached the full moon would fly out.
Chen Cheng’s family generally supports her to let the child sit in the safety seat, and when the child can’t stand crying, only the grandmother will nag a few times.
Compared with Chen Cheng, the boys of Yu Li’s family are more of a headache. Yu Li’s family is a boy, it seems to be more noisy, and there is a bit of a “rather die” posture for the safety seat. As long as Yu Li puts it up, the child begins to cry, how long to cry, toys and everything does not work, only watching TV can make the child quiet for a while.
In order to let the child sit quietly in the safety seat, the child can only watch cartoons on the mobile phone, which for Yu Li said, this is tantamount to drinking to quench thirst. It’s not that she didn’t try to let the child cry, but the posture of crying for as long as she came, so that Yu Li finally chose to surrender.
The biggest resistance for Li Xi’s child to sit in a car seat comes from the child’s grandmother. Every time the child travels and the child does not want to make a safety seat, the child’s grandmother will say: “It’s okay to hug, just let the father drive slowly.” “Children are natural speculators, and knowing that grandma is on their side makes them cry even more. If Li Xi insisted, although the grandmother did not forcibly carry the child down, she would always chant: “Baby, your mother doesn’t like you.” ”
Li Xi was angry and helpless.
There are many people in the family, and the car seat takes up a place. When traveling, it is always the mother and grandmother who squeeze in the back seat, and the child does not want to sit in the safety seat, so he holds it in the grandmother’s arms, and the back seat is even more crowded. Coming and going, Li Xi simply let her husband dismantle the safety seat and throw it in the trunk.
Different from eating milk powder and playing with toys, the safety seat brings safety to the child, but at the beginning it brings restraint and discomfort. How to make children sit quietly in the safety seat is a great challenge for many families.
(How can there be such a quiet time?) ）
Searching for the keyword “child seat” on Zhihu, which is ridiculed as “millions per capita”, is also at the forefront of an answer questioning the rationality of child seat legislation, in this answer, the respondent complained that his children did not want to sit in safety seats, questioning whether such legislation was for the state to force the sale of child seats. And the comments of passers-by below this answer also agree with the respondent’s point of view.
For now, child seats are still a new thing in China. Widespread acceptance is not high.
Child seats, the key to saving lives or IQ taxes?
So, is a child seat the key to saving lives or an IQ tax?
In actual collision experiments, data can speak.
At the moment of collision, the object in the car will produce an inertial force of 30-50 times its own weight, and if the parent holds the child in the back, a 10-kilogram child will produce a force of 300-500 kilograms, and it is difficult for parents to hold it.
Even if the luck does not completely fly out, the parent’s body will compress the child due to inertia, causing the child to hit the front seat and suffer relatively large injuries.
If the child is held by the parent and sits in the passenger seat, it is even more harmful. Once the airbag is opened due to a collision, it will cause the child’s head and neck to be misaligned, and even lead to death. If the airbag does not pop, the child is likely to hit the dashboard or windshield.
There is no doubt that in the event of a traffic accident, especially a high-speed rear-end collision with a violent collision, the child seat is the key to saving lives.
Many countries have also enacted legislation on child seats.
According to the World Health Organization’s Global Status Report on Road Safety 2018, 84 of the 175 countries studied have national legislation on child restraint systems.
This year, our country also became one of the countries with national legislation.
The biggest reason why safety seats are difficult to popularize is because of people’s fluke mentality, always feel that how can such a small probability of traffic accidents happen to themselves?
Now the child is crying, and the adults are not enough to sit.
In economist Mullenathan’s Scarcity, this phenomenon is known as the voyeuristic effect. It is that once we are faced with a lack of space, or something more urgent at the moment, people will focus on the most urgent thing at the moment, and other equally important things are ignored.
The child seat market, a young market
In the case of knowing that it is useful, but it is somewhat difficult to use, China’s overall child seat market share is very low.
According to data from the China Prospective Industry Research Institute, in 2018, the utilization rate of child safety seats in China was only 1%, and the utilization rate of child safety seats in first-tier cities was less than 5%, and the awareness and utilization rate of child safety seats was low.
According to the China Toys and Baby Products Association, the size of China’s child safety seat market has increased from 2.6 billion yuan in 2015 to 5.08 billion yuan in 2020, with a five-year compound growth rate of 14.33%.
This scale is really not large. A bubble mart that only makes blind boxes will have a revenue of 2.5 billion yuan in 2020.
In fact, 17.2% of parents have a car.
There is a car and a car seat, the difference between the two is too great.
Due to limited demand, there are not many companies that produce and sell child seats domestically.
Good Boy International counts as a family.
Check Goodbaby’s 2020 annual report, its total revenue was HK$8.3 billion, and child seats were HK$2.7 billion, accounting for 32.5% of the total revenue. There are three main child seat brands: CYBEX, gb and Evenflo. Among them, CYBEX is the German brand it represents, Evenflo is the American brand it represents, and gb is its own brand.
In terms of sales, CYBEX > Evenflo> GB. In particular, the high-end German brand Cybex, which is priced at about 5,000 yuan, is the only brand that is still growing in 2020, an increase of 8.1% over the same period last year. Moreover, its revenue accounts for even more than the main brand Goodbaby, contributing the most revenue to the company.
This is also in line with the current market perception of child seats.
More attention is paid to the middle class and above who pay more attention to scientific parenting, and these new parents mainly obtain product and brand information related to child seats from various Amlivan and evaluation articles, and they prefer foreign brands.
Foreign brands have a chain of contempt, and parents generally believe that German seats are better than British and American seats, followed by Japanese and Korean seats.
Therefore, the mid-to-high-end market of Goodbaby’s German brand Cybex has been occupied by brands such as Concord, Graco and Britax. Among them, the market share of EMI is as high as 30.63%.
And the information available for domestic brands is even less.
Among the available information, Tiancheng Self-Control (603085. SH) calls it one of the top three domestic companies producing child seats.
But if you carefully comb the data of Tiancheng Controls in the child seat, its performance can only be described as “poor”.
In 2020, Tiancheng Controls sold 33,401 child seats in this subcategory, with sales revenue of about 20 million, accounting for only 1.41% of its total revenue.
How does the child seat market develop?
I never doubt the ability of China’s manufacturing industry, but look at the determination of China’s manufacturing industry.
To develop the child seat market, the first thing to solve must be the cognition of parents.
Just like formula milk, many mothers obviously have enough breast milk to give their children formula, afraid that their children will not be enough to eat breast milk. After the child can eat ordinary pure milk after the age of two, he still insists on eating three-stage and four-stage formula, believing that the business is more comprehensive.
How to make parents build child seats must be a necessity for children to ride?
This is not a problem that can be simply solved by legislation. We must work marketing, popular science, and children’s experience. Educate parents with all kinds of publicity and advertising, and attract children with better experiences. Let parents be willing to force their children to sit even if they are crying.
The second thing to be solved is the supporting problem. If I take a taxi with my child, do I want a car seat? If I go to rent a car, are there any car seats to rent? These problems are all supporting issues that merchants should consider, in fact, they are also the direction of their sales of child seats. Is it possible to develop the rental market at the same time?
Solving cognition and broadening channels is naturally the most important price problem. Now there are three or four thousand, four or five thousand safety seats, which makes many families prohibitive.
In a research report of Tiancheng Automation, it is disclosed that the gross profit margin of child seats can reach 20%-30%, which is a profitable business. If we can continue to bring down the price and make more ordinary families who drive 50,000 or 60,000 cars affordable, it will undoubtedly further expand sales.
Provided, of course, that its security is not compromised.
It’s a young market, and it’s a difficult market to do, and it depends on the experience of the child, not the experience of the parents. That’s the hardest part of this market.