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Toymakers hold conference in Shanghai

China-made toys are displayed at a street toy vender yesterday in Shanghai. PHOTO: AP

Tens of thousands of international businessmen gathered here yesterday hoping to solve one of the puzzles of the international toy business -- how to sell their products to China's 300 million children.

"China is very fashionable now ... you have to build the brand first and that takes time," Hermann Bruns, head of international sales at Ravensburger, one of Germany's leading educational toy companies, said at the Shanghai Toy Expo.

China, home to the world's largest population of children under 14 and producer of 75 percent of the world's toys, only accounts for a fraction of the US$70-billion global toy market.

Its nearly 10,000 toy factories have a near monopoly on global manufacturing, yet the domestic market is only slightly larger than Spain's.

"The toy market in China compared to Europe and the US, which is worth about US$47 billion, is comparatively small," said Ernst Kick, chief executive officer of Speilwarenmesse, organizer of the world's largest toy fair in Nuremberg, Germany.

While China's domestic toy market is forecast to grow to US$12 billion by 2010, it was worth only US$1.4 billion in 2001, according to the latest industry statistics.

In contrast, China exported nearly eight billion dollars worth of toys in 2001 which jumped to nearly US$10 billion by last year -- accounting for 10 percent of the total exports in the country's light industry sector.

While the bouyant figures bode well for China's exporters, international toy companies have yet to crack the market -- imports jumped 36 percent but still only totaled US$192 million last year.

Undeterred, nearly 100 companies from Germany, Spain, Italy, France and Japan are in Shanghai for the expo, showing everything from expensive electric trains to building blocks for tots.

Piracy, lack of efficient distribution channels, strong domestic marketing strategies, poor sales outlets and price wars are just some of the problems international toy makers face.

While most of the world's toy giants long ago shifted production to China to benefit from the country's cheap labor, "Made in China" Western toys are still too expensive for the Chinese consumer.
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