Ningbo's cultural and creative industries impress the global 'big children'

These days, the production workshop of Ningbo Shida Industrial Co., Ltd. is bustling with activity, and workers are embedding springs into the round shaped "squirrel" body. This is a squirrel shaped stapler - the tail of the squirrel is designed to press the handle, and the body is a nail storage compartment. This batch of staplers is about to be sent to Germany, France, and the Netherlands.
In our product development and market research, we found that the audience for these cute stationery items is not just children, but the proportion of adult customers is rapidly increasing. They are not buying functionality, but emotions. Adults often need the moment of 'being cured' more than children, "said Sun Guohui, General Manager of Shida Industrial.
Focusing on the needs of global consumers and exploring international markets with original design and differentiation is the key to Shida Industrial iterating tens of thousands of new products annually. In the first four months of this year, the export volume of enterprises increased by 83.4% year-on-year, and the market share of their own brands in Australian supermarkets exceeded 50%.
As the "June 1" Children's Day is approaching, there are not a few cultural and creative enterprises in Ningbo who have tasted the benefits of this wave of self pleasing consumption. They keenly capture the emotional needs behind the "childlike innocence" of adults, and promote their products to go global, making "Children's Day" an outlet for adults to release stress and heal emotions.
Ningbo Yisida Board Game Co., Ltd. has directly turned traditional children's board games into a new favorite for adults to relieve stress. Entering the exhibition hall of Yisida, well-known IP licensed board games such as Harry Potter, Marvel, and The Lord of the Rings are displayed. They are exported to more than 20 countries and regions around the world.
Yisida General Manager Du Weiwei told reporters that the audience for board games has shifted towards urban white-collar workers, senior players, and social media influencers, especially the demand for overseas adults to play board games has surged.
Riding on this momentum, the export value of Yisida exceeded 48 million yuan in the first four months of this year, a year-on-year increase of 66.7%. The company now ranks among the top 20 global board game manufacturers.
Obviously, cultural and creative enterprises in Ningbo have shifted from traditional manufacturing to innovation driven, with significantly improved research and development capabilities. They are able to quickly adjust their production structure to keep up with market trends, not only adapting to demand, but also leading the industry. We have simultaneously built a full chain service system from research and development production to customs clearance and export, providing strong guarantees for enterprises to fulfill orders, "said the relevant person in charge of Ningbo Customs.
According to statistics from Ningbo Customs, in the first four months of this year, the export of cultural products from Ningbo Port has exceeded 20.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.6%.