At Design Shanghai, which ended this week, many children's home furnishing companies are gearing up to bring the latest masterpieces while watching the market sentiment under the new deal. FINE LITTLE HOME, a collection of children's home furnishing brand stores, brings childlike tree house beds, handmade from Belgium, and offers 33 color customization; environmentally friendly toy brand AVDAR brings open exhibitions, climbing frames and wooden toys are not less popular; 2018 UFOU, established in 1988, focuses on children's learning scenes and launches a series of modern and warm children's learning furniture.

In the fifth year of establishing the brand, ZiinLife, one of the representatives of domestic original design, launched the children's brand Ziia, which was welcomed by a group of young parents who love life and understand aesthetics. Alice believes that the audience for designing brands is mainly concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, and the size of the consumer group is small, so the impact of market benefits is also limited.

Modular and multifunctional products are sought after

Zhang Sichuan, founder and CEO of PUPUPULA, spent a lot of energy in organizing storage, leaving more space for events. She noticed that not only in the field of children's home furnishings, but also the design for adults is also changing. Modular and multifunctional products are more popular in the market.

In first - and second - tier cities, high housing prices limit the replacement needs of families with many children. Considering the longer application period, children' s rooms with changeable patterns have been favored in recent years. Young parents are not like the previous generation, expecting a bed to sleep from the age of 1 to 18 years old. They are willing to let the children’s room "grow up" by themselves. As the child sleeps, plays, and learns, the time varies. The emphasis of each age group is also changing.

In Alice's view, no matter how many children there are in the family, they need to consider the role played by furniture from both functional and emotional aspects. Especially when children have disputes or discomforts for "ownership" and "border sense", the design communication methods also need to be adjusted.

Opportunities are sinking in the market

Unlike other grassroots entrepreneurs who have devoted themselves to children's design, Zhang Sichuan is the co-founder of Momo and left the board of directors in 2017. Due to "bring your own Internet gene", PUPUPULA's H5 mini-game once blasted the circle of friends, Luo Yonghao also strongly recommended its smart piggy bank, saying that PUPUPULA is "warm, meticulous and imaginative" and "is still learning excellent aliens in Chinese manufacturing and Chinese design".

She originally thought that PUPUPULA users are concentrated in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. In fact, most of the purchases of large products come from second- and third-tier cities. This may be related to the limited housing conditions in first-tier cities, while the living environment of Hangzhou and Chengdu is more spacious, and the consumption concept is also consistent. 

The shift from the potential market is also the transformation that the original design head brands such as ZiinLife will face. For local original creators, the growth of first- and second-tier cities will slow down, and future increments will come from the sinking market, which needs to leverage the e-commerce platform to deploy and accumulate in advance.

 "Assuming that the three-child policy advances quickly in third- and fourth-tier cities, and their functional needs and aesthetics for children's furniture are different from those in first- and second-tier cities, then we also need to learn new rules of the game." Alice said.