Development characteristics of China's stationery industry

From the perspective of industry competition pattern, China has a large number of stationery enterprises with low industry concentration. At present, there are more than 8000 enterprises engaged in stationery production in China, while only over 1500 enterprises above designated size are included in the statistical caliber. 90% of stationery production enterprises have annual sales revenue of less than 10 million yuan, and only four companies with annual sales revenue of 1 billion yuan, including Chenguang Stationery, Qixin Group, Guangbo Co., Ltd., and True Color Stationery. According to the industry scale of 150 billion yuan, industry CR4 is about 5%, and CR10 is less than 10%. In developed stationery markets such as the United States, CR5 has reached over 70%.

There are over 8000 stationery enterprises in China, and most of them only engage in the business of producing parts and OEM for large enterprises. Therefore, the barriers to entry into the industry are not high. However, as a few leading enterprises, they will continuously raise competition barriers during their growth process, mainly including brand barriers, marketing channel barriers, and technology and design barriers.

Brand barriers

Market awareness and reputation are the comprehensive manifestations of brand competitiveness. The higher the market awareness, the wider the potential consumer base of the brand; The higher the reputation, the stronger the consumer stickiness towards the brand. Leading enterprises have established a solid brand advantage through years of product positioning and market promotion. For new entrants, to be accepted by many consumers, it not only requires high promotion costs, but also requires long-term accumulation.

Marketing channel barriers

Stationery belongs to fast-moving consumer goods, so a wide and deep marketing network is a guarantee that products can be sold in a timely manner. In the absence of significant product gaps, the ability to cover terminal marketing networks has become the core competitive advantage of leading stationery enterprises. A widely covered marketing network can not only help leading enterprises seize market share, but also respond promptly and quickly to market changes. But for new entrants, the construction of marketing networks requires a lot of manpower and material resources, making it difficult to form pressure on leading enterprises in a short period of time.

Technical and design barriers

Although sparrows are small, they have all five internal organs. Although stationery products are generally small in size and simple in structure, they are difficult to manufacture and research in precision industries such as pen heads and ink, and even for leading stationery enterprises, they are still in the continuous research and development stage. In addition, with the changes in consumer consumption concepts and the improvement of consumption levels, people have higher requirements for the industrial design and appearance of stationery. Therefore, only with strong technical and design capabilities can enterprises stand out from numerous competitors.

Industrial concentration is a necessary path

More than 8000 stationery production enterprises in China can be divided into two categories: OEM manufacturing and brand manufacturing.

OEM manufacturing enterprises mainly accept orders from domestic and foreign brand manufacturers for production. In this model, profits mainly come from the value-added of the manufacturing process, and due to the lack of marketing channels and brand influence, the bargaining power is not strong;

Brand manufacturing enterprises themselves have independent research and development and manufacturing capabilities, and have good market brand awareness in certain segmented product areas. However, their marketing network is relatively narrow, and they usually sell products through distributors.