Cute soft toys. Stuffed toys. Cuddly toys. Call them what you will, and then stop to ask from where does the craze for such cuties come? And from where do they themselves all originate? The answers are not just surprising, but also very, very local!
With all that has been going on the our crazy world recently, it is perhaps no surprise that cuddly toys have become the most popular fashion items in the world over the last 2 years, for their simple offering of comfort from many of the current hard realities which face almost every one of us today.
Among those realities are of course businesses built to capitalise on some of our most primal desires, even those just for something cuddly.
Heard of the brand called Jelly Cat which took the world by storm storm last year? Where do you think they are made? From where do you think Disney gets its stuffed toys? And what about Costco; from where does this retail behemoth source its stuffed toys?
It may not be much of an exaggeration to say that, in most cases, surprisingly, the answer is in fact sleepy Yangzhou in Jiangsu Province.
Today, the market for plush toys is ever expanding, so much so that many scenic areas now treat them as a top souvenir. Data shows fully half of these so called “plush dolls” in China are now produced in Yangzhou. Worldwide, one out of every three plush toys might as well bear the label “Made in Yangzhou”.
With annual exports of ¥3-4 billion to the USA and Europe alone, the City’s dominance in the sector has even earned itself a joke; “If Yangzhou’s plush-toy manufacturers collectively stopped production, Christmas would have lost half its joy”.
But when it comes to the beginning of Yangzhou’s cuddly-toy industry, almost all accounts begin in the 1950s, as the offical WeChat account “正和岛” reports.
At that time, many people in Yangzhou relied on making a living as tailors. These skilled professionals made toy dolls using the lace borders left over from exported garments. Producing them first as toys for children, they then slowly trod the path of commercialism and industrialisation.
But looking to a longer historical dimension, the people of Yangzhou in fact have a heritage of ingenuity engraved in their bones.
Yangzhou is known as the birthplace of the the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal. Hence a flourishing millennium of shipping and merchants have also played a significant role in Yangzhou’s textile culture.
During the Tang Dynasty, Yangzhou cashmere (“ronghua”) was a palace tribute, while the techniques employed therein were to become the foundations for today’s stuffed-toy industry.
Back in the modern era, 1958 saw the Yangzhou Red Star Sewing Factory converted to become the first toy enterprise in Yangzhou. And hence the export market began.
With China’s opening, so too did globally-renowned brands such as Disney and Hello Kitty begin to recognise Yangzhou’s production technology and quality standards in the 1980s, and subsequently chose to place production orders.
Despite its preeminent position in the market, the storm clouds have more recently been gathering on the Yangzhou cuddly-toy horizon.
As with much global-supply manufacturing which was dominated by China for the past 3 decades, stuffed toy production is gradually finding new cheaper homes elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
To offset this, Yangzhou has set up a satellite-production centre in nearby Tianchang of Anhui Province. Again, it’s cheaper. Then there is another bright spot in the form of AI; last November, Huawei launched its AI toy Smart Huan Huan, and with a price tag of ￥399, the ripples were quickly felt throughout the traditional-toy industry.
All this notwithstanding, demand is not showing any sign of slowing, and while high-profile brand names will come and go, Yangzhou appears relatively safe in its position as market leader. Until the world comes to its senses, that is.
