Who is the "eye-catching bag" in the gift box?

The New Year is coming, have you prepared all the New Year gifts? This article will introduce various data about this year's New Year gift boxes, let's take a look!

"Congratulations on your wealth and success~Congratulations on your brilliance~The best ones please come over~The bad ones please go away~Oh, the more gifts, the better——"

"I won't accept any gifts this year. The only gift I will accept is Melatonin~"

It is the time of the year again for visiting relatives and friends. Supermarkets in various places have invited cheerful singers such as Andy Lau to perform, and Melatonin advertisements have been played for decades. Nothing has changed, and yet everything seems to have changed - what has changed is the "weight" of various New Year gift boxes .

At the beginning of December, Sam's Club, Costco, Aldi and HEMA all launched a large number of popular holiday gift boxes. After New Year's Day, these supermarkets placed the holiday gift boxes together with couplets and blessing characters in the most conspicuous positions.

Image source: Xiaohongshu Sam's Club, ALDI, and Hema

Department stores like Shanghai Jiuguang simply provide flower baskets and gift boxes, allowing consumers to freely choose the contents.

At this time of year, colleagues, friends, and social media begin to exchange gift buying experiences, and demand in the gift market is unprecedentedly strong.

The "White Paper on China's Gift Industry Outlook 2024" released by consulting firm Kantar shows that the market size of my country's gift industry is expected to reach 1,377.7 billion yuan in 2024.

JD.com data shows that on the gift-giving themed Super Category Day held on December 22, 2023, gift box sales increased by 165% month-on-month. At the same time, multiple categories experienced explosive growth, with gold jewelry sales doubling year-on-year, beauty and slimming product sales increasing by 218% year-on-year, and health food sales such as vitamins increasing by 63% year-on-year.

The Spring Festival is approaching, and a large number of gifts are on the way, whether for visiting relatives and friends or maintaining business relationships. What are the new things in this trillion-dollar market?

1. Strive to be a "conspicuous bag"

This year's gift boxes have become "eye-catching bags" both online and offline.

In addition to traditional rice, flour, grain, oil and snack gift boxes, gift boxes of other categories such as skin care products, health products, small appliances, etc. have joined the "battlefield" of Double Holiday + New Year gift boxes - there are fancy special-shaped packaging; there are eye-catching and fun capsule machines and turntable boxes; there are unique designs that emphasize "New Year limited"... it's dazzling.

In terms of food, I believe that many consumers in first- and second-tier cities must have seen Sam's "Big Pistachio" and "Big Pine Cone" on social networks or in person. These two large gift boxes of nuts have become "eye-catching bags" in Sam's supermarkets, and many children can't put them down.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

Many cosmetics brands are no longer limited to the traditional product, cosmetic bag and raffia in the design of gift boxes. Cosmetics brands that are popular among young consumers, such as Juduo, Jiangse and Huazhixiao, have tried every means to make their gift boxes eye-catching, and will also give out practical or beautiful gifts such as large pillows and Rococo-style handheld makeup mirrors in the gift boxes.

Since last year, many brands and IPs have jointly produced New Year gift boxes, and this year, the trend of joint ventures is even more popular.

For example, the author "Bu Er Ma" launched a Spring Festival couplet gift box of the Year of the Dragon for its well-known IP "Fat Tiger"; Disney and MINISO launched the New Year's Edition of the "Chiqi Dali" series of products; the notebook brand Yancang also launched the "Line Puppy" co-branded notebook calendar gift box that will be popular in 2023...

In terms of appearance, New Year gift boxes have definitely captured the hearts of consumers.

Image source: Taobao

2. Open up new channels

In addition to the changes in the appearance of gift boxes, another thing that cannot be ignored is the change in gift channels.

In addition to shopping at offline supermarkets and online e-commerce platforms, consumers have begun to develop the habit of redeeming gifts with points from corporate welfare malls, banks, and airlines.

Many consumers only discovered this year that points on Tmall and Alipay can be exchanged for good products for free or at very low prices. As the year is coming to an end, these points malls have also added a large number of products that can be used as gifts, such as expensive cookware, small appliances or experience products, providing more choices for consumers whose points are about to expire.

Image source: Tmall, Alipay

Why are points malls becoming more and more attractive? On the one hand, the points systems of Taobao, Tmall, and bank credit cards have become more and more complete, attracting more and more brands to join them, making them a traffic entrance to contact consumers; on the other hand, the digital construction of most brands has become more complete, which also makes it easier for them to access more channels to manage a batch of goods.

When it comes to the points system, many companies have broken away from the Taobao Tmall and JD systems around 2023 and built shopping malls based on WeChat applets or web pages. By doing so, brands can open up the supply chain system from internal to external, and better serve private domain traffic and their own employees.

For savvy consumers who are good at collecting information from all sources, it is obvious this year that "in-house purchases" are becoming more and more common .

Industry insiders revealed that especially at the end of the year or the beginning of the year, brands need to clear their inventory and will carefully select a reasonable pallet for internal purchases to attract consumers to buy popular products. Usually, consumers will buy some inventory to save up for postage or on impulse.

These in-app purchase links are usually circulated in a semi-open manner to friends circles or various WeChat groups, and popular products are sold out in seconds once they go on sale.

Cathy, a consumer who has participated in multiple in-app purchases of shoe brands such as Clarks and Skechers and children's clothing brand Balabala, said: "These are all genuine brand direct sales, cheap and reliable... I can't control myself once I buy them."

Normally, Cathy would take advantage of in-app purchases to buy all the "equipment" needed for the whole family, and would also select some gifts for relatives and friends to give during holidays, spending thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan each time.

After the operation matures, many brands’ self-built shopping malls even open interfaces to other brands and sources of goods to meet the more diverse needs of consumers.

As a result, the gift supply chains of brands and e-commerce platforms began to "fight like gods". Even JD.com had to place advertisements in media channels, praising how mature its gift supply chain is and how it can meet customized needs.

3. Customization and scenario-based

Gift customization is a changing trend in the gift industry that cannot be underestimated in recent years.

An executive at a company told New Retail Business Review that, in addition to simply printing corporate logos on gift boxes, many gift suppliers can also provide one-to-one design packaging and customize contents of different specifications. Of course, the prices are also different.

"Many gift suppliers have come to us and provided us with a dazzling array of customized products. The products included are all from big brands or OEMs. They are of good quality and easy to trace. We can also customize different patterns and designs, all of which are very beautiful and elegant. At the end of the year, the company's customized gift boxes will no longer look tacky."

In the past, the demand for customized gift boxes mostly occurred in the context of business gift giving. Now, this demand has gradually spread to the consumer side.

An e-commerce customer service representative told New Retail Business Review that as the year draws to a close, the most common question she receives is: "What should I give as a gift to a good friend/boyfriend/girlfriend/elder/less-close relative? Can I engrave words on the product or customize it?"

She found that these inquirers all had the same idea: the more exquisite the gift box was, the more thoughtful the gift giver was, and the engraving on it meant that the gift was unique.

Now, more and more consumer brands have taken on this type of customized business for consumers . A person in charge of a cosmetics brand told New Retail Business Review: "We have design and production capabilities. For consumers, engraving and packaging services are definitely no problem. For large orders with business needs, we can also do customized designs."

It can be seen that whether it is sending gifts to relatives and friends, or to elders at home, or for business dealings, the increasingly segmented scenarios have made gifts and gift boxes more refined, and brands and supply chains are inevitably involved in it.

4. More convenient and more environmentally friendly

Someone on Xiaohongshu said that she attended a friend's wedding and received a bridesmaid gift. At first glance, it looked like a gift box from the "luxury brand" La Mer, but after taking it home, she found out that it was a fake with "real packaging but fake inside."

When she searched later, she found that whether it was a social platform like Xiaohongshu or a second-hand platform like Xianyu, there were people secretly selling or purchasing big-brand skin care gift boxes, product boxes, packaging bags and empty bottles, and their motives were suspicious.

Then, a question that cannot be ignored arises: where will these limited edition gift boxes with luxurious designs and solid materials end up?

It is observed that these gift boxes are first sent to discount stores that are close to expiration. In discount stores such as Haotemai and Hitego, these Spring Festival gift boxes can often be seen "standing guard" on the shelves in the stores at discounted prices all year round, giving full play to their final value as gift boxes.

Second, keep them in the hands of consumers. As the saying goes, "every generation has its own waste products", many young people are reluctant to discard the outer packaging of these gift boxes, but keeping them takes up space. Therefore, if you search for "gift box storage" on Xiaohongshu, you can see many bloggers sharing their experiences and methods of storing colorful and odd-shaped gift boxes.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

However, more gift boxes ended up in scrap yards.

Gift boxes with increasingly extravagant shapes and materials also cause a lot of unnecessary waste. According to statistics, the garbage generated by gift boxes in my country accounts for about 30% to 40% of urban domestic garbage. Most of it is caused by excessive packaging. During the Spring Festival, more than 200 tons of New Year garbage will be generated in just one garbage recycling station in 5 days.

Therefore, many young people prefer more environmentally friendly and convenient gifts, such as stored-value cards or vouchers : "You don't have to carry heavy gifts around, and there are enough choices for vouchers, so everyone is happy." Diandian, a consumer who calls himself an "I person" and does not like social occasions during festivals, said that although voucher gifts lose the sense of surprise when unboxing gifts, "it's enough as long as the thought is there, and it's also environmentally friendly."

In fact, gift cards are more popular in overseas markets . The above-mentioned "White Paper" data from Kantar shows that in 2022, the size of the gift card market in the United States alone reached US$275 billion (approximately RMB 2 trillion), exceeding the total size of China's entire gift market.

However, young Chinese consumers are already catching up with the mature European and American gift markets. The White Paper points out that today's consumers' gift preferences have gradually shifted from rice, flour, grain and oil to small household appliances, digital electronics, nutrition and health products with high unit prices, and they are more willing to buy experience products as gifts for others.

More importantly, young consumers’ mentality towards consuming gift boxes and gifts is also changing.

Diandian said: "In addition to basic social interactions, I will pick out some things that I really love and that are useful to me as gifts for my friends. I hope they will like them too, and we will have new common topics."

"I sometimes buy myself products in gift boxes to reward myself for my hard work," Cathy said. "When you see a beautifully packaged gift box, you feel better, right?"

Author: Qian Luoying Editor: Ge Weiwei

WeChat Official Account: New Retail Business Review