A Decade to Sharpen a Sword: Exploring New Ways to Export Chinese Children's Cartoons
Overseas animation brands, products and culture have flooded into China in recent years, exerting a profound influence on younger generations. At the same time, the curtain is gradually being lifted from Chinese cartoons. Shanghai Taomee Incorporated, ("Taomee") can be seen as a pioneer of Chinese animation industry exports.
Founded on 8 October 2007, it has worked to establish itself as a nationwide animation brand, and is now China's leading family entertainment provider focusing on games, TV and movies, and copyright.
It has successfully created three major brands - Space EnErgy Robot, Mole's World, and Flower Fairy, with online players promoting offline activities, and offline activities influencing online players. It has also developed a complete family entertainment industrial ecosystem, covering sectors such as online games, wireless games, books, cartoons, animations, stage plays, carnivals and franchising.
Picture: Mole's World
While consolidating its place in the domestic market, Taomee continued exporting Chinese products and services to the global market under Taomee's children's brand. In its overseas promotion, Taomee exported the brands and products of Space EnErgy Robot, Mole's World, and Flower Fairy. It blended culture into the content and explored new methodologies for Chinese cartoons.
Mole's World and Space EnErgy Robot were introduced consecutively to Taiwan, the first market beyond mainland China, and Space EnErgy Robot has become the most popular online entertainment product for Taiwanese children.
Picture: Taiwanese version of Mole's World
The success in Taiwan encouraged Taomee to expand into overseas markets. It officially entered Vietnam and launched Mole's World in November 2011, when the online product market for Vietnamese children was basically unexplored. Taomee was hugely successful even during the trial period, with average daily active users of over 150,000, and new registrations of over 1.5 million within 2 months. Although Japan and South Korea had very few games imports due to their own successful gaming industries, Mole's World still managed to penetrate their markets, through the efforts of Taomee's overseas operation team. In 2011, Taomee also exported Mole's World to Thailand, marking its launch in the South-east Asia market.
Years of experience has built Taomee's confidence in developing overseas markets. Establishing itself as an international family interactive entertainment company has become Taomee's long-term goal.