小納邁向棕熊之路

An interesting news on udn.com today grabbed my attention. It’s about the emerging population of “rich kids.” These rich kids in Taiwan own 10 million new Taiwan dollars in their saving accounts, have professional birthday party every year, and receive a house as a gift when they go to college.

Ironically, there’s another news about the broader gap between rich and poor not only in Taiwan, but also globally. Not surprisingly, U.S. is on the top of that list.

Last time during my visit to our premium doll store, I was amazed to see how those parents spent money on their kids. After reading the news today, I was further convinced that there’s a potential premium doll market in Taiwan, China, and Asia.

I don’t remember if I mentioned this before, but there’s a TV show in MTV channel called “my super sweet 16,” a show about how those rich kids in U.S. make their 16-year-old party plans. I enjoy this show a lot by watching these freaks. Those kids hired party planners, distributed invitation cards with bodyguards aside (the invitations were popular, I mean, who could refuse a free luxury freak show?), hired professional performers, and always, always, at the end of the show, their lovely daddy would show up with a Mercedes or Rolex or anything that made audiences scream as a birthday gift, and this was also the only moment that these always-angry-with-parents spoiled kids showed their love to parents. Too bad that Taiwanese are usually more low-key, or I’d love to see how this type of show would look like in Taiwan.

Or maybe I’m just jealous. The kids nowadays have more than we did in our childhood. No wonder that my ex-boss said he’d rather have one child and give the kid all his fortune than have a lot of kids and so the kids have to split up his fortune. In this world where huge gap between poor and rich exists, raising more children doesn’t sound like a good idea.

This is definitely a good news, however, for any premium brands in kid’s or teenager’s market. In the past, the average disposable income of each kid/ teenager was low. Although the whole population was larger, kids could only purchase low-priced products. Now most of them could afford higher-priced products (it’s not that their parents are richer but just fewer siblings are sharing their pocket money). The Q goes down, but the P goes up. The low-end kid’s products will inevitably face a downturn while the business opportunity emerges in the high end market. Interesting. Maybe we should do an AMR project of how to step into high-end doll market in China.

On the other hand, I feel lucky. When we grew up, we only cared about TV shows and pop songs and story books and toys and street snacks besides schoolwork (at least in my situation.) Even boba tea didn’t exist until I was in junior high school. All the trouble came up when I was in college. First it’s the beeper, then almost everyone owned a cell phone, then it’s the Japanese camera sticker machine, then it’s the laptop, then here came the digital camera, then iPod lauched…I couldn’t imagine being a kid in the 21th century. The whole situation would be miserable especially if you are a poor kid in a big city. You can’t even join your friend’s conversations (PS2, PSP, iPod, camera cell phone etc.) Growing up in the old time was fantastic.