TOY TEAM INDIA
India’s importance to the global toy industry is surging forward.
Toy manufacturers in India are seeing a huge boom in business. Major companies such as Hasbro have moved significant quantities of production to Indian factories in the last few years:
Wall Street Journal article on Hasbro & others moving toy manufacturing to India
Toy manufacturers in India are at the heart of a fast growing centre of toy production excellence. Due to India’s role as the regional centre for automotive engineering and manufacturing the country has a rich talent pool and knowledge bank of advanced engineering & lean manufacturing processes, especially in the critical area for toys – plastic injection moulding. There are huge numbers of highly qualified very experienced engineers, product designers and many other technical functions involved in the toy manufacturing process. Because automotive manufacturing tends to be significantly more advanced than the toy industry in general, with as many as tens of thousands of individual components in a single car, versus 10-20 in the average toy, we have found that engineering provides just as much value as the most obvious driver of India’s toy manufacturing surge – potential for manufacturing cost reductions.
Those rumoured cost savings are very much the real deal – labour costs in India are cheap – our research suggests Indian production line labour rates are c. 1/3 to 1/4 of comparable costs in China at the time of writing. When combined with cutting edge processes, we are finding that Indian manufacturing is offering cost savings to our clients of 5-15% on many products. We have toy company clients who are now saving $3-4m per year on an ongoing basis. In fairness, not every product is cheaper from Indian toy factories versus other markets – that depends on a number of factors e.g. amount of labour/assembly needed, complexity of design/components, new product versus tooling transfer etc., but what we can guarantee based on our experiences serving clients from the USA, Canada, UK, France, Benelux, Australia, Germany & other is that overall India offers substantial potential for cost savings.
We have also found that the usual ethical audit standards needed for the toy industry i.e. ICTI, Walmart, Disney etc are easily passed in Indian toy factories because the local labour laws are far more protective of workers vs China, so factories tend to exceed the required standards by default. In fact, the ICTI organisation (the toy industry’s own ethical audit foundation) is so convinced of India’s growth as a toy manufacturing hub that they have begun to build their own infrastructure in India: ICTI forms partnership in India
HOW CAN WE HELP YOU?
Toy Team India is a division of Kids Brand Insight, a leading Consultancy business serving the global toy industry. We offer the following services:
- Indian toy manufacturing & sourcing – we can help your company access the ever growing toy manufacturing base in India.
- High end engineering & product design services.
- CAD & prototype production.
- Tooling plans & tooling production.
- Product development project management.
- Logistics management.
We’re currently working with top factories in India, supplying plastics toys (preschool, games, collectible figures etc), board games & playing cards, wooden toys & other product categories.
Working from our offices in Pune (a major automotive & toy manufacturing hub 3 hours drive inland from Mumbai), and from our UK head office, our dedicated team of highly experienced and knowledegable professionals are at your service.
For more information, contact us via email: ToyTeamIndia
