With the increasingly fierce competition in the mother and baby market, traditional mother and baby chain enterprises are experiencing multidimensional transformation pains. According to the newly disclosed semi annual report data, although top enterprises such as Kidswant and Baby Room have maintained a growth trend in core areas such as milk powder category, store expansion, and self operated brands, the milk powder category still dominates the market pattern with a rigid demand advantage under the acceleration of industry integration. At the same time, the construction of self operated brands and cross-border business layout have not yet formed an effective growth pole. The key to breaking through the growth bottleneck in the industry in the future still needs to be explored.

Milk powder still dominates

Recently, the two leading channel providers, Kidswant and Baby Room, have successively released their semi annual reports for 2025. Kidswant's operating revenue for the first half of 2025 reached 4.911 billion yuan, an increase of 8.64% year-on-year, with a net profit attributable to the parent of 143 million yuan, an increase of 79.42% year-on-year, and a net profit margin after deducting non recurring expenses, an increase of 23.89% year-on-year; In the first half of 2025, the operating revenue of Baby Room was 1.835 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.31%. The net profit attributable to the mother was 46.7382 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.17%, and the net profit after deducting non recurring expenses was 36.9664 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.65%.

According to the financial report of Baby Room, the revenue of infant formula category reached 856 million yuan in the first half of the year, accounting for 46.6% of the total revenue. In the first half of 2024, the revenue of infant formula category was 1.016 billion yuan, accounting for about 60% of the total revenue. The proportion of infant formula business in the total revenue has decreased, but it is still the dominant category; According to the financial report of Kidswant, the revenue of the infant formula category reached 2.726 billion yuan in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 12.15%, accounting for 55.51% of the total revenue. In the first half of 2024, the revenue of infant formula was 2.431 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.50%, accounting for 53.77% of the total revenue. The proportion of total revenue in the infant formula category and the revenue of the infant formula business are both increasing.

In the maternal and child chain operation system, milk powder, as a high-frequency and essential product, has always been one of the main categories that attracts consumers. It can bring stable customer sources and cash flow to stores, and is also the basic foundation for the stable operation of maternal and child chains. In addition, the growth of the milk powder category has also brought more traffic entry points for enterprises. As the core product of mother and baby stores, milk powder can not only directly contribute considerable sales but also drive the sales of other related products, such as nutrition products, diapers, etc. This synergistic effect further enhances the market competitiveness of mother and baby chain enterprises.

At present, it seems that there is hardly any contribution that can compare to infant formula. The category of infant formula is likely to continue to dominate in maternal and child chain operations, continuing to influence the industry landscape and corporate development strategies.

The pace of industry integration is accelerating, and we are vigorously expanding our franchise layout

In the first half of 2025, the top maternal and child chain enterprises will continue to expand their stores. Currently, there are 61 franchise stores operated by Kidswant, with over 140 stores under construction or planning, totaling more than 200 stores; 35 new baby friendly stores have been opened, and as of the end of the reporting period, the company has signed contracts to open 30 stores.

In addition to leading enterprises, other mother and baby chains in the industry have also been expanding frequently. Many regional mother and baby chain brands have begun to enter low tier cities and county-level markets, expanding their market share through franchising and other means. For example, the original regional concentration of Maternity and Baby World was in southwestern provinces such as Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, and Yunnan. As of now, its business has expanded to 11 provinces, including Anhui, Hubei, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, etc; The business scope of Baobei Tianxia has expanded to 27 provinces, and the business map of Zhongyi Maternity and Baby covers 14 provinces.

The competition in the maternal and child market is becoming increasingly fierce, and the speed of industry integration is accelerating. Some brands have achieved rapid expansion through franchise models, which can not only quickly increase market share but also provide support to franchisees through brand and supply chain advantages to achieve mutual benefit and win-win results. However, the franchise model also brings some risks, such as lax qualification review and operation management of franchisees, resulting in uneven service quality, damaged brand image, and even loopholes in product supply chain management.

In addition, some brands have accelerated integration through alliance cooperation, such as multiple mother and baby enterprises or stores forming alliances to share resources, markets, and customers, thereby enhancing market competitiveness, achieving resource sharing, reducing operating costs, and enhancing brand influence. Some mother and baby chains have now launched joint promotional activities or shared supply chain resources through alliance cooperation to improve their purchasing bargaining power; Some mother and baby brands have rapidly expanded through a custody model to ensure consistent service quality in their stores. For example, brand owners or third-party organizations manage mother and baby stores, including personnel training, operational guidance, product procurement, etc., to help stores improve their management level, reduce operational risks, and achieve standardized operations.

Against the backdrop of accelerated integration in the maternal and child industry, franchising, alliance cooperation, and other models have become important means of enterprise layout due to their efficient expansion characteristics. However, how to balance expansion speed and risk control will become the key to the sustainable development of maternal and child chain enterprises in the future. At the same time, enterprises still need to continuously innovate and optimize management during expansion to achieve sustainable development.

Self operated brands have made progress, but their overall proportion is still relatively low

With the intensification of competition in the maternal and child industry, launching self operated brands has become a common measure for channel operators to optimize product structure and enhance differentiated competitiveness. Many chain maternal and child brands have launched self operated brands covering multiple product lines, attempting to reduce intermediate costs through independent research and development and production, while creating a product system that better meets the needs of their own customer groups.

In the first half of this year, Kidswant has launched a total of 54 short chain products, covering core categories such as zero complementary foods, nutritional supplements, milk powder, and clothing textiles. Among them, 11 self operated brands have successfully exceeded one million yuan in sales, achieving phased breakthroughs in both product quantity and individual product performance. Baby Room has a complete proprietary product research and development system, with over 40 SKUs jointly launched by its Baby Easy Meal and Helan Shi dual brands, covering multiple categories such as food, cotton products, diapers, clothing, and toiletries, such as Helan Shi nutritional food, Duoyou diapers, Yibi clothing, and Qinbei toiletries.
However, the proportion of self operated brands in the overall revenue of enterprises is still at a relatively low level. For example, the sales revenue of the differentiated supply chain (including self owned brands) of Kidswant is only about 530 million yuan, accounting for 12.25% of the sales revenue of mother and baby products. The self owned brands of Baby Room account for more than 30% of sales in multiple categories. This also means that self operated brands in the mother and baby channel have made progress, but have not yet become the core pillar of enterprise revenue.

The development of self operated brands can help enterprises better control product quality and costs, enhance product differentiation competitiveness, and meet consumers' demand for high-quality and personalized products. However, the market promotion and brand building of self operated brands require a large amount of resource investment and face fierce market competition. Self operated brands need to continuously improve in product quality, brand marketing, channel expansion, and other aspects in order to gain recognition.

The self operated brands in the mother and baby channel have made significant progress in the first half of the year, but there is still considerable room for improvement in terms of revenue proportion. With the increasing demand for personalized products from consumers and the continuous investment of enterprises in supply chain integration and product research and development, self operated brands are expected to occupy a more important position in the mother and baby channel.
Cross border expansion is also difficult to drive growth, and extending layout has become the norm?

In the current market environment where the overall growth rate of the maternal and child industry is gradually slowing down, many forward-looking enterprises have begun to explore and try cross-border layout, no longer limited to the traditional maternal and child business field, but turning their attention to other infant and even larger group fields, trying to find new growth points and profit margins outside of traditional businesses, and maintaining sustained development and competitive advantages in the increasingly competitive market.

However, the financial report of Kidswant in the first half of the year still mainly focuses on traditional business data such as maternal and child product sales, store expansion quantity, and core category revenue. The revenue and expenditure situation and revenue proportion of cross-border businesses such as personal care, skincare and beauty, and IP trendy toys have not been separately disclosed, and the situation of baby friendly rooms is also the same; This situation may be due to the fact that cross-border business is still in the cultivation stage and has a small scale, or it may be due to the fact that cross-border business has not yet become a stable growth pillar for enterprises.

Both Kidswant and Baby Room are expanding their toy business beyond their main business. Kidswant has launched its own brand of toys and opened a "kidswantultra" store that integrates trendy IP and AI technology, creating an immersive parent-child space that embeds toys into interactive scenes; Baby Room acquired the exclusive agency of Japanese royal toy brand in Chinese Mainland to expand the high-end toy market, and cooperated with Bandai Nanmenggong to open a base store of Gunda, which can attract young families to improve the sales attraction of toys through IP empowerment.
Kidswant Ultra, a subsidiary of Kidswant, targets children and teenagers and focuses on the experience of growing together with their children. The store has set up areas such as Xiaomi, IP trendy toys, and AI intelligent toys, introducing over 50 popular IPs such as Detective Conan and Pony Koma, covering a variety of products such as badges, cards, and blind boxes. At the same time, it has launched a self-developed AI intelligent emotional partner series of dolls called "Ah Beibei".
Bandai Assembly Model Store, a subsidiary of Baby Room, focuses on children and teenagers, gathering internationally renowned IPs such as Gundam, Pok é mon, and Doraemon to provide assembly models and related peripheral products, meeting consumers' consumption needs for trendy toys and IP culture.

The cross-border exploration of maternal and child enterprises is a choice to cope with market changes, but to achieve sustainable growth in cross-border business, enterprises still need to further optimize their layout, improve operational efficiency, and strengthen brand building. With the continuous exploration and optimization of cross-border business by enterprises, it may bring new growth momentum to the maternal and child industry in the future.

Online business requires effort

With the rapid rise of online comprehensive e-commerce and content e-commerce, it is driving changes in domestic mother and baby sales channels. Online consumption has gradually become an important choice for mother and baby groups. Under this trend, traditional mother and baby chain enterprises such as Kidswant and Baby Room have also realized the importance of online business and increased their business layout on e-commerce platforms to meet the increasingly diverse shopping needs of consumers.

Through its own platforms such as APP, WeChat official account, applet and WeChat Mall, as well as third-party e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD, Kidwang has built a diversified online channel, built a precision marketing model using big data technology, and achieved personalized recommendation through user tags and smart models; Baby friendly rooms quickly covered O2O instant retail platforms such as Meituan, Hungleme, JD Home, Tiktok Houda to meet consumers' demand for instant shopping, and improved brand reputation through social media platforms such as Tiktok and Little Red Book to drive the national sales of its own brands.

However, efforts still need to be made in the layout of online business. The financial report for the first half of this year shows that the online sales revenue of Kidswant's mother and baby products was 1.898 billion yuan, accounting for 43.86% of the total sales revenue of mother and baby products, which is nearly half but has decreased compared to 2024; The e-commerce revenue of Baby Room decreased by 15.90% year-on-year, and the gross profit margin was also lower than that of the offline market.

Against the backdrop of the continuous penetration of online consumption in mother and baby care, enterprises dominated by offline chain stores should also focus on the operation of online business. The online business of Child King and Baby Room has achieved certain results, but both the slight decline in the proportion of Child King and the year-on-year decline in Baby Room revenue indicate that online business still needs to continue to work hard; Future mother and baby chain enterprises need to increase investment in product differentiation, user experience optimization, digital marketing, and other aspects in order to better adapt to online market competition and promote steady growth of online business.

Industry thinking: Faced with increasingly fierce market competition, the mother and baby industry is also exploring growth. Leading companies are seeking breakthroughs in multiple dimensions such as strengthening core categories of milk powder, accelerating franchise expansion, developing self owned brands, extending cross-border business, and building online channels. However, these explorations have not yet formed significant new growth poles. How to achieve effective breakthroughs in innovative businesses while maintaining a stable foundation in the future will be the key to the sustained growth of the industry.