Heima's 2025 Table Tennis Market Observations, Part 1
1
Exposure decides the life or death of a product and a brand. Set performance aside — LOKI’s business this year should be quite good. It sponsored a great many events: the Super League, the Asian Juniors, the A/B/C/D leagues, plus many grassroots tournaments, and signed many national players. Its strategy now resembles Tibhar’s before: cast a wide net to build name recognition. It also signed Liang Jingkun, Yuan Licen, Zhao Zihao, Hu Dongshen, Xu Chenhao and other national players, plus a slew of provincial teams — solid exposure.
Some brands do not lack star power — Butterfly, DHS — so their products naturally have high exposure. Often, customers only buy once they have seen your thing. Especially now, with many brands and even more products, however good your thing is, without enough exposure it will not sell. Take Yinhe’s Beidou 5, like a supple-springy Hurricane 8 — actually quite good to play. On my account, it sold at least a hundred-plus pieces, because people saw the ad.
Why do I often promote my own Heima refined-craft on my account? For one, within an hour of each article, dozens of accounts on different platforms copy my article outright; if I do not add some of my own ads to make copying harder, it will not do. For another, promoting my own product is reasonable — if you do not promote, people do not notice, however good the product. When Yanyang was promoted often, it sold well. Now with less promotion, even after price cuts, it sells little — normal. And with brands churning out new products faster, each must give products enough exposure in different places to survive, especially small brands.
2
Pinduoduo’s big winner. Xianyu needs no mention — its decade of growth was very fast; even my Xianyu account has thousands of followers. Pinduoduo, in the last couple of years and especially this year, has much larger sales. How dealers make money, and how much, I do not know. Anyway, brands surely profited — at least sales grew a lot. And the big winners behind it are the better-known major brands, because those products were household names, now bought at more affordable prices. People surely flock to them. For example, the once-pricey DHS star national rubber and Butterfly’s flagship rubbers (Tenergy, Dignics series) sold a lot more. It also boosts already-known rubbers — XIOM’s Platinum V (Vega China), Stiga’s DNA Red Dragon and Platinum editions, V>15 Sticky. Many say Stiga is failing now; on the contrary, these two years Stiga’s business is surely better (they all went on team-building…), because rubber sales surged. OEM’ing to ESN was a brilliant move, and the Korea-made blade move is opening up wider.
3
This table-tennis gear market is generally weak, the second half worse than the first, and ever more cutthroat. Cutthroat, because online spreads fast and info-sharing is high; also because there are more and more self-owned brands. Plus, with Xianyu, Pinduoduo and other platforms, the price war keeps raging. I now buy waterless glue on Pinduoduo myself. I usually use Liulan — better elasticity, ordinary tack, better for tensors. Yan Tianming is tackier, a bit like DHS No. 15, suiting domestic rubber. There is also a 6th-gen upgrade that does not bubble. The prices really are too cheap! I cannot say how much profit Pinduoduo brings dealers, but it truly helps us buy our beloved products cheaper. A buddy next door says his T05, once changed every four months, can now be changed every two thanks to Pinduoduo.