Heima's 2025 Table Tennis Market Observations, Part 2
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People are still willing — even more willing now — to pay a premium for what they love. Once, a brand-new custom Fan Zhendong ALC worth 20k sat in front of me; I did not treasure it, and only regretted it after losing it. True, compared to last year’s Butterfly new-custom order price, the seller surely profited a lot, but the problem is most people cannot get one at all. Rarity raises value, and this one is currently discontinued, so prices climbing is reasonable. Once, when I started playing the Yoshimura Maharu Limited, it was only two thousand; now it is routinely listed at over ten thousand. Few buy it, but few are needed — a handful is enough. The gold-label Viscaria, though I keep saying it is not worth the price and I would rather play the market Viscaria, cannot stop players paying for what they love. Even if the price is sky-high, even if it is not worth it, one consumer trend among young people is to more readily pay a premium for what they love.
Take the recently popular 500-plus-yuan Fan Zhendong Champions League jersey… no wonder Tibhar has put much focus on apparel these years — it is hugely profitable. Of course, several other foreign brands do the same; profit-chasing is understandable. But it shows: when people love something, never mind value-for-money or whether the price is reasonable… that is unnecessary, because they love it.
5
Simply cutting prices no longer means much. If something was already hot — Red V, Platinum V, DNA Red Dragon, D09c — price cuts help, of course; those who hesitated over price easily place an order. But more often now, people will not buy just because a product is cheap to try something new. That era has passed. We will pay more for what we love, but we will not easily buy what does not move us, even cheap. Besides, cheap blades and rubber are everywhere now.
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The price gap between new and secondhand goods keeps widening. The gap was not this big before. For pricier items — gold-label Viscaria, Boll 70, Butterfly limiteds or customs — many buy to collect or to wait for appreciation, not to play. Then they pick new, even if new costs a lot more. Those purely trying for novelty, buying secondhand blades, have many options — it is just curiosity, a try is enough. As for rubber, with Xianyu and Pinduoduo in a price war, many new rubber models are already cheap, so there is no need to buy secondhand.
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People have passion for what they love, but the passion fades fast. The “golden grand slam” W968, Q968 and S968 dropped a lot over the past year — you could say nearly halved. Early on, people were enthusiastic. Those who paid high prices for the “Red Zhang” were excited at first, then cooled fast. Today’s market hot spots change very fast. People are like scrolling short videos of pretty girls — liking this one moment, that the next, hard to like anything for long. People also lack patience. Take Stiga’s Destiny Carbo — the feel is genuinely comfortable and bright, but if it keeps being “futures,” people soon lose the urge to buy. This is almost a shared phenomenon.