As for international trade, import flows of baby and children’s goods in the country exceeded export volume for every product category in this market. Toys were the most imported type of product for Russian children, with a projected import value of over 1.2 billion U.S. dollars for 2020. During 2018, Russia also imported nearly 1 billion U.S. dollars worth of sanitary products and food preparations for babies, if counted together. Baby sanitary products were the leading export commodities among baby and children’s products from the country that year.
In 2019, toys and games accounted for the highest online shopping penetration rate of all product categories in the Russian children’s products market, with aggregate sales value amounting to over 200 billion Russian rubles over that year. Of over one third of Russian baby food e-shoppers in 2019, the majority used online shopping channels to order either breast milk substitutes or ready-made food for babies. 2019 was also marked with the historic maximum for average household expenditure on school year shopping, with the school uniform being the priciest item.
Russia’s largest children’s goods retailer Detsky Mir, with over half of the total online sales share, owned 780 retail outlets across Russia and the CIS region by the third quarter of 2019. The second-largest retailer Korablik, experienced severe losses since 2016, while Dochki -Sinochki reported 22 billion Russian rubles in 2018. As for parental preferences in Russia, the quality was the main feature for food, apparel, and toys, while the use of natural materials was important to less than half of the parents surveyed.
