Speed in launching new products is important, but getting it right is the key.
A cross-border toy company with nearly $400 million in annual revenue, managing eight brands and 19,000 SKUs, launches over a thousand R&D projects each year. When scale reaches tens of thousands of SKUs, the real challenge is no longer "how fast can we launch," but rather "can we consistently and reliably ensure accuracy."
Joyin leverages Feishu Projects to implement IPD (Integrated Product Development) into daily execution: using 11 standardized process templates to govern every R&D path, conducting single reviews of more than 400 SKUs, and eliminating approximately 30% of ineffective project initiations.
How has this toy company transformed new product launches into a truly replicable system?
Peak Season Window: Only Two Months Left
Half a Step Behind Could Mean Missing the Entire Year
Whether a new Christmas product makes it onto North American shelves in time for peak season is often decided half a year in advance. Every second half of the year, the pace of retail in North America accelerates sharply: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas arrive in quick succession, leaving only about two months for channel inventory preparation and shelf placement. For consumer goods companies, R&D, procurement, quality inspection, compliance, and logistics are compressed onto the same timeline, with each step interdependent. Any delay in one link results in tangible consequences—either missing the entire peak season or carrying unsold inventory into the next year.
This time pressure is something Joyin faces annually. This company, focused on cross-border toys and seasonal products, must simultaneously advance over a thousand R&D projects each year, with every peak-season launch bound by this tight schedule.
Transitioning from Distributing to In-House R&D
Speed Was There, But Order Was Lacking
In its early days, Joyin operated more like a traditional cross-border trader: agile in product selection, responsive, and broad in distribution. This model helped the company quickly enter markets and build brand and channel scale. However, as overseas consumers’ demands for originality and quality increased, the business focus gradually shifted toward in-house R&D. The number of concurrent projects surged from single digits to hundreds, involving more roles, increasing compliance complexity, and exacerbating information loss during transmission.
At that time, market trends were mostly communicated verbally, progress relied on manual follow-ups, and designs teams spent months on creations that might ultimately be out of sync with overseas trends. Projects that should accelerate couldn’t speed up; those that should be terminated were hard to stop; and critical projects didn’t necessarily receive sufficient resources.
Through internal reviews, Joyin gradually realized that what they truly needed was a digital R&D management system embodying IPD principles—one covering the entire process from initiation to launch. A single tool alone could not solve systemic challenges. Ultimately, Joyin chose Feishu Projects as its core platform to systematically restructure R&D processes, review mechanisms, and cross-department collaboration.
11 Process Templates to Control
Every Pathway from Mold Creation to Shelf Placement
Joyin’s product range is diverse, with varied R&D routes. In-house toy development typically involves mold creation, prototyping, testing, and compliance certification; lightweight iterations, such as changing packaging or color schemes, follow shorter processes; certain textile-based or special toys require additional quality inspections and compliance checks.
Joyin’s strategy is to standardize these processes into templates. Based on the R&D complexity, iteration rhythm, and overseas compliance requirements of different product categories, they have gradually established 11 R&D process templates within Feishu Projects, adapting to various development scenarios. Full-process projects advance through stages such as concept, design, development, testing, and launch; lightweight projects retain essential nodes to shorten cycles; special categories strengthen prototyping, quality inspection, and compliance steps.
While process templates solve the question of "how to execute a project," the bigger challenge lies in "how to manage it." At the collaboration level, Joyin adopts a combined model of master and sub-processes: the master process controls milestones and overall scheduling, while sub-processes handle specific execution tasks such as visual design, sample testing, and compliance verification.
This decomposition may seem abstract, but brings concrete benefits: project managers no longer need to chase progress across multiple chat groups or manually consolidate status updates from different stages. Specialized roles have clear start/end times, responsible parties, and deliverables, enabling project managers to maintain oversight without getting bogged down in micromanagement.
Eliminating 30% of Ineffective Initiatives
Putting R&D Investment Where It Matters Most
Smooth processes address "how to do it," but for consumer goods companies, deciding "what to do and what not to do" is even more critical. Within Feishu Projects, Joyin has built two evaluation libraries: DCP (Decision Checkpoint) reviews focus on commercial feasibility, while TR (Technical Review) assesses quality and technical implementation. Different projects automatically match required review dimensions, materials are condensed into one-page summaries, and review outcomes are aggregated online, supporting centralized reviews of over 400 SKUs at once.
After implementing standardized reviews, Joyin successfully eliminated about 30% of ineffective project initiations, allowing resources to be concentrated on high-potential projects.
Information Alignment, Cost Calculability
Growth Can Then Be Truly Controlled
When project counts reach the thousands, collaboration friction often stems from basic information issues: inconsistent fields, duplicate data entry, and version confusion. By standardizing core fields such as product codes, brands, and categories, Joyin enables automatic synchronization of information across work orders, samples, quality inspections, and other stages within Feishu Projects, reducing manual verification.
With unified data definitions, resource allocation and costs can be accurately calculated. Joyin incorporates project investments, mold costs, supply chain expenses, and labor costs into a unified tracking process, allowing the system to automatically compute expected returns and actual ROI. Decision-makers no longer need to wait until after product launch to conduct post-mortems—they can monitor changes in investment and returns throughout project execution, doubling down on high-potential projects and terminating low-efficiency ones early.
When SKUs Expand to Tens of Thousands
Management Itself Becomes Competitive Advantage
Cross-border toys and seasonal products belong to industries characterized by high timeliness, rapid iteration, and high SKU density. In the early stages, companies can grow rapidly based on product selection and supply chain agility. But once a certain scale is reached, the key to growth quality shifts from "whether we can launch new products" to "whether we can consistently, reliably, and at scale ensure new product success."
Joyin’s transformation path is clear: shifting from distribution to in-house R&D, from scale expansion to systematic operations, where R&D management now directly impacts growth efficiency, resource returns, and brand competitiveness. Throughout this journey, Feishu Projects has integrated processes, reviews, and collaboration into a single operational mechanism.
Joyin’s COO, General Manager Luo, summarizes: "Launching large volumes of SKUs continuously requires fully connected processes, reviews, and coordination. Feishu Projects has helped us implement IPD in practice, eliminating 30% of ineffective initiatives. With a functioning system, scalable growth becomes replicable." For cross-border consumer goods companies undergoing transformation, building systems has become especially critical.
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