Behind The Boom Of "Double 11" Sweeping Robots: Housing Economy And The Rise Of Flexible Industrial Chain

The "double 11" promotion has entered the closing stage. As expected, the sweeping robot has successfully reached the top of the hot selling list of e-commerce platforms. This category is entering thousands of households at an extraordinary speed this year.

According to the announcement of kovos group, during the "double 11" period, the total turnover of the two major brands of the company exceeded 1.45 billion yuan, an increase of 83.5% year-on-year; the turnover of relatively small-scale brand Youli company during this period was 45.49 million yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of 1584%.

Under the background of new crown pneumonia, the rise of "housing economy", everything about the family scene is rapidly hot. This is a typical application in the market.

The 21st century economic report reporter found that the stock price of kovos, the only two listed company in the market, has jumped from about 19 yuan this year to 65 yuan (up about 242%) on November 11, while the stock price of stone technology has risen from 340 yuan at the beginning of the year to 850 yuan (up about 150%).

With the penetration rate of sweeping robots still very low, the stock prices of the two companies have soared, which confirms the market's optimism for the blue ocean in the future. However, the performance of the two companies in the half year period was still mediocre, and it was not until the third quarter that they successively ushered in the outbreak.

From the early seemingly chicken rib household appliances to today's investment institutions and families are keen on, what has the sweeping robot industry experienced?

Rapid growth in demand for sweeping robots

Recently, the news that the chairman of Shenzhen sweeper robot Co., Ltd. is crouching on the floor of upstream supply chain manufacturers to grab goods has been hotly discussed in the industry.

This is also one aspect of the development of the industry. With the maturity of navigation, endurance, interaction and other technical capabilities, and the ecological stability of the industrial chain, sweeping robots begin to be accepted by consumers with a more mature attitude.

The external factor is a small pusher in the unexpected. "The epidemic has created a new economic model of" housing economy "around the world, thus contributing to the rapid development of two industries: small household appliances and e-commerce." Wang Lilei, chairman and CEO of Guangdong Baole robot Co., Ltd., told the 21st century economic reporter that this led to the vitality of subdivision categories related to family scenes this year, including sweeping robots, electric kettle, microwave oven, oven, etc.

The consumption demand of sweeping robots is growing rapidly. According to Euromonitor, in 2019, China will sell 5.436 million sweeping robots, ranking first in the world, far exceeding 2.745 million in the United States and 2.384 million in Western Europe.

But there is no doubt that there is still much room for imagination in the Chinese market. According to the calculation of China Merchants Securities, the penetration rate of sweeping robots in the Chinese market is still low. It is estimated that the stock of sweeping robots is about 15 million, and the penetration rate is about 6% based on 250 million urban households.

The Research Report of Haitong Securities shows that if the final penetration rate of domestic sweeping robots reaches 30%, if it takes 10 years to achieve the goal, the corresponding industry compound growth rate in the next 10 years will be 18%; if the final penetration rate reaches 50%, if the target is achieved in 15 years, the corresponding composite growth rate of the industry in the next 10 years will be 15%.

Demand growth in overseas markets is also strong. Wang Lilei pointed out that the company's recent sales growth in South America, Asia and Southeast Asia is very high. In the early stage, the growth of demand was mainly in Europe, but now it has further shifted and expanded the demand.

"The penetration rate of the United States is much higher than that of China. On average, the global penetration rate is calculated in terms of households, and the penetration rate may be less than 5%, because the demand of many Asian, African and Latin American countries has not yet started. " He further analyzed.

There is no doubt that there are huge opportunities for the companies involved. Under the current situation of extremely low penetration rate, the domestic market has formed an oligopoly competition pattern. According to statistics, in 2019, the market share of the sweeping robot industry in kovos will reach 49.4%, and that of stone technology (Mijia + stone) will reach 23.1%.

Industrial chain and technology iteration deepening

Different from the early years of sweeping robot in the family quite some chicken ribs, now its ability has become more mature.

Wang Lilei said that today's sweeping robot products can be remotely demarcated from the map to evaluate the use status of the robot: whether the dust box is full, battery power, daily cleaning area, etc.

The latest machines have evolved to do garbage collection; there are also electrically controlled water tank machines, which have more and more control over water, thus cleaning larger areas. AI is more capable of solving the problem of face sweeping and so on.

Wang Lilei also told the 21st century economic reporter that currently, obstacle crossing is still a technical bottleneck faced by sweeping robots, but in recent years, technology has gradually solved some problems.

"It's true that there are always barriers at home, but now our sweeping robots can cross the heights of 2.2 cm and 2.5 cm, and can cross most of the barriers such as thresholds and wires." He added that according to the observation, female groups and family pet groups will have relatively high demand for sweeping robots, mainly for hair cleaning and so on.

The attraction and promotion of the whole industrial chain are indispensable. In the Chinese market, consumer electronics is like a circle. When one category leads the electronic industry chain to maturity, other categories will blossom and bear fruit.

For example, China's mobile phone industry has become the world's champion, and the industrial chain links and technologies involved in it can also be used in small household appliances such as floor sweeping robots. This has created the Pearl River Delta region's ability to control the market maturity and agile production of sweeping robots, and is also the foundation for mobile phone manufacturers to announce their entry into the aiot field.

"The biggest advantage of PRD is that there are a large number of suppliers who can cooperate with us to carry out flexible manufacturing and sensitive manufacturing for customers. Without the cooperation of everyone in the same understanding ability and technical ability, it is difficult for the supply chain to complete the iteration quickly. " Wang further said. This is also a kind of competitiveness that is hard to be replaced by other places in the world so far.

Zhong Bo, chairman of Li company, has been in business for 11 years. He also pointed out that the earliest manufacturers of sweeping robots in mainland China were Japanese and Taiwan funded enterprises. They came to the mainland and Guangdong to set up factories. At first, they came for cheap labor. But after the mature supply chain and localization of technical teams, they found that the advantages of mainland and Guangdong were all-round, and "they can't do without it any more.".

Because of this, the iteration speed of China's sweeping robot products will be much higher than the evolution ability of overseas brands based on their own culture and production capacity.

Today, sweeping robots are still evolving towards real "robot" capabilities. "The process of sweeping robot industry from 0 to 1 is not in China, but from 1 to 10, even from 10 to 100, there will be great potential." Wang Lilei pointed out that it algorithm, software advantages and manufacturing capacity are the overall leading advantages of China's sweeping robot industry. In addition, the role of sweeping robot can be further evolved by combining with more intelligent platforms.

According to Wang Lilei, Guangdong Baole started with an injection molding factory. Today, nearly half of the R & D personnel are software code engineers and Algorithm Engineers, accounting for nearly half of the company's R & D cost. But going to the bottom, the lack of ability began to appear.

"For example, we don't have enough capacity to run servers and maintain basic data in many overseas countries. It happens that Alibaba cloud has launched server deployment all over the world, which has played a crucial role in improving our customer service ability and enabling Chinese companies to export so many machines to European and American markets. " He pointed out.

For example, the process of connecting robots to the Internet is extremely complex. In the early stage, the company's own solutions need to be repeatedly connected. But now using the WiFi Bluetooth chip module of tmall genie, the one button direct connection scheme will greatly improve the effect.

"Driven by AI technology, we are still studying the direction of security." Under Wang Lilei's plan, the future sweeping robot will have the ability to identify family scene risks, such as pet care, identifying the basic situation of the elderly, etc. "In the next step, we plan to analyze and identify the data through the transmission of cloud platform data. This process depends on the basic capabilities of more partners."