Author: Jin Wang.
In 2022, the number of pet dogs and cats in urban China will reach 11.6 billion.
Behind such a huge group of pet owners, there is a larger pet industry.
Zhang Xiaolin stepped into this industry 20 years ago, when he had just graduated from college and found his first job in a foreign company that made smart cat litter boxes in charge of the first chain, which was more than ten years.
Starting a business to make your own products and companies originated from an accidental experience after Zhang Xiaolin studied for an MBA.
In an MBA class, the teacher asked everyone to do a practical case analysis, and Zhang Xiaolin only had one pet-related work experience at that time, so Zhang Xiaolin began to study the Chinese pet market in depth.
China's pet industry in 2014 is still in an embryonic stage, but whether from the perspective of China's urbanization development speed or from the perspective of Chinese population, China's pet market has immeasurable potential.
Zhang Xiaolin, who has more than ten years of industry experience, came up with an idea this year: why not talk to the old owner, be the general agent himself, and introduce more products into the domestic market?
That's what he thinks and does, and in this way, Zhang Xiaolin's entrepreneurial road started from the introduction of foreign smart cat litter boxes.
01 Enter the blue ocean
Zhang Xiaolin can be said to be the earliest group of people in China to contact the smart cat litter box, and in the past ten years, he has gradually established his own team and cognition.
By 2017, when doing a double eleven review for the first smart cat litter box brand, Zhang Xiaolin found that his first overseas head brand of smart cat litter box had reached 5 million users in China, and it was roughly estimated that the number of domestic cat owners was close to 10 million.
However, due to the fact that the unit price of his ** product was too expensive (4000+ yuan) at that time, the actual conversion rate was not high.
At this time, Zhang Xiaolin, who has been in the market for many years, has a lot of new ideas about the product, and after these ideas were not implemented to the brand, Zhang Xiaolin had the idea of developing his own smart cat litter box.
The reason why there is such an idea, in fact, there is another reason, that is, Zhang Xiaolin judged according to various signs in the market that China's smart cat litter box market in 2017 has reached the eve of the outbreak.
So, Zhang Xiaolin found two classmates he knew when he was in the MBA, and registered a company at the end of this year, and the registered name was Lianpet Intelligence.
After the company was officially established, Zhang Xiaolin set the first goal for the team: to make the world's first full-featured automatic cat litter box controlled by APP.
Looking back at the joint pet intelligence established in 2017, there are two fundamental advantages:
The first is the advantage of the domestic ** chain.
Compared with the smart cat litter box that is often thousands of dollars larger in foreign countries, Lianpet Intelligence, which was established in China, has mature Chinese manufacturing and first-class chain support, as well as the popularization of technologies such as the Internet of Things and sensors in China, which is the basis for Lianpet Intelligence to compete with mature international brands
The second is the experience advantage of the team.
Zhang Xiaolin has always believed that to be a global pet company, the first thing is to pets, not to people.
This understanding allows them to gain a fuller insight into their "end users" and do a good job in product definition and feature development.
In this process, the team of Lianpet Intelligence developed technologies such as multi-cat recognition and health monitoring, which became the functions of their products and the core technology precipitated by the company.
The first product of Lianpet Intelligence was officially launched two years later, and in August 2019, the first smart cat litter box scooper of Lianpet Intelligence was launched on Tmall, and it became a popular product for a while.
Afterwards, Zhang Xiaolin said, "After this year, the smart cat litter box business of Lianpet Intelligence has maintained a growth rate of 2-3 times, and it has maintained the first place in the sales category on the Tmall platform for four consecutive years." ”
02 The dilemma of going to sea
According to iResearch statistics, in 2022, the number of pet dogs and cats in China's cities and towns has reached 11.6 billion, the domestic pet market size has exceeded 300 billion yuan.
China's pet market, after rapid growth in the past few years, has begun to take shape.
However, Zhang Xiaolin told us, "In terms of pet raising, Europe and the United States started more than 20 years earlier than China. ”
He believes that China is still facing the first generation of cat owners, Europe and the United States are already the third generation of cat owners, and the life span of cats is generally more than 12 years, with a difference of 24 years.
In the past 24 years, European and American pet brands have stepped on many pitfalls, and we have learned a lot of experience from them. ”
Zhang Xiaolin not only learned a lot of experience from the growth experience of mature pet brands in Europe and the United States, in fact, from the first day of the establishment of Lianpet Intelligence, he positioned the company as a global company, and his idea at that time was to "bring China's mature ** chain and IoT technology overseas." ”
The ideal is very full, but the reality often has all kinds of obstacles.
For example, in more mature overseas markets, there are pet brands that have occupied the minds of users, such as whisker, which was founded in the United States in 2000, and its litter-robot has long occupied more than 50% of the market share of the smart cat litter box market in the United States.
In the early days of going overseas, Zhang Xiaolin found that it was difficult for them to enter the mainstream pet breeders in the European and American markets, especially when launching an independent station, no matter how they advertised, they could not bring any sales effect.
So, Zhang Xiaolin made two difficult decisions for the product to go overseas:
First, stop the delivery of independent stations and put more placements on B2C platforms, such as Amazon.
Second, take the route of "rural areas surrounding cities", and the first stop to go to sea is China's neighboring countries.
Everyone in our industry knows that the United States is the largest market in the pet industry, and the market size is 4-5 times larger than China. ”
In 2019, when the first product of Lianpet Intelligence was launched, they also brought this product to Southeast Asia.
At that time, Zhang Xiaolin preferred three countries for this product:
First of all, Japan and South Korea, two developed countries that are closer to Europe and the United States in terms of pet concept, are sold in the Japanese and South Korean markets to verify the possible market feedback in the European and American markets
The second is Thailand, which is similar to the concept of raising pets in China, and through this emerging market, the products of Lianpet Intelligence can be further verified.
By going overseas to these countries, Zhang Xiaolin preliminarily verified the problems that his products may encounter when going overseas, and accumulated rich practical experience for the next step of the brand's going overseas.
03 From selling goods to making brands
The real impact of Lianpet Intelligence on the larger European and American markets will be in 2022.
Zhang Xiaolin knows that when entering the European and American markets, it is inevitable to wrestle with local players who have been deeply involved in this industry for twenty or thirty years and have fully occupied the minds of users, for example, in the United States, it will inevitably encounter litter-robots.
At this time, Chinese companies like Lianpet Intelligence must find a suitable path for themselves to go overseas.
Litter-Robot has been operating in the United States for more than 30 years, occupying more than half of the market in the United States, and it is difficult for us to surpass Litter-Robot in the American market.
At the time, he found that no matter how they advertised, it was hard to see what the conversion rate was, "because no one knew who Catlink was." ”
After a period of exploration, Zhang Xiaolin formulated a new strategy for Lianpet Intelligence, and the new strategy emphasizes two points:
First, functional advantages. Although the European and American markets are more mature, they are not better than those in China in terms of functionality and intelligence, which is also a fundamental reason for Zhang Xiaolin's entrepreneurship.
Second, the advantage. The products of mainstream players in the European and American markets are sold at high prices, and Zhang Xiaolin tried to open up the market with the half-price pricing of these products.
There are always some early adopters who hope to buy more cost-effective and more technological, supplemented by cross-border e-commerce, which has become the most suitable operation strategy for us in the European and American markets. ”
However, Zhang Xiaolin also knows that cross-border e-commerce is the best in the final analysis, and it is difficult to precipitate the brand, and if Chinese enterprises want to become bigger and stronger, they must get out of the idea of selling goods and learn to be a brand.
To learn to be a global brand, Zhang Xiaolin's first thought was Google, so Zhang Xiaolin signed up for the Google Overseas Entrepreneurship Accelerator in 2022.
Zhang Xiaolin and his team really entered the Google Overseas Entrepreneurship Accelerator in 2023, a year in which Zhang Xiaolin and his team have undergone a re-learning Xi from brand building, business model, and channel strategy.
In terms of brand building, after Google's overseas entrepreneurship accelerator, Zhang Xiaolin has a new set of ideas:
First of all, for the top-level design, each product has its own technical characteristics and story. This can be subdivided into different brand stories, such as the story of smart cat litter box with multi-cat recognition technology, and the difference between filtered and unfiltered water in water dispensers.
Google's experts helped Lianpet Intelligence sort out the top-level design, for example, what are we?What's the difference?How to prove it?This brand has three questions.
Secondly, convey the brand concept through content. Through the AB test, choose the appropriate channel to convey the content that Lianpet Intelligence wants to express.
After three months of learning and Xi in Google's overseas entrepreneurship accelerator, we found that to be a brand, we must uphold long-termism, Amazon solves the problem of user purchase, and the real brand operation also needs to present the content of each single product and some private domain operations. ”
Finally, there is the choice of communication channels.
In 2023, Lianpet Intelligence will have nearly 500,000 users around the world, and the smart cat litter box will be the first in the domestic category, and on the Amazon platform, it will also be the first in the primeday category for two consecutive years.
Next, facing the European and American markets, Lianpet Intelligence needs to start anew.
"In 2024, our focus will be on building our global brand content and brand through Google's diversified advertising. ”