"Over the past year, the global economic recovery has been sluggish, real estate has remained sluggish, and consumer demand has been weak. In this context, it is not easy for Sakura to stabilize the fundamentals and achieve a substantial increase in profitability. ”
At the "2024 Sakura (China) Spring Festival Carnival", Zhang Yongzheng, vice chairman of Sakura Kitchen (China) Co., Ltd., said.
For a long time in the past, Sakura Kitchen, which was frequently on the hot search for "being touched by copycats", has come to the 47th year of brand development. And this year, nearly half a hundred, how is it developing in the kitchen and bathroom track? Let's take a look.
Cottages are numerous
"True Sakura" is low-key
In the field of Chinese kitchens and bathrooms, "Shanzhai Sakura", "Shanzhai Oupai" and "Shanzhai Good Wife" are known as the three hardest hit areas of Shanzhai kitchens and bathrooms. These three copycat brands were quite crazy in the past few years, almost occupying half of the kitchen and bathroom appliances market.
Among them, "cottage cherry blossoms" topped the list. The most well-known incident dates back to 2015, when Alibaba announced that it would remove all products from copycat "Sakura" and "Wonderflower" on platforms such as Tmall, which was a rare removal of all products from a certain brand by Alibaba.
After that, Alibaba cooperated with authoritative testing institutions to carry out a special sampling inspection for the household appliances industry, and locked a number of merchants and goods with quality problems. Among them, the complaint rate of "wonderflower" is relatively high, and all the sampling batches of gas water heaters under the brand are unqualified, and the failure rate of other products such as electric water heaters, range hoods, and disinfection cabinets is also as high as 7666%。
Subsequently, domestic e-commerce platforms such as JD.com, Suning, and No.1 Store also removed Sakura's products from the shelves within 24 hours.
In recent years, Sakura Sakura has been holding high the banner of cracking down on counterfeiting and striking hard. "Shanzhai Sakura" gradually faded out of the market, and the 47-year-old "True Sakura" has a high national degree as always. It can be said that behind the copycat is the high national popularity of the Sakura cherry tree.
Sakura Sakura was born in Taiwan, China in 1978, entered Kunshan, China in 1994, and established Sakura Kitchen (China) Co., Ltd. *** is one of the first pioneers in China's kitchen industry. After entering the Chinese market, Sakura experienced the peak of development in the early days, and in 2012, it was limited by the growth bottleneck of products and channels, and fell into a difficult transformation in the medium term.
Fortunately, in about 2013, it launched the "brand reengineering" in time, adjusted the logo, extended services, optimized channels, nuggets e-commerce, and carried out intelligent upgrades to new products such as smoke stove consumption, combustion heat, electric heating, etc., so that Sakura Sakura regained the rhythm of the market, and gradually radiated new vitality and competitiveness.
It is reported that as early as 2014, Sakura Group's cross-strait performance reached NT$12.5 billion (equivalent to about 28.5 billion yuan7.5 billion yuan). In 2018, the total operating income of its mainland business was 12$1.4 billion. According to the data of Aowei Cloud Network, in the proportion of offline kitchen appliances** sales in 2023, Sakura ranks among the TOP20; The proportion of offline sales of range hoods ranks 13th, and the online proportion has also squeezed into the TOP20.
47 years of steady progress
The original intention of the cherry blossoms has not changed
As we all know, under the wave of one-stop and scenario-based consumption, the overall kitchen has become the key layout direction of major kitchen appliance companies.
As early as 1986, Sakura Sakura took the lead in introducing German technology in Taiwan and produced the first set of integrated kitchens, which has a fairly solid technical foundation. In 2002, Sakura Sakura Whole Kitchen, which has a high starting point, officially entered the Chinese mainland market.
At that time, the vast majority of consumers were still quite vague about the concept of a whole kitchen. In this regard, Sakura Sakura's communication approach is to provide a total optimization solution to help consumers make plans. And in 2012, he proposed to "work together to realize the kitchen idea".
Unlike many companies, Sakura Sakura has always been relatively low-key, and follows the steady and steady route, believing that "the post-maintenance of the whole kitchen is not a year or two years, but a long time, during which consumers will come to you if they have any questions." For this reason, as soon as Sakura Sakura Modular Kitchen entered the market, it launched the "Integral Kitchen Permanent Free Maintenance".
In addition to the overall kitchen strategy, Sakura Sakura also pursues the ultimate philosophy in products, marketing, and service.
For example, in terms of products, at this Spring Festival Carnival Annual Meeting, Sakura exhibited more than 300 kitchen and bathroom products covering smoke machines, stoves, water heaters, integrated stoves, integrated cooking centers, integrated sink dishwashers, etc., including 8 new sets of morning snow, modern, hot love, fantasy, slender, twilight, mood, and fantasy in 2024, as well as white kitchen appliances that are popular throughout the kitchen appliance industry, and special gas water heaters that integrate the characteristics of Sichuan opera faces.
In terms of product innovation, as of 2021, Sakura Sakura has applied for a total of 1,142 patents, 160 trademarks, 2 copyrights and 3 software copyrights.
It is worth mentioning that as early as many years ago, Sakura Sakura established a set of "concept engineering" product development tools internally, that is, let the product manager take the initiative to interact with users, refine the "consumer concept", and then combine it with the company's internal expert opinions to finally judge whether the product has market value and whether it is worth the investment in commercialization. This fundamentally puts an end to the "closed-door manufacturing" of product development.
In terms of service, since its establishment in 1978, Sakura Sakura began to implement the "permanent free oil delivery network" service for range hoods, the "permanent free safety inspection" service for water heaters in 1986, and the "permanent free maintenance" service for the whole kitchen and wardrobe.
In terms of marketing, the words and deeds of Sakura Sakura in the past two years are also remarkable. For example, in the past, he cooperated with "Our Band", "Trend Partner 2", "Go to Work! cross-border cooperation with well-known variety show IPs such as "Mom"; In the special special event of the 30th anniversary, a series of interactive pop-up activities related to "romance" will be created.
It is reported that in 2024, Sakura will focus on the theme of "Comfortable Life + 1 Degree", and realize the upgrade from "Happiness Train" to **Food Truck, and then to the national bloom of Sakura City Park. Through the life show of young people, as well as the way of online and offline national pan-entertainment, we can play with the "three new groups" of newlyweds, new homes, and new middle class.
The brand has been established for 47 years and has entered the mainland market for 31 years, although it is not standing at the top of the pyramid in the field of kitchen appliances, Sakura Sakura has been steadily developing and becoming a popular brand with a high national degree. Business competition is a marathon, and Sakura Sakura, with its endurance and strength, deserves greater expectations in the future.