1 year ago, Qian Dongqi, founder of Tim ke, once set up a Flag: "In the next 3 years, we will surpass Dyson in the field of clean home appliances." From the perspective of market performance at that time, although the new track of the floor washer developed by Tim Ke had a steep growth curve, it was still too different from Dyson in terms of brand awareness and the richness of the product line.
What everyone did not expect is that today, 1 year later, Qian Dongqi has achieved this goal, "This year's double 11, Timco omni-channel sales increased by 245% year-on-year, in the clean electrical category has surpassed Dyson." He told Titanium Media. According to the data, Timco's omni-channel sales reached 1.45 billion yuan, of which Tim washable machine product "Fuwan" became the market share of Tmall, JD.com, and Douyin platforms No.1.
The scrubber, which started from 0, has become a new favorite in the market
Mention of the Tim co brand, many people may still be a little strange, its predecessor is actually TEK, this brand from the beginning of the birth of 1998, began to get involved in the research and development of vacuum cleaner categories, it should be said that now Tim can achieve success in the field of cleaning home appliances, inseparable from the 23 years of technology accumulation.
Qian Dongqi said: "Compared with other companies in the industry, Timco's biggest technical competitive advantage lies in the comprehensiveness of its capabilities, and in the early days of the development and production of vacuum cleaners, it has accumulated a lot of technical experience in air duct design, motors, and ergonomic structures." At the same time, the OEM business that the company has, so that Tim coco has a complete structure not only in research and development, but also in manufacturing. ”
It is precisely because it has built a complete industrial chain combining upstream and downstream in the field of clean home appliances that the innovation of the category has become possible, and the launch of the Tian washable floor machine product is also based on the observation of the actual use needs of Chinese users. Compared with the decoration habits of using carpets in houses in Europe and the United States and other places, domestic users prefer hard floors such as floors and marble, which makes traditional vacuum cleaners have certain limitations when cleaning.
This localization demand has also quickly brought business opportunities, in the past few years, we can see a lot of intelligent mopping tools on the market, and at the same time, the category of sweeping robots has also begun to rapidly iterate in the new direction of "sweeping and dragging". After noticing this market demand, Tim Ke did not follow the trend to do smart mop or other single-function mop products.
"The goal of the scrubber is to provide a 'total solution for floor cleaning', that is, to replace both the broom and the mop that already exist in the home." Qian Dongqi said. The idea of having a brand new object replace an old one and bring a better experience sounds very simple, but in practice there are various technical difficulties.
If you take the mobile phone as an analogy, this product was already available on the market in 1973, but it was not until around 2010 that mobile phones really began to replace traditional landline telephones as people's preferred telephone communication tool.
The same is true in the field of floor cleaning, "Tim Can launched the first generation of scrubbing machine products from 2018, and then basically maintained the annual iteration speed, but until 2020, everyone really began to pay attention to and understand the scrubbing machine products, on the one hand, because the new category needs a certain amount of time to enter the market, on the other hand, the product experience needs to meet the user's expectations, and this product may be accepted by the market." Qian Dongqi told Titanium Media.
"There has never been a real Red Sea in my eyes"
The gradual popularity of the scrubbing machine category has made the number of players in the track increase rapidly, according to Qian Dongqi: "At present, the number of brands in the industry has reached hundreds, whenever the industry development enters this stage, everyone will say that the scrubber industry is already 'Red Sea', the competition is very fierce, but I do not look at this problem this way, the so-called Red Ocean, Blue Ocean, in fact, still depends on the potential of the track, whether there is really an insurmountable technical and market bottleneck." ”
Take the ground cleaning of this large track as an example, the past two of the biggest competitive tracks are vacuum cleaners and sweeping robots, when everyone thinks that after the sweeping robot achieves the popularization of LDS technology, it will fall into a technical bottleneck, thus exacerbating the inner roll into the Red Sea, Cobos brought Dibao X1, this product uses a one-stop intervention-free automated cleaning experience, and brings the industry into a new stage of development, so now, the sweeping robot can still be regarded as a blue ocean, It's just that this blue ocean is open to products like Dibao X1.
"So I always believe that the so-called Red Sea is actually the result of the fact that the enterprises in the field have not found the future direction, and for Tim Ke, he has never worried that this track will enter the Red Sea, because when others in the industry catch up with Tim Ke, we have found the next blue ocean market." Qian Dongqi said.
And from the current stage of the development of the entire industry, the rise of the scrubber is still very large, the current market share of the scrubbing machine category can reach a level of about 70%, and the overall sales volume of the brand is only about 1 million units, in contrast, the total sales volume of domestic vacuum cleaner products in 2020 is more than 21 million units, from the overall structural design and the experience it can provide, the scrubber is completely able to replace most of the vacuum cleaner use scenarios.
"In addition to the overall market size, as a tool product for daily cleaning, I believe that the current scrubber still has experience details that are worth improving, which is why Timco, despite being at the forefront of the industry, has been updating and iterating products every year, and only by continuously improving the product experience can we get more consumer recognition." Qian Dongqi said.
Especially for the current young users, they are very willing to pay for new technologies, new products, Qian Dongqi believes that as long as it can provide a more complete experience than other products, then the brand should get better market performance, which is also the concept he has always adhered to.
Timco has found a second growth curve
In addition to the track of the scrubber, in the past two years, Timco has also been constantly opening up new application scenarios, such as the launch of smart blenders, hair combs and other products, all of which are enriching their own category layout.
Qian Dongqi mentioned: "For the exploration of other fields, we also adhere to the same attitude as the scrubber, that is, the product development thinking from discovering the needs to solving the needs. Based on this thinking, you will find that many of Timco's categories start from 0, because in the past no one paid attention to the needs of users, and we were the first company to visualize user needs as product solutions. ”
Perhaps these new categories that Tim Ke is digging deep into have not received the same high attention as the scrubber products, but Qian Dongqi will always adhere to the layout of these tracks, because he believes that with the iteration of the product, the improvement of the experience, when its technology, experience, price and other factors develop to a certain stage, it will be recognized by consumers, and then it means that Tim Ke has opened up a new "blue ocean".
At the same time, this is also the difference between Timco and many companies, "I will not be satisfied with success in a certain field, just like before I brought Cobos to the head of the sweeping robot industry, and now Timco has become the No. 1 in the field of scrubbers, for me these are not the end of the pursuit." I only hope to develop more consumer-informed technology and improve their happiness in family life, which is my ultimate goal. Qian Dongqi said. (This article was first published on Titanium Media App, author/Deng Jianyun, editor/Xiang Ou)