Text | Yao Lan
36Kr exclusively learned that "Snowyowl Tech", which owns two ski brands of "THE WHIP" and "Overide Halo" (hereinafter referred to as "Overide"), has completed two rounds of financing in the angel round and the angel + round in half a year, with a cumulative amount of tens of millions of yuan. The Angel Round is led by The Evergreen, followed by the Sequoia China Seed Fund; the Angel + Round is led by the Sequoia China Seed Fund, and followed by Little Red Book and Shenwan Capital.
Founded in March 2021, "Snow Owl Technology" is committed to creating a full range of outdoor lifestyle brands with "sports technology" as the core, hoping to let more people feel the fun of outdoor sports. At present, it is jointly developing "THE WHIP" high-end skis with the American team, positioning "sports technology + extreme luxury"; the jointly developed "Overide" is positioned in "sports technology + trend", and the team is preparing for the research and development of ski wear, snowboard shoes, helmets and glasses and other products.
With "sports technology" as the core of the full range of outdoor lifestyle brands, according to the enterprise
Founder Li Yao is a serial entrepreneur and investor, graduated from the National People's Congress; co-founder Li Mingyang is an athlete with living, studying and working experience in the United States, Canada and other countries, and graduated from the Penn Wharton School of Business. The team is keen on all kinds of outdoor sports, the Chinese team is mainly a new team from hardware technology, Internet, investment and other industries; the American team is mainly top ski equipment research and development engineers, university professors and experts and former world ski champions.
Why skiing? Li Yao gave the following four reasons:
First, China's ski penetration rate will continue to increase: the current Chinese ski penetration rate is less than 1.4%, the United States and Japan 8%-9%, some European countries are close to 40%, so it is very likely that China's ski penetration rate will increase to 5% in the next 5-10 years.
Second, the event and publicity drive: the Chinese Winter Olympics will be held in 2022, from a historical point of view, the Winter Olympics will help the growth of the local ski market, the 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics in Japan and the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, so that the number of Skiers in Japan increased from the initial annual number of more than 5 million to a maximum of 18 million. After the 1960 Winter Olympics in California, skiing broke out.
Third, infrastructure construction is constantly improving: in the past decade, the number of ski resorts in China has increased from 300 to 723, and it has the largest number of indoor ski resorts in the world. Shanghai Ice and Snow World and Shenzhen Baoan Sunac World will open in the next few years, they all hope to become the world's largest indoor ski resorts, conservatively predict that these super large indoor ski resorts can reach 1.5 million people / year, compared with the domestic north of the annual ski resorts more than 400,000 ski resorts are not many, and the world's first and second ski resorts are about 5 million, 4 million people / year.
Fourth, the per capita equipment consumption will continue to increase: at present, the per capita consumption of ski equipment in China is less than 400 yuan, 600 yuan in Japan, and more than 1,000 yuan in the United States, and there is a large room for growth.
In 2021, the average GDP of Chinese will exceed $10,000, benchmarking European and American countries, which is the tipping point for the people of a country to begin to enjoy the light luxury movement. Li Yao believes that China is transitioning from an economic power to a cultural power, and the next 10 years will give birth to a large number of influential consumer brands in the world, these brands are not only electronic products, clothing, food, housing and transportation will also be fully covered, and sports have no borders, and a world-class outdoor sports brand with Chinese blood will be born in the consumption track. What "Snow Owl Technology" has to do is to grasp China, the world's largest new ski market, and constantly develop and iterate products to serve Chinese users well, while also making it more capable of promoting products with obvious style differentiation and outstanding performance indicators in the world.
In order to provide high-quality sports equipment, "THE WHIP" and "Overide" continue to explore the pain points and needs of users in ski scenes, and strive from the most fundamental product materials, processes and designs, hoping to form a functional core competitive barrier that sports products should have.
"THE WHIP" originated from a niche snowboard brand with a history of 17 years in the United States, which has two characteristics: one is to build for a few people, not to seek popularization; the other is to introduce cutting-edge technology, break the conventional design, and abandon the concept of "balance" and "comprehensive" to achieve a smooth and fast skating experience. It was in view of the outbreak of the Chinese ski market that the "Snow Owl Technology" team decided to reintroduce "THE WHIP", which has accumulated technical advantages for many years and is in line with the concept of value.
The WHIP skis, picture according to the enterprise
"Our brand is geared towards young people, so we need not only the product itself to be good enough, but also good enough to reflect the cool style characteristics." Co-founder Li Mingyang told 36Kr that "THE WHIP" has an integrated bracket made of all-carbon fiber, a hollow plate bottom and a double-layer structure, and its fashionable and technological design caters to the aesthetic preferences of male consumers; and a large part of the future users of "Overide" may come from women, "good-looking" can be said to be the reason why they choose a product first, so the team will strive to develop a light, bouncy, And good-looking flat flower board and ski clothes that take into account the appearance and functionality of the ski to meet their needs.
Overide skis, picture according to the enterprise
A high-quality supply chain is a prerequisite for creating differentiated products. Li Yao told 36Kr that whether it is the existing "THE WHIP" and "Overide" skis, or the ski clothes and snowboard shoes under development, the suppliers they cooperate with are the top in the industry, thus ensuring the stability of product quality and shipments. "Crossover suppliers like helping sports cars make carbon fiber wheels and bicycles make carbon fiber frames are also our partners. For the first time, many of our partner suppliers have opened up orders for the Chinese team. ”
According to reports, "Snow Owl Technology" is exploring the development of new scientific and technological materials (such as replacing the poplar core of traditional veneer with a new material, and the research and development of a new fast-wearing fixer), so as to enhance the experience of ski enthusiasts. As the official said, the face value is only the "THE WHIP" and "Overide" side, and its other side is the hardcore sliding performance.
Hardcore glide performance, according to the enterprise
Li Mingyang told 36Kr that WeChat Mini Programs and offline channels are the most important sales channels of "THE WHIP", and overseas independent stations and Amazon are the main sales channels of "Overide". "THE WHIP" and "Overide" will reduce channel costs as much as possible, so that more funds will be used for product research and development to improve product quality.
In terms of brand strategy, "THE WHIP" and "Overide" are ready to use brand co-branding to discover potential users, and at the same time make full use of new media platforms to output original and high-quality content, and make innovative brand value expressions.
It is worth mentioning that in the 2021-2022 FIS Snowboard Slew Pursuit World Cup Montafon Station in Austria, ski brands "THE WHIP" and "Overide" gave equipment support to the Chinese snowboard slew tracking national team.