When Su Yue, a post-90s mother, watched her 1-year-old baby play with color mud, she couldn't help but worry vaguely: what if these colorful things are accidentally eaten, is it toxic?
This is not only her concern, in fact, countless novice parents in the face of their children's problems, will always hope that the product is more scientific, safer, and existing products will always have such and such troubles, such as ordinary color mud contains chemical raw materials, there is a risk of accidental eating, and the wheat flour as raw material on the market, there is a potential gluten allergy problem.
"Why isn't the clay safe enough to be edible?" Babycare's product designer Ken has always felt that if the mother and baby brand can't put themselves in the shoes of parents and children, and personally experience all kinds of irrationalities, then they can't design products that truly meet consumer needs. He and his team redesigned the rice-based clay without any flavor, and to ensure safety, he even tried it himself before it was launched.
Colored mud made from rice
It's not just not enough color mud, too thin wipes, inexorable straps, ugly confinement suits, cribs with the risk of emitting formaldehyde... All of them invisibly increase the anxiety of new parents. If the previous generation of parents has gone through too many detours in the matter of parenting, then the new generation of parents is ushering in some changes - with the upgrading of consumption, the science and refinement of the concept of parenting, they tend to choose maternal and infant products that are not only safe and comfortable, but also aesthetic and design, and even spiritual resonance.
When the wave of new consumption enters the second half, the traffic begins to recede, and the long-termists who are persistent enough in product power and values highlight greater value at this time - Babycare, which insists on innovation in all kinds of "irrationality", is one of the representatives.
Interpreting Babycare's brand slogan "Redesign for Love", the core of which is to return to the original point, examine all the irrationalities in parenting life, and break the routine and tradition, and redesign each product with the heart of parents. Its underlying logic is the core strategy that led Babycare to achieve the "hidden champion" of the new maternal and infant consumer industry in just 8 years: C2B2M.
Unlike the traditional B2C model of selling goods from the supply chain, Babycare chooses to make proposals around users. Dare to think and dare to create, with the design concept of "existence is unreasonable", put forward the solution of "10 times better", and rely on the connection ability of the global high-quality supply chain to achieve product landing. This kind of business strategy with users as the starting point for decision-making has made Babycare naturally close to users since its birth, and has a distinctive "youthful spirit". Dare to challenge industry stereotypes, dare to break the inherent design, dare to subvert yourself.
#为一条背带建一个工厂
If the success of any brand is inseparable from the opportunities of the times, then the birth of Babycare has just caught up with the transition period of rapid development and maturity and transformation of China's maternal and infant industry.
Benefiting from the development of the Internet industry, the rise of e-commerce channels, the rapid development of online mother and baby platforms, the acceleration of offline mother and baby chain branding, and the gradual expansion of maternal and infant categories. The mainstream consumer population has changed from the post-80s to the post-90s, and the consumption willingness of maternal and infant products is high, and the unit price of customers has increased. Commodities are gradually specialized, designed independently, and consumer needs diversified.
"Haitao" has become the common memory of the times. Whether it's milk powder, baby strollers, harnesses or a bottle, many parents are willing to travel thousands of miles to buy imported products from overseas for their children.
Domestic brands can not meet the demand, but Haitao can not really solve the problem, high prices, long shipping time and not to mention, the most critical point is that the product is not specially designed for Chinese consumers.
Take, for example, baby carriers. Babycare studied the sitting posture of 500 babies in the process of carrier, and found that the traditional shoulder stool surface is too narrow and can easily cause the baby's hip dysplasia, parents are prone to waist pain for a long time, and the thick waist stool is uncomfortable for a long time. Most of the domestic carrier prices are in the range of hundreds of yuan, but the design is unreasonable and more chicken ribs; and even if the products imported from the sea for thousands of yuan, there will be problems that do not match the Chinese body.
Based on this insight, Babycare launched its first strap, widened the stool surface, this high-value, in line with the design needs of the Chinese people once the product came out, it became a blockbuster single in the double 11 that year, and helped the brand tear open a hole in the fiercely competitive mother and baby market.
What's even more rare is that Babycare's strap has also been upgraded 9 times in 8 years and obtained 27 patents. The new product, which will be launched in April 2022, has been specially designed in terms of "single operation" and the friendliness of caesarean section mothers, and has a vest-style integrated wear and dismount design, and all adjustments can be operated in front of the body. L-shaped hyperboloid abdominal waist stool can scientifically disperse abdominal pressure and improve the wearer's comfort.
Many people don't know that Babycare has also done a "crazy" thing for the sake of the harness. As a textile, the harness has a problem that was once unavoidable - the thread. The small thread is inconspicuous, but it can be a big risk to your baby's safety. Can I make a strap without a thread? Babycare decided to give it a try. Unexpectedly, this test, built a factory for this purpose. Don't underestimate this thread problem, to use a thread to sew a part of the end continuously, which is the standard of luxury goods in the industry. No factory wanted to make a harness by luxury standards, so Babycare decided to do it herself.
From a business logic, it's hard to understand Babycare's anti-productivity obsession. But from another point of view, starting from their values of "making products with the heart of parents", everything is logical.
Upgraded 9 times in 8 years, Babycare straps have won a total of 27 patents # changing the direction of the industry with a wet wipe
The development of battery wipes means that Babycare has expanded its product line to FMCG and reached more consumers.
Many parents will probably have such complaints about the baby wipes on the market in the past: thin, easy to break, small size, often need 3 or 4 consecutive sheets to be enough, zhang zhang "force through the back of the paper"; even pull out a few sheets into a lump, the result can not hold the baby with one hand with the other hand wipes, can only be completed by two people, and may make the table a mess.
And such products are also based on the excessive pursuit of "piece unit price" environment, in the price war competition, in order to save costs, many brands are making wet wipes thinner and thinner.
Babycare is trying to make a difference.
At a time when supply chains were mismatched, costly and not recognized by the market, Babycare was still fully committed to developing a "thickest" wipe.
To be the first person on the market to eat crabs, finding a cloth that can match is key. Babycare's R&D team remembers that at that time, the market was dominated by 38 grams and 45 grams of cloth, and the cloth required for thick wipes was 80 grams, which doubled. Because of the lack of successful precedents, the job of finding the right fabric supplier has become very difficult, "the cloth chamber feels that what is good, can not sell, there is no need." The R&D team spent four months running across the country. It was hard to find the cloth, and the cutting tool had a problem again. Because the cloth thickened, the traditional knife used to cut the cloth at high speed could not meet the requirements, and several were cut, and Babycare spent a lot of time debugging. In order to solve the problem that the sealing sticker is easy to fall off, Babycare boldly adopted the design of the special-shaped cover. This cloud-shaped lid was hand-drawn by the developers themselves, but from the drawings to the actual products, 3 sets of molds were spent in the middle and hundreds of thousands of dollars were invested. With just one lid, it took 4 years to iterate continuously. The dosing rate of ordinary wipes is 3.2 times, the cleaning force is not enough and it is easy to dry, Babycare wipes adjust the amount of dosing to 3.8 times, and even the water in the liquid is pure water with 7 filters of EDI, which is cleaner than mineral water.
The process of making a wet wipe is like breaking through, and the R&D team has gritted its teeth and persevered in continuous failure, retrial, failure, and retry, but the test is not over.
At first, it was difficult to sell a "thicker" wet wipe on the e-commerce platform, because unlike offline shopping, consumers could not see and experience the thickness of the wipes in person. Therefore, for a long time, Babycare can only accumulate initial users through free dispatch, and the sales of wet wipes by word of mouth have gradually increased.
Babycare's best-selling product - purple lid wipes
As the reputation of the product opens, users feel so good that they are willing to pay a premium for it. In 2021, Babycare wipes in Tmall's market share reached 21.7% to become the "fault first", compared with 9.1% in the same period.
For Babycare, the significance of this wet wipe is not only to become a blockbuster, but more importantly, it has raised the industry standard, promoted the upgrading and iteration of the subdivision of wet wipes, and practiced the design concept of the brand's "existence is unreasonable". Today's consumers are used to thick wipes. In a sense, Babycare's product innovation, which has attracted peers to follow suit, has indeed driven the direction of the industry tide.
#以一款纸尿裤撬动全球供应链
What is the choice of diapers? In the Babycare team's survey of consumers, it was found that parents seem to have to make trade-offs between different needs - if they want a softer surface, they choose Japanese; if they want to be more dry, they choose American brands.
The reason why it is impossible to balance is the professional barriers built by different factions of brands relying on the advantages of their own supply chains, as well as the shortcomings that they cannot avoid. For example, Japanese brands have good surface technology, but they are prone to faults and are generally thick. Europe and the United States are dry but grainy and not soft enough.
Babycare launched the "3 countries and 6 enterprises" royal diapers
This is a difficult choice for parents who want to avoid their children's "red farts". Because in general, to solve this problem, it is necessary to have a thin, soft and breathable diaper, but also to absorb well, but also not to reverse osmosis. And to do this, it is not something that a single supply chain can solve.
Since the existing supply chain can't do it, let's transform it ourselves. Bacycare has set its sights on the "supply chain" of "supply chain", the global raw material giant. Running for half the world, finally combined the supply chain advantages of 6 century-old enterprises in Germany, the United States and Japan to form the "strongest heavenly group" - the front waist sticker is from the United States 3M company, the adhesive is from the German Henkel company, the surface fiber is from Japan's Yamato Textile, the rubber rib is from the American Laika, and the core SAP is from the German BASF company and Japan's Sumitomo.
And this also brings a return on sales. After 3 years of listing, Babycare diapers have entered the industry Top 3 in the Tmall channel with an 8% market share. In the fiercely competitive diaper category, babycare completed a 116% increase in omni-channel sales during the Double Eleven period in the face of international giants.
At present, Babycare not only has explosive products, but also has become an "all-category" mother and baby brand that covers 33 secondary categories and nearly 600 tertiary categories in omni-channel. It has 45 million users, 10 million members across omni-channel, and more than 16 million fans in Tmall's official flagship store, becoming the first in the industry. The brand has rapidly grown into a "hidden champion" within the industry.
Babycare is one of the very few brands in the maternal and infant field that adheres to the one-stop all-category strategy and has been successfully realized
Behind the rise of a brand, it is inseparable from the opportunities of the times, and the most critical thing is its own adherence to long-termism and the original intention of brand values. Babycare always puts user insights first and feeds back into product development and supply chain integration capabilities, bringing users really useful products and winning a bigger market for themselves.