"As long as there is water, there is Han Ding!"
Since 2015, Han Ding Fishing Gear has been firmly in the top spot in the Tmall fishing gear category.
In the minds of anglers, it is not that imported fishing gear cannot be bought, but that Han Ding fishing gear is more cost-effective.
As of 2023, among all the fishing rod styles of Han Academy, the best-selling one is Han Ding No. 1, with more than 20 million pieces, and the rebar used for fishing large objects has also exceeded one million sales.
What's more worth mentioning is that last year, Han Dynasty just listed a "small white rod" suitable for novices, with an annual sales volume of 130,000 sets, attracting other similar fishing tackle companies to follow suit.
When it comes to fishing, many people think of middle-aged and elderly people, and it is considered to be a way to have money and leisure. As everyone knows, young people have gradually become the main force of the fishing team.
From Taiyu to Lua, young people have a variety of ways to play, and the requirements for equipment are more demanding.
China's fishing gear market has long developed into a red sea.
Weihai is a coastal city with one-third of Shandong's coastline, and its fishing tackle industry is well developed, not only as a fishing tackle industrial park in China, but also as a fishing tackle supply base around the world.
Liu Chao, the founder of Han Ding Fishing Gear, entered a fishing rod factory in Weihai at the age of 15.
The factory has a large number of orders packed and sent to Japan, South Korea, Europe and the United States and other countries every day, so that Liu Chao at that time was very incomprehensible, a small fishing rod can have such a big market, everyone is very idle?
In order to better understand the market, Liu Chao experienced fishing whenever he had time, and gradually fell in love with the sport of fishing.
After becoming a senior fishing friend, Liu Chao began to study and design products, and pondered every day how to improve the fishing rod to make it more convenient for anglers to use, even to the extent that he forgot to sleep and eat.
The boss saw that Liu Chao liked to study technology, so he asked him to be responsible for the design of the fishing rod.
During this period of part-time work, from fishing rod design to production, Liu Chao knew every process and every production link by heart, and accumulated a lot of rich experience.
Once Liu Chao went to an Internet café to surf the Internet, and stumbled upon some QQ groups discussing the topic of fishing, he shared a lot of fishing tools from a professional point of view, attracting many people to join him QQ chat.
This made Liu Chao see the huge potential of the fishing rod market and came up with the idea of selling fishing rods online.
Liu Chao pulled a group, purchased from the fishing tackle market, and recommended it to the fishing friends in the group, but he didn't expect to be able to sell some.
Later, Liu Chao found several e-commerce platforms and hung some products, but e-commerce was not accepted by the public for a few years, and the annual sales volume was only a handful, but he still believed that online shopping would become an indispensable part of people's lives in the future.
In 2008, Liu Chao decided to resign and concentrate on opening a store on Taobao to sell fishing rods.
Liu Chao purchased goods from the source of the factory and sold them online, and gradually accumulated popularity and reputation on Taobao with his familiarity and enthusiasm for fishing gear.
Because Liu Chao entered the Taobao market relatively early, there was little competition, and Liu Chao's Taobao store quickly got up.
In 2012, Tmall was launched, and in order to seize the development opportunity of Tmall, Liu Chao immediately registered Han Ding Fishing Tackle Company, becoming the first fishing tackle brand to enter Tmall.
With his own brand, Liu Chao began to think about how to stand out.
At that time, Liu Chao found that the entire fishing gear industry was making mid-to-high-end products, so why not go the opposite way and find a new track.
He understands that in order to stand out in the fierce market competition, it is necessary to have its own brand and characteristics.
Considering his own technical advantages and being very familiar with the entire process of the product, he began to embark on the road of independent research and development.
In 2014, Liu Chao officially launched the H&Q brand, and in order to create a brand effect, he minimized his profits, earning only 10 yuan for each product.
In terms of categories, in addition to fishing rods and fishing hooks, H&Q also has more than 50 kinds of professional clothes, hats, boxes, benches, glasses, etc., which can be said to have all kinds of clothing, food, housing and transportation.
In terms of operation, Liu Chao used the platform's marketing tools to open a through train to increase brand exposure and promote product purchases.
Liu Chao firmly believes that only by truly thinking about consumers can we win their trust and support.
With the rise of e-commerce, the competition in the fishing gear market is becoming more and more fierce, and there are many imitations of Han Ding on the Internet.
In the chaotic industry environment, H&Q's turnover has declined rapidly, and even a few flagship products have few sales, and a large number of products are unsalable.
Liu Chao began to think:
"If you want to be competitive, you must be differentiated, to grasp those things that do not change, to do the extreme, since the price has been reduced, then from the service to improve. ”
2015 is an important node in the development of Han Academy.
Starting from the two points of "price" and "service", H&Q adheres to the company's business strategy of "ultimate cost performance" and "worry-free service".
In addition to the low pricing, H&Q has made a lifetime commitment to free replacement parts in terms of service.
For fishing rods, the material of carbon fiber is brittle and easy to break, and it is precisely with this in mind that H&Q's lifetime maintenance exemption has attracted many customers to a certain extent.
Soon, Liu Chao became the TOP of the Tmall fishing industry with cheap and high-quality products and high-quality services, with annual sales exceeding 100 million.
In 2016, H&Q added three major brands, Benmeng, Jiuku and Hideo, which not only enriched H&Q's product line, but also further enhanced H&Q's professionalism and influence in the fishing industry.
Three years later, with its innovative power, H&Q once again developed a high-profile rod - H&Q Rebar, a heavyweight fishing rod that can catch a huge species within 100 catties.
The launch of this fishing rod has caused a sensation in the entire fishing market, and major fishing gear companies are vying to follow suit.
In the following years, H&Q developed a full range of peripherals for this fishing rod, including brackets, fishing nets, fishing boxes, fishing umbrellas, fish protection and other products, to meet the needs of fishing enthusiasts for high-quality, high-performance fishing rods.
Entering 2020, the development of H&Q has ushered in a new milestone, and it has reached a new level in terms of hardware facilities and production capacity.
In this year, Han Academy set up an industrial park integrating R&D, production, warehousing and marketing in Weihai covering an area of 43 acres.
During the "Double Eleven" period in 2022, the sales volume exceeded 100 million yuan, ranking first in the sales list of Tmall fishing rods for 7 consecutive years.
As more and more young people join the fishing team, H&Q has also begun to follow the trend of young people, enter the field of lure, lay out the mid-to-high-end market, and further seize market share.
Compared with traditional fishing rods, lure fishing rods do not need real bait, and use bionic bait that can be reused, which is easy to carry, and the action of repeatedly casting the rod and returning the line plays a role in exercising the body, which is called "water golf".
Lua, a more environmentally friendly and healthy way of fishing, has attracted many fishing enthusiasts with its unique skills and charm.
In March 2023, H&Q developed a "Little White Rod" for novices.
This "little white rod" has a low threshold, a fashionable paint design, coupled with intimate beginner tutorials and after-sales services such as free distribution sections, and uses live streaming to bring goods, and 7,000 pieces were sold in the first month of sale.
The launch of this product lowers the threshold of fishing, so that more novices can easily experience the fun of fishing.
Liu Chao's success can be said to have seized the dividends of the e-commerce era, but more importantly, it conforms to the trend of fishing culture.
The popularization of fishing culture can be said to be a microcosm of social development and people's lifestyle changes in recent years.
This once relatively niche form of entertainment has now gradually entered the public eye and become a part of more and more people's leisure life.
And the fishing population has also changed significantly.
From the initial post-70s and post-80s to the current post-95s and post-00s, more and more young people have begun to join the fishing team.
In April 2022, Kuaishou Big Data Statistics Statistics on the post-90s and post-00s fishing-related creators on Kuaishou reached 40%;
According to the 2023 H1 Douyin Cicada Cube data, 24 to 30 years old, 31 to 40 years old have become mainstream consumers, and more than half of users aged 18-40 have become consumers.
In the process of popularizing fishing culture, people's consumption concept has also changed.
Initially, fishing enthusiasts may be more concerned about the cost-effectiveness of fishing tackle and pursue affordability. However, with a deeper understanding and love of fishing, they began to pay more attention to the performance and quality of their fishing tackle.
High-performance fishing rods, fishing lines, bait and other fishing tackle have become the first choice of anglers, and have also given birth to the vigorous development of the fishing tackle industry.
At present, 80% of the world's fishing gear comes from China, and 60% of the fishing gear produced in China comes from Weihai, which has been awarded the title of "China's Fishing Tackle Capital".
Today, Weihai has nearly 5,000 fishing rod manufacturing enterprises and more than 1,150 fishing rod production enterprises, with an annual output value of 10 billion yuan.
In Weihai's Huancui District, a unique industrial sharing cluster model has been formed, where different enterprises can share a workshop or a factory.
Shandong Global Fishing Gear invested 200 million yuan to build a "shared park" with a construction area of 27,000 square meters in Huancui District, integrating R&D, branding, promotion and distribution, attracting many enterprises to settle in.
Among them, the Gamma (Weihai) outdoor and ternary fishing gear materials that have been settled in the shared plant are readily available, which can not only meet the production needs, but also solve the logistics support problems such as staff dormitories and staff restaurants, which greatly saves the investment cost of fishing gear enterprises and improves production efficiency.
As of 2022, there are 697 enterprises engaged in export trade in Weihai, contributing 4.3 billion yuan in export sales, accounting for 47% of the country's total exports of fishing tackle.
After the rise of e-commerce, about 70% of Weihai's fishing tackle companies have registered on major e-commerce platforms, up to more than 3,000.
In addition, Huancui District is also the country's first e-commerce live broadcast base, where enterprises can enjoy free training, traffic delivery and other benefits, attracting 180 enterprises.
In the 2022 Douyin "2022DOU Come to Fish" topic, the total number of broadcasts of major enterprises in Huancui District exceeded 10 billion times, and the sales exceeded 23 million yuan.
Gathering the industrial chain and group development has become an important model for the development of fishing tackle production enterprises in Huancui District.
However, at present, the sales channels dominated by e-commerce have become saturated, and since the development of high-end, the sales performance of H&Q has fallen to 35 million in last year's Double 11, ranking third.
Wuhan Tianyuan, which ranked first, topped the list with a turnover of 130 million, and its sales volume was the sum of the bottom four.
However, there are many people who are popular, and many e-commerce platforms have stolen Wuhan Tianyuan's registered trademarks, counterfeit and shoddy products, and shoddy chaos has emerged one after another.
This not only damaged the brand image and reputation of Wuhan Tianyuan, but also caused great damage to the interests of consumers.
Wuhan Tianyuan is just one of the many fishing gear companies, and some unscrupulous businesses take advantage of consumers' trust and dependence on brands to make illegal profits.
Compared with previous years, the overall sales volume of the domestic fishing gear industry has declined, and the profit margin has gradually narrowed.
Going overseas has become a new field that major brands are vying to occupy.
According to data, the global fishing gear market will reach 83.2 billion yuan in sales in 2023, and it is expected to reach 111.4 billion yuan after 2030 according to a compound annual growth rate of 4.5%.
As a Chinese enterprise that contributes 80% of the share, it is expected to create a 100 billion market by virtue of its strong supply chain advantages, the convenience of the Internet, and the brand effect.
From doing OEM factories for foreign brands to entering the international market with their own brands, this forward-looking change will surely promote the fishing gear industry to stand on a new stage.
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Resources:
Chaos Academy: Behind the fishing culture that continues to break the circle, will there be new opportunities for the brand?
Entrepreneur: He started his business from scratch, doing e-commerce and selling fishing gear, with monthly sales of 17 million
Financial industry: Fishing brand H&Q: Acquire more young consumers on Tmall 618 sales exceeded 50 million
Sino-Singapore Jingwei: A small fishing rod leverages a 10 billion industry, and fishing moves from the niche to the public
China Network Shandong Channel: Weihai Huancui District: Small fishing rods "fish" characteristic industrial clusters
Author: Jin Se
Editor: Willow Leaf chatter