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Cheng Qian, Vice Chairman of Coworth Group and CEO of Coworth Service Robots.
Coworth (stock code: 603486) was founded in 1998, the early foundry cleaning of small household appliances started, after more than 20 years of development, has become the global home service robot and intelligent life appliances industry leader, the current products have served 20 million families around the world, is committed to making robots become a part of the user's family.
Financial Breakfast specially invited Mr. Qian Cheng to be a guest of the "Celebrity Breakfast Party" column to share with financial friends Coworth's globalization strategy, understanding and views on hot topics such as research and development and competitive pressure.
Financial breakfast: from the early OEM, to the self-created brand in times of peace, to the leader of the global high-end home robot, on this road, what changes has Coworth made in line with the times, and what are its insistences?
Qian Cheng: The development of Coworth conforms to the rhythm of the times in the development of China's reform and opening up. Manufacturing industry is the basic plate of economic development, enterprises in the process of industrial upgrading, the accumulation of initial funds after the re-investment, after having enough strength to do the brand, the construction of brand heritage, the need to continue to increase R & D investment; at the same time adhere to innovation is the direction of enterprise development, to build their own brand competitiveness. From the basic "system" manufacturing, to the quality of the "quality" manufacturing, and finally to the intelligent "intelligent" manufacturing, Coworth embodies the brand development concept of Coworth as a robot company, driven by innovation.
Financial breakfast: There is a view that the appearance of the robot should be close to the human form, as the first sweeping robot of Coworth, what is the reason for not choosing the "human" shape? What were the design considerations at the time?
Qian Cheng: The logic of Coworth's product is to combine predictable market demand within the range of available technologies to make a unique and predictable future product.
My father, Qian Dongqi, drew inspiration from a robot football game, thinking that if a robot can play football, then it must be able to sweep the floor, so he aspires to develop a robot sweeping the floor. Despite the difficulties and setbacks, my father insisted on leading Coworth to build his own R&D team, and continued to increase research and development based on changes in consumer demand, and increased investment in cutting-edge technology in the industry. My father firmly believes that the robot industry has broad prospects for development, and Chinese enterprises can become the vane leading the development of the industry. Today's Coworth also proves the right thing to invest. The development of the cleaning appliance industry was "defined" by foreign countries in the early form, because the vacuum cleaner is more for the cleaning of the environment such as carpets. Today's clean robot development is "defined" by Chinese enterprises, our investment and resources in related fields are invested in leading industries, and we already have a certain scientific research strength that competes with overseas giants, and has been at the forefront of cutting-edge technology, and the future development will also be led by China.
Financial Breakfast: In the early days, Coworth chose to do marketing, and then advocated attaching importance to globalization, what is the way to break the globalization strategy?
Qian Cheng: The logic of my thinking is to pull the time a long time and summarize the law of development from history. The development of all industries or enterprises must conform to social needs, and the emerging electric vehicle companies and robot companies are the result of complying with social needs. The global competitiveness of enterprises is the synthesis of various capabilities such as manufacturing capabilities, scientific research capabilities and market expansion capabilities.
Taking the road of independent brand is the first step towards internationalization of Coworth. I was most impressed by the fact that I took Dibao to the Canton Fair, and at that time I did not know how to expand overseas customers, and found that overseas customers preferred OEM manufacturers at the Canton Fair. However, Coworth clearly insisted on not oem, must take the independent route, with its own innovative products to win the affirmation and favor of customers. At the time, it was a bold attempt that made us pay more attention to our own brand building.
At that time, I predicted that in the future, this stage would definitely belong to Chinese enterprises. Because Chinese smart enough, our track will be full of similar products. The current market conditions really confirmed my suspicions at the time.
So I had the idea of making Coworth a global brand. As a Chinese manufacturing enterprise, Coworth already had its own brand effect, its own production capacity, technology and product advantages. Therefore, I chose to go boldly. In 2015, Coworth began to deepen overseas markets and implement a localization strategy, and we always wanted to run faster than others.
Financial Breakfast: How does internationalization bring substantial improvement to Coworth products, technical strength, channel operation capabilities or brand concepts?
Qian Cheng: First, internationalization helps the company expand its overall scale. The larger the sales volume of the product, the more obvious the geographical restrictions, otherwise the production capacity and output will naturally expand. Coworth creates excellent products and invests in research and development for consumers around the world to enjoy. This is also how inputs and returns are maximized. At present, Coworth International revenue has accounted for more than 30%, and is still rapidly increasing, the process took nearly five years.
Second, internationalization is a cultivation of the company's internal capabilities, including organizational skills and the potential of employees. Internationalization is a challenge for the team as a whole, and there are higher requirements for the team, which requires strong management ability, professional ability and other capabilities. Our team has always embraced challenges, which is a process of improvement and progress for themselves.
Cobos firmly believes that in the future, China is the world, and the world is also China. China's excellent products and brands, if you have confidence, you can achieve the world's leading. Sweeping robots will bring a new way of life to consumers around the world, essentially similar to home appliances at this stage. For example, washing machines save time cleaning clothes, and the same is true for sweeping robots, with the ultimate goal of liberating people's productivity.
Financial breakfast: 2021 Coworth interim report data is eye-catching, how to reshape the business landscape in the post-epidemic era "two-wheel drive" strategy? Will there be a situation of "multi-wheel drive and blossoming everywhere" in the future?
Qian Cheng: The strategic transformation in 2019 is the deep reason for Coworth's outstanding performance. I took over Coworth in 2019, chose to abandon part of the foundry business, invested more resources in the global market research and development, brand innovation and channel upgrading, and focused on creating two major private brands: the Coworth brand that is deeply rooted in the field of home service robots, and the Tianke brand positioned in the field of high-end intelligent life.
Facts have proved that the company's product sales under the "two-wheel drive" strategy have achieved excellent performance in The Coworth. The international market of the two brands continues to expand, and the product innovation is leading the industry. The Cobos robot sector, in addition to sweeping robots, also includes window cleaning robots and air purification robots, etc., forming a rich robot product matrix and occupying a leading position in the world. For example, this year we entered the field of smart kitchens and pioneered the creation of the first thinking intelligent blender "Food Wan", which is a new category.
Every innovation is equivalent to a choice for Coworth, and our track is bound to get wider and wider. We adhere to the long-term doctrine, that is, we do not absolutely value short-term gains, but also value the momentum and space for sustainable development in the future.
Financial breakfast: the penetration rate of sweeping robots in domestic and foreign markets is not high. As a leading enterprise of sweeping robots in China, how does Coworth view the future growth potential of the industry?
Qian Cheng: China's ground cleaning market has a market size of 30 billion, of which robots have 14 billion, and the robotization rate has reached 40%-50%. China's consumer group is both young and avant-garde, preferring to let sweeping robots complete cleaning tasks, and its share in China still has a lot of room for improvement in the future. In the global floor cleaning market, the robotization rate is about 20%, and the growth rate of overseas is relatively fast, and the growth potential is large, but the acceptance of products in overseas markets is still relatively backward.
Financial Breakfast: Is it related to local infrastructure, such as network bandwidth speed?
Qian Cheng: That's right. The development of the Internet determines the sensitivity and acceptance of young consumers to products, and the products themselves have requirements for connection rates. Overseas, there is a preference for vacuum cleaners with traditional cables, rather than sweeping robots. Chinese enterprises have significant advantages in sweeping robot technology, have global competitive advantages, and to a certain extent can guide the market.
Coworth hopes that in the future, sweeping robots will enter thousands of homes like washing machines. In terms of the number of per capita or households, the penetration rate of sweepers is only 8-10%, and the penetration rate can continue to increase in the future.
Today, China's floor cleaning market is already rapidly encroaching on the traditional vacuum cleaner market. Chinese families want both sweeping robots and wet and dry cleaning tools to address the needs of scenarios such as mopping floors and cleaning up wet garbage. We want to define modern cleaning tools that truly meet the needs of consumers of the times, especially Chinese consumers.
Financial Breakfast: The first-mover advantage helps companies build a moat early on. Hardware gives robots "black eyes", how can the application of artificial intelligence technologies such as machine vision take it to "find the light"?
Qian Cheng: Today, Coworth has a market share of about 45% in China, and it still ranks as the industry leader after many rounds of fierce competition. Competition is normal, no competition means that the market is too small, and the market is large and competitors will continue to appear. In the larger pattern, the heavy responsibility of leading brands is how to make a big "cake", like new energy, robots are important forces to expand the economic and technological territory. Vicious price competition and "squeezing toothpaste" innovation will not improve and promote the development of human society, only by avoiding such a situation, can we move towards common prosperity and let more people enjoy science and technology.
Robots are developing faster, and the industry continues to expand. At present, there are two main types of domestic commercial competition: one is the crazy influx of capital into relatively mature industries, bringing a new round of competition and redistributing the cake; the other is that funds "burn" out so-called new technologies. As an industry leader, Coworth "defines" industry competition by truly innovating to meet consumer needs, creating a benign industry competitive environment that competes in technological innovation, product innovation and category innovation, and helping the industry to be healthy, orderly and sustainable, so that consumers, investors and the entire industrial chain can benefit from it. In this kind of healthy competition, we have formed a research and development advantage including the integration of soft and hardware and the manufacturing advantage of industrial integration, which is the secret of our invincibility.
Coworth adheres to the integration of internal software and hardware, robot code is completely independent, including the underlying control to navigation, to the Internet of The Internet of Network and software architecture, to understand the software to make better hardware, the development of higher precision sensors to enrich the consumer experience.
We also adhere to industrial integration, first of all, to solve product design problems, while continuing to consolidate independent production capacity. The world's best companies, all of them have strong manufacturing capabilities.
Of course, when it comes to innovation, we always have to be the front-runners. Coworth never lets others tell us what to do, and we continue to discover and create, making what others think is impossible possible
Financial Breakfast: It is popular to talk about the three-tier business chain, cash flow business, growth business and seed business, how should The many businesses of Coworth correspond to each other?
Qian Cheng: The continuous expansion of sweeping robots in the global market, especially in the Chinese market, has contributed greatly to the growth of cash flow, which is the process of volume and price increase. The scrubber is a product that has just penetrated the market, is a high-growth business, and it is expected that it will replicate the same success in overseas markets. Household robots have a broad market development space, such as Coworth's air purification robot has become the first high-end market share of 3,000 yuan during the 618 period this year, and will challenge the overall market share head.
The field of smart home appliances and commercial robot tracks are still in the layout stage. Based on consumers' pursuit of new lifestyles and diets, the field of smart kitchens is worth exploring. The commercial robot market is a big "cake", and the technology and experience accumulated by Cobos in the field of robotics can be reproduced to a certain extent to the commercial robot sector to solve the corresponding core problems.
Coworth is constantly looking for higher speed tracks, so innovation has become our corporate DNA. Whether it is a growth business or a seed business, Coworth is actively exploring.
Financial Breakfast: From studying abroad in the past to deciding to return to China for development, most people rarely chose to return to manufacturing at that time, how did you consider choosing manufacturing at that time?
Qian Cheng: At that time, I was relatively innocent, and before I returned to China, I didn't think that manufacturing was so bitter. At that time, one of the people around me did not choose, and the other was that there was no choice. And I chose to follow the same path as my father. I have a deep affection for Coworth as a business and consider it a very futuristic business. Coworth makes me feel futuristic from two aspects: one is a high-tech company specializing in robotics, which is quite attractive to boys; the other is young, the company has online and offline channels, especially the e-commerce business department team tends to be younger, colleagues are basically peers, let me feel that this is a vibrant and energetic company.
I am convinced that Coworth is a company at the forefront of the times, pursuing the latest technology products in the current market, I think this field is promising, the opportunity is rare, and I don't want to give up easily.
Financial breakfast: Generation Z is gradually entering the public eye, embracing young people is embracing the future. Young people know more about young people, what are your tips for insight into the consumption trends of young people?
Qian Cheng: Young people's "ignorance" and "fearlessness" of the world are their greatest wealth. "Ignorance" will make them dare to explore and not be imprisoned by what is in existence, and the same is true for "fearlessness". Practicing innovation with the spirit of "ignorance" and "fearlessness" and applying it to management philosophy is especially important for a technology-based enterprise that is willing to challenge breakthroughs and continue to grow. Young people should believe in an idea and give everything they can to accomplish it. In the management process, enterprises must also combine past experience and abide by economic logic and industry rules in order to achieve long-term development.