Author: Qian Luoying, Editor of New Retail Business Review
"Smart pet home is the way, the era of pet health is coming?"
Just like people detect their heartbeat, blood pressure and other health conditions through intelligent hardware, pet owners now also want to know how many times their fur children go to the toilet every day, how much food they eat, how much water they drink, and use this to judge whether they are doing well or not.
Through the Tmall 6·18 pet supplies list, you will find that the current smart pet home products are a variety of, in addition to smart pet toilets, feeders, living spring water dispensers, as well as smart taste purifiers, negative ion hair combs and other high-tech products with human functions.
It is reported that the sales of pet smart household products surged by more than 1300% during the "opening red" period of Tmall 6.18, which shows the potential of the industry.
Once upon a time, pet supplies were more convenient for pet owners, and now, how to make pets feel the same as their owners to feel the care of science and technology has become the core idea of product design for cutting-edge pet product brands such as Xiaopei, CATLINK, and Youha.
But is it really necessary to collect a bunch of pet data at a price that is tens or even hundreds of times more expensive than ordinary products? This is a doubt that all consumers will have.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="17" > the logic behind pet data collection </h1>
"The doctor said that if it was a little later, I would not be able to save my cat."
A Thai user who uses the CATLINK smart cat litter box shared a thrilling experience in the community last year - one day, he found through the CATLINK App that his little black cat went to the toilet frequently, from two or three times a day to more than a dozen times.
He immediately took the little black cat to the pet hospital, and after investigation, the cat suffered from nephritis. Doctors said that if the cat does not urinate all the time, there will be urine reflux, and it will almost kidney failure.
Screenshot of the CATLINK exception data interface provided by a Thai user
In addition to smart toilets, today's smart pet feeders, drinking fountains also have pet eating and drinking habits and portion tracking functions, if the pet from the "big stomach king" to a small appetite, or from frequent drinking water to drip water, then, pet owners need to be vigilant about these abnormal situations.
"In 2014, I had the dream of doing 'cat networking'." Jason said. This is also his original intention to start a catlink three years later. The cat network he envisions is to help pet owners better understand their pets by building a smart pet product ecology.
He said that pet health has become a mature trend overseas, but it has not yet become a trend in China.
However, with the change of modern pet concept, pet owners who regard pets as family members have begun to pay more and more attention to the experience and feelings of their own hairy children; on the other hand, compared with the expensive pet medical expenses, monitoring the health status of hairy children in advance through smart pet products is undoubtedly the best choice.
As a result, smart pet products have ushered in a rare opportunity for development.
New Retail Business Review learned in the interview that different pet brands collect data and use it differently.
For example, after Youha collects pet behavior data, it collects pet genetic data through pet genetic testing services, and the combination of the two adds more dimensions to pet health identification.
"Many purebred pets are actually the product of artificial breeding, the risk of genetic diseases is very large, genetic testing is used to identify the probability of their genetic diseases, so that pet owners, pet hospitals can intervene in advance." Ha CEO Lu Shengbo said.
This data has also become the basis for driving continuous product updates and iterations and the development of new products: "Through data, we better understand the deep needs of pets and pet owners, so as to develop new products that meet their needs." The relevant person in charge of Xiao Pei told new retail business review.
Founded in 2013, Xiao Pei's original product is a pet smart pendant, similar to a human smart bracelet, which can monitor the pet's heart rate, sleep time and other health data in real time.
On the basis of these data, XiaoPei has gradually extended more new products that refresh the industry's cognition, such as smart pet feeders that do not jam food, and smart pet nests that can adjust the temperature.
The "2021 China Pet Consumption Trend White Paper" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper") released by iResearch shows that after the epidemic, people not only began to pay special attention to their own health status, but also paid more attention to the health of their dogs, sons, cats and daughters, and the quality of goods.
These smart home products, which are very "gimmicky" in the eyes of laymen, are gradually becoming the just needs of pet owners.
People in charge have told new retail business reviews: Xiao Pei's turnover in Tmall flagship stores has risen by 632% in recent years; CATLINK has also completed the turnover of last year's full year this year; Youha, who just opened a Tmall store last year, has increased turnover by 8 times this year - such achievements are the epitome of this industry.
More new players are pouring into the market, and they almost all have a mature hardware supply chain accumulation, as long as the technology and concept are exported, they can produce products. As a result, the mature subdivision tracks such as smart cat toilets, pet food boxes and drinking fountains are crowded with players and gradually become a red sea.
Even so, there are still many pets and pet owners whose needs have not been taken care of: "Rapid iteration and differentiation will be the follow-up development trend of smart pet home brands." Jason said.
This means that in addition to data, the increasingly competitive pet smart home brands must break through and compete in the details of technology applications and services.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="136" > impress consumers with details </h1>
The popularity of smart pet household products means that the previous extensive and people-oriented pet breeding method is gradually "outdated".
In the past, the main service object of many pet products was pet owners, but now, more and more cutting-edge brands have begun to favor pets, pet owners, and even simply "pet-oriented", which has transformed the design ideas of pet products under the drive of data.
Xiao Pei meets the concept of pets and pet owners at the same time, the product uses baby-grade materials, and the appearance design refers to the style of apples, which is very beautiful at home.
In addition, in terms of design logic, because pets will only follow instincts to use pet supplies, unlike humans who will learn to master the use of smart products, so "the design logic of pet supplies is very simple, but the things presented are more complicated." The relevant person in charge of Xiao Pei told new retail business review.
For example, if the food in the feeder gets stuck, the pet simply doesn't eat it, and doesn't fiddle with the feeder to see why it gets stuck. Therefore, the most important problem that the smart pet food box needs to solve is the card food, and secondly, it is to measure how much the pet has eaten, and it is presented on the App side.
So, how to make the cat owner drink more water? Xiao Pei's solution is to design the drinking fountain into the shape of a spring and then add the technology of flowing water. Because the ancestors of cats lived in the desert, there is still a hint of wild cats that have a sense of closeness to the spring water engraved in the DNA. At the same time, the water dispenser has also added human-grade filtration equipment to make the water quality more suitable for the intestines of pets and avoid the risk of stones.
In Xiao Pei's product matrix, there are also outdoor casual cups that meet the needs of feeding pets water when walking, intelligent pet nests that adjust the temperature, and pet companion devices that can realize two-way interaction function... The pet of Xiao Pei user may be more exquisite than people.
However, the so-called data-driven is not limited to pet data. The relevant person in charge said that Xiaopei's product research and development is also inseparable from Tmall's help in consumer data - Tmall provides a large number of industry and accurate crowd data information to pet smart brands such as Xiaopei, CATLINK, and Youha as a reference, so that their new product research and development is more targeted for high-net-worth consumers.
Youha found the market gap of pet deodorization and launched a smart pet taste purifier. Previously, deodorizing products were mostly sprays and aromatherapy. But in fact, this kind of way of masking the smell with scent is very unfriendly to pets with a keen sense of smell.
To this end, Youha's R & D team used human-grade filtration technology on the taste purifier, no additional filter consumables, silent operation and lighting does not stimulate the pet, which not only makes it "invisible" in the pet toilet, but also can sense the entry and exit of the pet.
There is a negative ion comb launched by Ha Xin, but also because of the insight into the pain points of long-haired pet owners. The traditional pet steel comb is committed to pulling out the hair as much as possible like wool, completely ignoring the "feeling" of the pet, making the pet mostly resistant to combing.
However, you have a negative ion comb to maintain and massage pet fur while combing hair, and when combing becomes a kind of enjoyment for pets, they will be more cooperative.
This is also fully in line with Youha's product design ideas - based on the needs of pets. Such products make pets comfortable to use, in fact, in turn, can save the time and energy of pet owners.
On the basis of such a concept, Youha, which has just entered the bureau in 2019, has taken a different approach and divided the products into three categories, class A is a product whose user needs have not yet been met, such as a taste purifier, vacuum pet grain storage barrel, and a negative ion pet comb; class B is a new product that greatly enhances the original mature product experience through technical application; class C is a product that is just needed, such as cat litter, cleaning gloves and other consumables. Among them, the more innovative and more considerive of pet needs of Class A products is the main target of Youha.
Unlike Xiao Pei, who takes care of pets and pet owners, you have to focus on pet needs, CATLINK is to find a balance between pet needs and pet owners' needs, and CATLINK will apply the unique multi-cat recognition technology to a series of intelligent products, which not only meets the needs of "multi-child families", but also forms a differentiated competition with other players in the track.
White paper data shows that pet owners will have 1.3 cats in 2021. Therefore, distinguishing between different cats' eating and drinking states has become the core technical barrier of CATLINK.
Moreover, CATLINK does not stop at "identification". In its designed food box, a food sharing mechanism is added, that is, to identify different cats and automatically give different amounts of cat food, so that each cat can eat well.
In addition, CATLINK also pays attention to the upgrading of product materials, and its cat bowl innovation uses ceramics. Previously, the reason why no one tried the ceramic material of the smart feeder was because the cost was quite high, and one or two hundred of the 1,000 ceramic bowls were often defective. However, ceramics are easy to clean and can greatly improve the experience of cats, so CATLINK is still willful.
Nowadays, more and more technologies and materials that were originally used by humans have begun to be applied to pet smart products, and people who do not own pets will ask "is it necessary", but pet owners are telling the market with real consumption: It is worth it - 6.18 this year, Xiao Pei, CATLINK and Youha have received satisfactory answers after 3 months of intense preparation.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="137" > the market is in full swing and anything is possible </h1>
Xiao Pei's head told New Retail Business Review that pet penetration in the United States is as high as 65%, while china is less than 5%. With the vigorous development of the domestic single economy and the silver economy, the pet market still has great potential to be tapped.
However, whether it is the dissemination of concepts, the application of technology or the accumulation of data, the pet smart home market is still in its infancy at home and abroad. The vast market space and low entry threshold are bound to attract more and more powerful players to enter the market.
How to enhance user stickiness in the foreseeable fierce competition in the future and keep them in their own ecology?
In addition to launching core products with excellent quality and accurate solutions to pain points, the three brands have invariably launched consumables and daily necessities such as cat litter and disposable cleaning appliances to improve the repurchase rate.
This is also based on the needs of the loyal user group, Jason said: "They trust us and hope that we can make some products that they just need for them to use." "CATLINK simply puts the imported high-quality cat litter with good ratio into it and mails it together when the user purchases the cat toilet, and the service is in place in one step."
"Consumers of pet products are inherently community-oriented and are keen to post their babies or exchange feeding tips on social media, so user stickiness is relatively higher." Lu Shengbo told New Retail Business Review that the repurchase rate of Harbin consumables has reached 50%, and the retention rate of private domain traffic is about 20%, which is at a high level in the entire consumer goods industry.
As they look to the future, the three companies also offer three different perspectives:
Xiao Pei has a more complete product matrix, and the cat and dog products are involved, so the relevant person in charge believes that "doing a good job in the product is to save the user's time, so that Xiao Pei's users can enjoy life more, so that pet raising becomes a better way of life." ”
Youha hopes to use a more perfect product matrix to radiate more users, and eventually become a data-centric service platform, which can carry out customized services around pets and pet owners in the future.
Jason, who has been in the pet products industry for nearly 20 years, told New Retail Business Review that although the concept of pet health abroad is leading, there is still a blank in terms of smart products with AI technology. Therefore, going to sea is also one of the ways out for domestic smart pet product brands today, and the field of pet health will be promising in the future.
Although the focus and product design ideas of the three companies are different, they are all developing more products with high standards for human products around the needs of users (pet owners and pets), and building their own ecological closed loop.
In the initial stage of the pet smart home controversy, they may only represent part of the development status of the market, but they all convey a core concept - to do a good job is the essence of everything, for people, for pet products should be so.
Today's topic: Will you buy smart products for pets? Why?