Coworth was founded in 1998, and by March of this year, it had just turned 20.
In the tech industry, 20 is an enviable, even jealous, age for businesses, because there aren't many companies that can stick to that age. What's more, in a sense, what Coworth did before was ahead of its time, and in business history, a large number of cases have proved that the concept and product are advanced, often do not mean a good ending.
Coworth is clearly out of this category.
This makes us curious, in that era when even the domestic traditional vacuum cleaner market has not been completely activated, what made Coworth abandon traditional vacuum cleaner products and turn to the transformation to the sweeping robot market? And what forces have propelled Coworth to become one of the synonyms of the current robotics market and field? Taking advantage of this interview, we wrapped up these issues and threw them all over to David Qian, president of Coworth International Business Unit.
Qian Cheng, President of Coworth International Business Unit
Coworth and its first decade—the triumph of another idealist
The most common metaphor for doing business is comparing the business to one's own children. But few people can really appreciate the difficulty of raising children like Coworth.
When Coworth first established the brand in China, the traditional vacuum cleaner market at that time was still a wasteland that needed to be reclaimed, because the vacuum cleaner at that time was still a symbol of high quality of life for most Chinese families, so as a market pioneer at that time, the best way for Cobos should be to build itself as a market-leading brand.
Under this premise, Coworth can be said to have no incentive to transform, at least the need for transformation is far less urgent, but it still does. Coworth explains this, "We're going to express our brand and what we really want to do." ”
For this answer, Lei Feng has a question: in today's technology industry, there seems to be a trend, the more valuable success, the more its original intention and cause will be described as simple and pure, and even a little willful, such as wearing the cloak of idealism, such as involving the spirit of craftsmanship... etcetera. Now that Coworth has described his transformational initiatives in the same light way, we can't help but wonder if Coworth is also inevitably clichéd.
In this regard, Qian Cheng said that when the company made this decision, it was indeed a part of the thinking and analysis of the future and the development of science and technology as the basis, but what really promoted the implementation of the transformation was Coworth's insistence on the heart and dream. Qian Cheng also pointed out that in fact, behind many successes, in addition to testing foresight, insight and execution, pure and even naïve ideas are often an element, because compared with the previous conditions, these come from the deepest desires and ideas in the heart, and it is obviously easier to support the belief, and every change and transformation of Coworth in the past 20 years has this part of the factor.
We are satisfied with this answer. Because it is not difficult to imagine that when Coworth decided to transform from the traditional vacuum cleaner market to the sweeping robot, it was difficult to summarize it even with the word "pain" - after almost all other products were withdrawn, Coworth's sales performance suffered a sharp decline, although this is an expected result, but it is still difficult for enterprises to undertake, and on the other hand, the sweeping robot as an emerging market, can provide Coworth with too slow and too little feedback. In retrospect, this was probably the most intolerable phase of the business.
However, reality proved that Coworth's choice was correct.
As a technology company like many domestic technology companies, Coworth has also experienced the development route from trade to factory, to technology, and finally to the launch of its own brand. In Coworth's view, this is actually the development path of Chinese manufacturing determined by a large era framework, but it also points out that if it were not for continuous technology investment and pursuit, Cobos would not have the opportunity to shift from the original trade to today's brand - which seems to explain why Coworth has achieved such success today.
In fact, if you have enough observation, it is not difficult to find that in fact, the traditional vacuum cleaner field has not emerged a brand that has a real sense of leading the development of the industry, and the outbreak of the entire vacuum cleaner product market is precisely the brand led by Coworth, who gave up the traditional vacuum cleaner to do the sweeping robot. Subsequently, more and more companies began to pay attention to how to achieve consumption upgrades in the field of home cleaning, and at this time, Cobos has become the most advanced first force in this wave.
Talking about this, the author thought of another case that was originally questioned by many people as a wrong strategy, that is, JD.com's self-built logistics, which led to JD.com's continuous losses, was once considered to one day drag JD.com into a quagmire that could not be turned over, but after the advent of the real e-commerce era, people suddenly realized that self-built logistics has become one of jd.com's biggest dependencies - like JD.com, Coworth did not wait for the wind outlet to come, but chose to become part of the outlet.
Coworth and its 20th year, how the sweeping robot walked the last mile
When it comes to the word 20th anniversary, Qian Cheng can't hide his smile in his eyes, but he also said that this is not a point that should be paid too much attention.
This is also the same as the mentality of many parents, the 20th birthday is certainly worth celebrating, but more important than the celebration itself, or how to plan the next step, and then the next step of development, so that the "child's" 30 years old or even 40 years old, can still harvest success like today.
In the interview, Qian Cheng revealed two data to Lei Feng: in the European market, the sweeping robot in the entire field of small household appliances is the second largest growth. In the United States and the Chinese market, the growth of sweeping robots is the fastest.
It seems that the entire industry is developing according to Cobos's expectations - the world is facing consumption upgrades in the field of home cleaning, and the starting point of upgrades may be different from each other, but sweeping robots are the "confluence" of this upgrade.
But the problem in front of Cobos is that although Cobos has occupied a leading market position in China, it is still facing the challenge of the traditional vacuum cleaner market that is also in a growing state, in this regard, Lei Feng also put forward its own questions: In the future, how will Coworth further expand its market share?
Qian Cheng first said that comparing the size and share of the market, in fact, Coworth is most concerned about how to make this market bigger and bigger, and welcome more and more companies to join the industry - usually, a company can have such an inclusive mentality for competitors, for no more than two reasons, one is that it has a higher corporate perspective and level, and the other is that it often has absolute technical strength and sufficient judgment on the market. And it seems that Cobos has taken it all.
However, Coworth also came up with its own specific measures to share with Lei Feng. The first plan is to continue to promote the category of sweeping robots through the channel of partners, so that more consumers can recognize the product and even lifestyle choices. It is worth mentioning that just this past March 27, Coworth just joined hands with Tmall to hold a Coworth "Super Brand Day", which is a double eleven that belongs only to Cobos, and behind this cooperation, it is Cobos's market leadership and its good cooperative relationship with Tmall and other channels that determines.
The second solution is to continuously optimize the intelligent space of the sweeping robot. Qian Cheng frankly said that at this stage, due to the volume and technical factors, it is difficult for sweeping robots to cover every corner of the home, so these remaining and uncovered places are still the "world" of traditional vacuum cleaners, which is also the direction that sweeping robots must strive to achieve more market share.
Qian Cheng said that the main energy at this stage is to solve the problem of the last kilometer in the field of "home cleaning", and the weapon it takes out is the positioning and identification of the indoor environment.
Sweeping robot DJ35, Zhong Hanliang endorsement
In this area, Coworth found Qualcomm cooperation, with the help of the powerful computing power of Qualcomm chips, coupled with Coworth's exclusive advantages of indoor navigation technology, can greatly enhance the scanning robot's processing requirements for environmental information. The DJ35 robot that has been launched so far is the result of the cooperation between Coworth and Qualcomm, and What Cobos hopes is that consumers will have a different experience when they take this home than Coworth's previous products.
Facing the next decade, Cobos has its own magic weapon, that is, the leading indoor environment positioning and identification technology, for which Cobos is full of confidence, because the application range of this technology is very wide, as long as it is a robot product in the indoor scene, it can achieve true intelligence with this technology.
However, in addition to the leading indoor environment positioning and recognition technology, the addition of artificial intelligence is also constantly promoting the development of the sweeping robot industry through the last kilometer, which will prompt the robot to strengthen the judgment of things and the environment through continuous learning, so as to truly transform the core focus of the product from sweeping and other functions to a truly intelligent robot.
How Coworth is heading for its 30-year-old ?—— a complete product line from sweeping robots to home robots
In addition to the cooperation with Qualcomm, Qian Cheng also mentioned the cooperation with Huawei hilink, introduced the sweeping robot can help collect the signal strength of Huawei routers, and timely feedback to help enterprises improve the development direction of products, and said that in the future, through hardware such as cameras, more information and parameters can be collected to help more enterprises reduce barriers to communication with consumers.
This also raises our privacy concerns, especially after learning that the product is equipped with a camera. Qian Cheng said that first of all, the purpose of using the terminal to collect data is to help consumers solve pain points and improve the experience, and also to help manufacturers understand whether they have better service consumers; As for the camera on the device, it will only capture the feature points to scan, and will not see any information that should not be in the home. But Qian Cheng also said that at present, no manufacturer can say that the user privacy issue is absolutely perfect, and the only thing that can be discussed is how to protect the user's data privacy, and realize that the data only serves the customer and is not used for others. Qian Cheng said that he is willing to join the discussion at this level and make real efforts for user privacy and data security.
When talking about the future, Qian Cheng said that the most important thing at this stage is to do a good job in existing products and tap more value, such as making robots a more valuable terminal and promoting more consumers to recognize such products.
At present, in addition to the sweeping robot under Coworth, there are air purification robots and window cleaning robots, in the interview, Qian Cheng also made an introduction to Lei Feng Network, such as air purification robots, which is a mobile air purifier, its advantage is to solve the problem that the air purifier is not enough for the whole family, buy more but waste, and greatly enrich the original scene, such as a family with children, you can set the air purifier to automatically move to another room after the child falls asleep, And don't rely on manpower to carry and so on.
Lei Feng proposed that whether Coworth will enter the service field in the future, and the answer is that Cobos will not necessarily do service, but if it does, then it is definitely not just the service itself. Qian Cheng said that he is more concerned about how to break through the boundaries on hardware, so that the service can really sink, rather than simply renting out a device.
Qian Cheng also said that the future robot will continue to change from the current tool to the identity of the housekeeper or even the partner, such as adding security and care functions, etc. When Lei Feng wants to ask more carefully, Qian Cheng said that it is not convenient to disclose more at present.
This may mean that Coworth has enough surprises ready to wait until the right time to show you.