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Editor's note: As going overseas becomes more and more a core strategy for a Chinese company, how to conquer the global market has become an extremely professional topic. In the evolution of globalization, many Chinese brands have stood at the forefront. In view of this, Hard Krypton launched the "Insight Global" column, exploring the cutting-edge direction and opportunities of Chinese brands going overseas from the perspective of brand growth and change, and providing thinking and inspiration for players and industries going overseas. This is the 31st issue of our column-established in 2015, devoted to outdoor scenes in 2017, and cut into the courtyard track in 2019 to launch the wireless swimming pool robot brand Aiper, with outstanding results: in the past three years, it has achieved financing of more than 75 million US dollars, annual cumulative shipments of more than 1 million units, offline settlement will exceed 7,000 stores, and the market share of swimming pool robots is second in the world... How did Yuanding Intelligence break through, occupy and expand overseas markets? In this regard, we talked with Wang Yang, CEO of Yuanding Intelligence.

Author | Lin Qingqing

Editor | Yuan Silai

In the minds of Chinese people, courtyard swimming pools are always associated with decent and peaceful suburban middle-class life.

But there are two things that people who live in single-family homes can't avoid: mowing the lawn and cleaning the pool.

After selling 1 million swimming pool robots, Yuanding Intelligent CEO Wang Yang still remembers the hard summers that the swimming pool brought him.

Compared to the morning mowing, when the sun and grass bring a refreshing atmosphere, pool cleaning can be said to be a boring job. After a leisurely float, there is always a sweaty cleaning.

In Europe and the United States, most families have independent courtyards, and swimming pools are standard in many courtyards. According to a report by the Pool & Hot Tub Alliance (PHTA), there are about 30 million private swimming pools in the world, of which nearly 90% are in Europe and the United States. Most families with private swimming pools are high-net-worth individuals, who generally have strong spending power and high willingness to pay, and pool cleaning is a rigid demand.

However, there are obvious pain points in pool cleaning. On the one hand, in the past, pool cleaning basically relied on manual cleaning tools or traditional pool vacuum cleaners. These two methods not only waste water, electricity and time, but also have unsatisfactory cleaning performance.

On the other hand, the high labor costs are daunting. The frequency of pool cleaning is generally about twice a month, and the average charge for manual pool cleaning in Europe and the United States is high, which is extremely cost-effective. According to data from the American company Lawnstarter, pool owners spend an average of $1,432 per year to maintain their pools, including regular cleaning, maintenance, and seasonal opening and closing, with an average single cost of more than $100.

This is a market that is still on the rise. Stimulated by the pandemic, the number of swimming pools around the world has increased, growing by about 5% each year. In addition, the rigid demand and high unit price of pool cleaning have also increased the market size of pool cleaning. According to the latest market report from BrandEssence® Market Research, the global robotic pool cleaning market will be worth $960 million in 2022 and is expected to reach $2.42 billion by 2029.

In 2019, Wang Yang smelled a business opportunity and decided to lead his team into the swimming pool cleaning market.

In just a few years, its product Aiper has become the leader in the pool cleaning robot segment and has become the number one brand in terms of shipments of pool cleaning robots in China today.

At present, Yuanding Intelligent has R&D, sales and brand offices in China, Singapore, the United States, Canada and other countries. It has established swimming pool robot R&D centers in Shenzhen, Suzhou and the United States. It has more than 300 R&D personnel, accounting for more than 70%, and has more than 250 global related patents (of which invention patents account for 50%).

Yuanding Smart's products are not only popular in online channels such as Amazon and independent websites, but also in mainstream offline channels around the world. It is expected to enter more than 7,000 offline stores by 2024, including major European and American stores such as Walmart, Lowe's, The Home Depot, Best Buy, Target, Costco, Sam's Club, OBI, Leroy Merlin, and Fnac. It is worth mentioning that Aiper currently has a total of nearly 700,000 active social media fans and more than 50 million YouTube video views.

In terms of financing, Aiper has completed three rounds of financing in the past three years, with a total financing amount of over US$75 million. Investors include XVC, Xinwangda, CMBI, Fosun Ruizheng and Fengqiao Capital. The latest B+ round of financing was led by a global leading new energy company. The huge amount of financing has attracted market attention.

Based on this, we approached the issue from the perspective of products and brands and had a chat with Wang Yang, CEO of Yuanding Intelligence.

From wired to wireless, from wireless to smart

Yuanding Intelligent was founded in Shenzhen in 2015. Initially, the company focused on the production of outdoor portable energy storage and courtyard products. Later, combining its own advantages and market trends, it launched the first wireless pool cleaning robot in 2019.

At that time, the overseas pool cleaning market was still a "four-legged" situation. For a long time, the market was mainly divided by four old home furnishing brands: Israeli brand Dolphin, Spanish brand Polaris, British BWT and American Hayward. Moreover, pool cleaning was mostly a small branch line of these brands, and there were very few industry brands that focused on pool cleaning robots.

Wang Yang believes that this high concentration of market monopoly has resulted in almost no technological breakthroughs and innovations in the industry for more than 20 years, which has created conditions for the rise of Aiper. "I found that the old players in this track in the past had a very good life. No one noticed that there was a huge information gap in this track. The products they provided could not keep up with user needs. I think this is an industry with a high market value."

Different from the high-end market positioning of these old-fashioned swimming pool robot brands, Aiper focuses on solving user needs and satisfying user experience. It abandons the traditional thinking of overseas companies in making home appliances and chooses to enter the basic market from the beginning. It launched wireless swimming pool cleaning robots. Its main products are sold for no more than US$500, with an average price of around US$300.

More importantly, Aiper caught up with a rare window of time. When the wireless smart pool robot came out, it was the blowout moment of the overseas smart home and outdoor gardening tracks. Taking advantage of this "time", the wireless pool robot became a new consumer category on Amazon.

Swimming pools are generally divided into three categories, and different types have different requirements for cleaning: First, above-ground swimming pools, also called bracket swimming pools, can be built and used at any time, and the cleaning requirements for the product are not too high; second, swimming pools dug out of the ground require cleaning of the pool bottom, side walls, water lines and water surface; third, commercial swimming pools such as five-star hotels and swimming pools require more water quality and dust management.

Pool cleaning robots on the market can also be divided into three categories. The first category is entry-level handheld products that require manual operation for cleaning. These products are relatively inexpensive. The second category is medium and large "wired" pool robots that require an external cable for power supply. The third category is the "wireless" pool robot corresponding to the "wired" one. These products are mainly small and medium-sized machines, powered by lithium batteries, do not require cables, are more flexible in cleaning, and are suitable for home swimming pools.

Wang Yang believes that for users, the most critical demand in the pool cleaning scene is cleaning power. Only by solving this problem can we really make a good product. And the core of the upgrade from "wired" to "wireless" pool robot technology is to overcome the problems of perception and power.

In the past, traditional wired pool robots on the market needed to be connected to the water with cables, had no timer, and had limited battery capacity. The cleaning process was rigid, and the robot could not judge the cleanliness of the pool environment. It mainly performed "violent cleaning" through random collisions or simple inertial navigation. This resulted in the cleaning power and coverage being unguaranteed, and the overall product performance and experience were not very good.

Aiper's wireless smart pool cleaning robot is mainly aimed at private pools and home pools. Compared with traditional pool vacuum cleaners, Aiper's robot can interact with the user's mobile phone app through algorithms. Its self-developed battery pack management system solves the problem of underwater power cords being easily entangled in the past, allowing the robot to freely arrange the cleaning path underwater. With the addition of automatic path planning capabilities, Aiper's robot can also set key cleaning areas and intelligently avoid obstacles, improving cleaning efficiency and ensuring that the swimming pool can be thoroughly cleaned in the shortest time and with the highest efficiency.

Aiper Seagull series products, source: enterprise

Aiper has also launched 10 models in the Seagull, Scuba and Surfer series to meet the needs of pool owners with different spending levels, with prices ranging from US$179 to US$1,099. Among them, the Seagull SE topped the Amazon bestseller list last year.

Yuanding Intelligent's third-generation fully intelligent products will also be released this year. 36Kr learned that the third-generation products will focus on intelligence and will bring significant technological innovations in three-dimensional swimming pool cleaning, offline communications, underwater mapping, intelligent variable frequency cleaning, water quality management and other aspects.

Go offline

The most difficult thing for a Chinese company to gain a long-term foothold overseas is to cross the cultural gap and infiltrate into the daily lives of overseas users.

Aiper has chosen the path of branding since its early market development. Unlike the traditional path of Chinese companies that flooded overseas markets with cheap products, Aiper chose to start with European and American courtyard culture and party culture, slowly influencing the minds of users and achieving cultural resonance.

Online, Aiper focuses on Amazon and independent websites, and uses social media to attract traffic. At present, Aiper has built a complete social media matrix covering well-known platforms such as Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, etc., and has posted independent website links on the official account homepages of each platform to attract fans to the independent website for purchase. In the menu bar at the bottom of the independent website page, Aiper also released a variety of cooperation methods, including "drop shipping", "alliance program" and "becoming a distributor, dealer", which greatly expanded Aiper's sales channels.

In 2023, Aiper's sales on its official website alone will reach nearly 200 million yuan.

In addition, Aiper specially hired a Hollywood team to produce a series of product promotional videos, which were released on the official website and YouTube. The video scenes were selected from courtyards, swimming pools, streets, etc., which are common to Americans. The overall style is young and close to American local pop culture. The team also cooperated with official sponsors of large overseas events such as the Grammy Awards to carry out brand placement and advertising.

Aiper's emphasis on branding has been evident since its early entry into Amazon. Wang Yang mentioned, "Branding is very important. We found on Amazon early on that the website did not have an independent keyword entry for swimming pool robots. After noticing this, we applied for the keyword swimming pool robots from Amazon and Best Buy. Now, when you search for swimming pool robots on these two websites, pictures of Aiper robots appear. Just like searching for mobile phones, Apple and Samsung pictures will appear by default."

Today, on Amazon, the Aiper Scuba SE wireless pool robot has repeatedly ranked No. 1 in the monthly sales list of the Robotic Pool Cleaners subcategory.

Online channels are usually the main battlefield for Chinese brands to expand overseas, but offline stores are more difficult to enter. Wang Yang believes that only by occupying the main offline shelves in European and American stores and opening up this "last mile" can branding be truly achieved.

Aiper tends to directly select local employees when selecting sales teams, and gives priority to tapping local sales experts in the European and American markets. "No one knows the local market channels better than them, and knows how to communicate with the channel parties better. This also greatly shortens the time it takes us to understand the local market."

Not only that, the model between Aiper and offline stores is not a simple agency sales, but cooperation with the stores. After the goods are distributed offline, it provides a one-stop "promotion + traffic + research and development + after-sales" service. The team will hold meetings with the store manager every week to review the situation, and even every shopping guide on the store's own shelves is specially trained by Aiper.

It took Aiper two years to not only enter offline shelves, but also become the first swimming pool robot brand to enter offline stores.

Today, Aiper has entered more than 5,000 offline stores in the United States, including Lowe's, The Home Depot, Walmart, etc., and has also entered Leroy Merlin, the largest DIY store in Europe, becoming its most important brand of swimming pool robots. It will be available in more than 800 stores, and will be put on sale in other stores one after another.

Wang Yang told 36Kr that the market for wireless pool robots is still in the blue ocean stage and has great potential. There are two main growth points: first, there is a lot of room for improvement in the technology of current pool robots; second, the current penetration rate of pool robots is only about 18%, and in terms of consumer awareness, many people are still at the stage of using traditional pool cleaning equipment.

However, sensitive Chinese manufacturers will not let go of this blank market. Especially after the continuous overcapacity in domestic production, this track will become more crowded. Unlike the domestic market, the overseas market pays more attention to products and brands, which will place extremely high demands on the company's supply chain, global service capabilities and global organizational capabilities.