Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Intelligent pet hardware is developing in the direction of intelligence and digitalization, trying its best to help "shovel officials" save time, effort and worry. At present, this subdivision track has grown rapidly, with a market size of nearly 500 billion yuan. More and more new local players come to the fore and begin to harvest overseas.

In the recent broadcast of "Superbrain Youth Group", a group of post-05 people with excellent basic knowledge and excellent programming skills have ushered in a new challenge-making cat face recognition feeders.

This is by far the most difficult problem for seasonal programs, requiring challengers to combine intelligent identification technology with the feeding device to effectively start the device.

The two teams are composed of three people, each responsible for device construction, image processing, programming and other work.

05 after adjusting the production of cat face recognition feeder (picture source: "Superbrain Youth Group" official WeChat) competition, each team collected photos of 10 cats in advance to build a database by taking pictures of different angles and expressions for artificial intelligence machines to recognize and learn.

In the following time, the six team members worked synchronously, from algorithm design, expected training, feeder production, to picture testing, true pet verification, all completed independently, and the whole process was intense and exciting.

In the end, a team succeeded in the challenge. The feeder not only successfully identified the target cat and activated the feeding device, but also identified the interfering cat and did not feed it, which was praised by the audience both inside and outside the screen.

When the post-70s and 80s were still manually feeding and shoveling shit, and the post-90s were looking at the instructions for using pet hardware, the post-05 generation had already started to make pet intelligent hardware. This is not only the progress of the creativity of Generation Z, but also the general trend of the development of pet economy.

As more and more single and busy young people join the "shit shoveling army", the time-saving, labor-saving and worry-saving pet smart hardware market has ushered in an explosion.

Including automatic cat litter basins, automatic feeders, automatic drinking fountains, intelligent traction ropes, intelligent cameras and other equipment emerge in endlessly, production and sales brands are also varied, including traditional home appliance companies such as Midea and Panasonic, and even Internet companies such as Xiaomi want to get a piece of the pie, and have also won the popularity of start-up brands such as CATLINK and companions.

An obvious trend is that these brands have coincidentally focused their innovation on the two subdivided tracks of pet cleaning and pet feeding, and the products are also becoming intelligent and digital, doing their best to reduce the trouble of "shoveling officials".

But keeping a pet is a matter that requires patience and emotional healing. "shovel officials" get spiritual comfort by investing time, energy, financial resources and other emotions on their pets.

Once the investment in "hairy children" is reduced, will "parents" pay less attention and rely on it? How much growth potential can this track have?

1. "digitalization" is the ultimate form of the product, "young age, both cats and dogs", which is becoming a true portrayal of the living conditions of contemporary single young people.

Due to the change in the concept of marriage and the needs of life, more and more singles place their companionship on their pets. The number of people living alone in China is expected to exceed 92 million in 2021, with 45.1 per cent of post-95 singles owning pets, second only to those born in the 1980s (54.1 per cent), and 38 per cent and 28.9 per cent of post-90s and post-00s singles, respectively, according to the Ai media consultation report.

Photo source: among the questions asked by Ai media about pet eating, drinking and Lhasa, fecal smell and cleaning, healthy diet and regular diet are at the top of the list, which is the biggest headache for shoveling officials.

Take the cat litter basin as an example, the price of the traditional open cat litter basin is relatively affordable, but it has some disadvantages such as easy flying sand and easy smell. In order to meet the market demand, businesses have developed upper open cat litter basins, semi-closed cat litter basins, fully enclosed cat litter basins and other types of cat litter basins to cover up the smell.

But none of these can completely avoid the smell, until the emergence of the intelligent cat litter basin, its own cleaning function completely liberated the hands of shoveling officials, and its own deodorization function also made the "parents" no longer disturbed by the smell.

Founded in 2017, CATLINK is a start-up focused on cat smart hardware, and its main product is an intelligent cat litter basin that integrates AI interaction, remote shit shoveling and data monitoring functions.

According to founder Jason, once using products such as smart cat litter basins and smart cat toilets, it is difficult for users to return to the scene of manual shoveling. "intelligent pet hardware is an irreversible trend in the industry."

Therefore, from its inception, CATLINK has focused on solving cat fecal cleaning and odor treatment, and has created an industry-leading intelligent cat litter basin product based on the prediction that "intelligence" will become the trend of the industry.

According to Jason, the product has gone through three update iterations before and after its launch, which took nearly two years, far exceeding expectations. In order to meet the "intelligent" demand, the company has completed all self-research from the definition of consumer demand, product function design to software and hardware development.

CATLINK R & D team currently accounts for 40% of the total number of people in the company, covering hardware, firmware, software development, etc., and employees invest millions of dollars a year alone. This is clearly a significant investment for startups that have only announced one round of financing so far.

CATLINK financing process (Photo Source: Tianyan Cha) although the fully automatic cat litter basin developed by CATLINK is located in the high-end market and sells more than most similar products, CATLINK's products are still recognized by the market, and the products have been ranked No. 1 in Tmall's smart cat litter box sales list for three consecutive years since they were launched in 2019.

In early 2000, North American household cleaning brand BISSELL also set its sights on the pet family scene, and launched the first portable deep cleaning machine specially designed for pet cleaning in 2005.

Since entering the Asia-Pacific region in 2019, BISSELL Beisheng products have always maintained rapid growth. In the domestic market in 2021, BISSELL Beisheng fabric cleaning machine sales ranked first in the industry, accounting for nearly 60% of the market share, and also ranked second in the industry in the field of floor washer.

According to the observation and judgment of Liu Jingjun, managing director of BISSELL Beisheng Asia, not only pet hardware, but also domestic large and small household appliances are developing in the direction of "intelligence".

To this end, BISSELL has set up an R & D center with 200,300 people in China to develop intelligent cleaning products according to domestic consumption trends and consumer demand. On average, every 7 months or so, BISSELL will develop a new product.

In terms of pet-related products, BISSELL will maintain the speed of new products for half a year to a year. Liu Jingjun stressed that as Chinese consumers increasingly prefer innovation in the style and function of pet hardware, "intelligence is definitely a very important trend in the future development of the industry."

However, Jason believes that the ultimate form of pet intelligence hardware is "digital", that is, to provide intelligent early warning services for shoveling officials by collecting basic physiological data and monitoring the health status of pets.

It is understood that CATLINK has expanded its business to sub-areas such as pet intelligent feeders and intelligent drinking fountains, covering all kinds of cat life scenes. "We now have nearly 400000 registered users of App and nearly 300000 online devices." Jason is generally satisfied with CATLINK's current achievements, but it will not stop there.

At present, CATLINK has collected billions of pieces of data, including shoveling shit, feeding, drinking water, and so on. According to Jason's plan, the future goal of CATLINK is to learn about pet weight and fat content through big data, so as to provide data reference for shoveling officials, pet food manufacturers, pet hospitals and other industry chains.

2. Players huddle together and look at the entire pet intelligent hardware track. At present, most of the players who have made certain achievements and have some sound volume are start-up brands.

But even Pei, who is known as the "number one brand of pet smart products" and whose valuation has been exposed to exceed 3 billion yuan, only completed US $5000 in D-round financing in August last year; more brands are in the early stages of angel round and round A, such as CATLINK, which completed its first round of financing last year.

However, according to a research report released by iiMedia Research, the scale of China's pet economy industry nearly tripled from 2017 to 2021, approaching the 400 billion yuan mark; this scale is expected to reach 493.6 billion yuan in 2022, an increase of 25.2 percent over the same period last year, and will increase to 811.4 billion yuan by 2025; and maintain double-digit year-on-year growth in the next three years (2023-2025).

Photo source: Ai Media Consulting has a broad market space and a young player lineup, which has attracted the attention and admission of many giants.

In September 2019, Xiaomi War Investment and Shunwei Capital completed the A round of investment in the pet intelligent hardware brand "cat and dog". At present, the products of Mi intelligent pet drinking fountain and Mi Jia intelligent feeder have been mass produced.

In 2020, Midea opened a flagship store for pet products in Tmall, followed by the launch of pet smart products such as cat drinking fountains, air purifiers and cat airboxes, and entered the pet products market; last year, the company also revealed two brands: "Cat Gravity", which specializes in pet food, and "Fluffy&Floppy", which mainly deals with pet products.

In 2021, Tmall upgraded the pet category to the first-tier industry in the new fiscal year planning, and in the same year, JD.com Pet also revealed that it will build more than 50 first-tier new brands in the coming year.

The east wind of capital suddenly makes waves in the pet intelligent hardware track, and players with different identities are facing the challenge of competing on the same stage. Who can fly higher and farther depends on the ability of each family.

CATLINK does not seem to be afraid of players with strong backgrounds, and even expects more players to enter. "at present, the product penetration is low, and a large number of players entering the pet smart hardware track will help to create opportunities for more brands." Jason believes that the industry is currently in a period of growth, the size is still growing, new players will attract new consumers, "as long as they do not make mistakes, other brands may rise with the market."

From the performance of CATLINK, the company made a profit a year after its online intelligent cat litter basin. Jason told all-weather technology that the company's performance in 2020 was six times higher than that in 2019. On the one hand, the company has relatively thick cash, on the other hand, it is already doing work to reduce costs and increase efficiency. "We are not trying to make money for short-term interests, but we want to grow the prototype of a good company at this stage."

In his view, there will be no more than three enterprises coming out of the Chinese pet intelligent hardware track in the future, and three may occupy 90% of the market share. "it is not necessarily a big company coming out. What enterprises need to do is to save energy in winter and wait for the opportunity to break out."

Large enterprises may be stronger than small enterprises in terms of capital, talent and technology as a whole, but the specific investment in business segmentation is not as obvious as imagined.

A person familiar with Midea's pet business told all-weather technology that Midea originally transferred some personnel from various business departments to form a new team to cut into the pet appliance track. "they were just trying." later, it was found that the track was not profitable or fun, and the division was laid off. "

This statement also echoes Midea's previously announced layoffs.

In May this year, Midea was revealed to be carrying out a large-scale layoff. after that, the authorities acknowledged the layoffs and said, "in view of the judgment of the internal and external environment, the company shrank its non-core business in an orderly manner, suspended non-operating investment, and adopted multiple measures to further consolidate growth potential and improve operating performance."

It is reported that, in addition to the core categories of home appliances, mother and baby, pet appliances and other businesses are facing optimization. Midea CFO and Chief Financial Officer Zhong Zheng said that the optimized businesses such as mother and child, pet appliances and some SKU have no impact on the overall revenue of the United States, but are beneficial to the improvement of profitability. This may also mean that businesses such as pet appliances are lossmaking in the United States.

The change of consumption demand of Z generation leads to higher and higher details of consumption scene and product value. If brands want to win the market, they must more accurately address consumer demand and provide consumer value. From a certain dimension, the current stage can give the brand more opportunities to grow, which is more suitable for the development of vertical brands.

3. Local brands make great efforts to trace the family wealth history of local pet-related enterprises, and we will find that many of them have grown up from the brand OEM mode, until the pet economy has grown rapidly in the past two years. Enterprises began to independently develop and design products and operate brand channels.

However, the late transformation does not mean that local enterprises are not competitive. On the contrary, they have advantages in many aspects.

Liu Jingjun pointed out that in order to occupy a place in the domestic pet intelligent hardware market, three things need to be done: first, there is a team that understands the consumption characteristics of the local market and formulate a clear sales strategy; second, strong ability to undertake online and offline channels; third, the ability to build brand image and consumer mind.

CATLINK, for example, has a precise and clear marketing campaign-bidding farewell to offline electronic screens and flooding ads, and choosing to work with platforms such as live talent and social content media.

The purpose of this is to achieve the maximum transformation and hit the popular style products with the minimum cost as much as possible in the uncertain environment, so as to achieve the integration of quality and effect.

It is understood that the marketing method of CATLINK is mainly divided into two lines. On the one hand, it cooperates with e-commerce live streaming talent to promote core items and build up brand mentality by promoting consignment; on the other hand, it achieves the purpose of marketing promotion through content recommendation on platforms such as Little Red Book and Douyin.

According to Jason, when it works with Taobao Live SuperTouda, a live broadcast of millions of sales will often result in a loss of 10% of the turnover as a whole. "this figure is far lower than the large-scale spending of the whole network, and the brand marketing effect is better."

This seems to be the case for a number of pet start-ups except CATLINK. They start online and have innate advantages in building brand image and consumer mentality, attracting other brands to follow suit.

When BISSELL wins into the fierce Chinese market, it pays attention to the marketing methods of local brands, attaches great importance to building its own brand image and telling brand stories.

To this end, the company chose All In short video content, which was diverted to the traditional e-commerce platform by publishing recommended videos on the short video platform; in 2020, BISSELL opened the channel of Little Red Book, attracting a large number of consumers; and in 2021, Wang Yibo was officially announced as the brand spokesman to increase product exposure and harvest fan flow.

Liu Jingjun revealed to all-weather science and technology that the total network turnover of Shuang11 BISSELL products exceeded 100 million in 2020, a 10-fold increase over the previous year, and the company's total sales more than tripled from a relatively large base last year.

However, he stressed that BISSELL will not focus entirely on marketing, but will also invest in infrastructure such as research and development and supply chain.

When foreign brands enter the Chinese market, local brands are also expanding into overseas markets. According to incomplete statistics, including CATLINK, PETKIT, birds and flowers, Petwant, PAPIFEED, HoneyGuaridan, Ameifu, Xiaomi, Linglong cat and other Chinese brands have gone to sea, and occupy a certain share of the overseas pet smart products market.

Data released by AliExpress in August also show that the growth rate of pet "summer relieving artifacts" on the platform is more than 200% in Europe, smart pet products have increased eight times compared with the same period last year, and overseas consumers have shown a strong favor for Chinese pet products.

In the past, the stereotype was that the advantages of Chinese brands over overseas brands were the speed of response and collaboration in the supply chain, as well as cheap labor, while they were mostly inferior in product technology and brand marketing.

But in Jason's view, this situation has completely changed. Chinese pet smart hardware is not inferior to overseas products, "especially the icing on the cake in addition to the underlying technology, such as mobile payments, smart devices, etc., have obvious advantages." At this time, it is undoubtedly a good time for Chinese brands to go to sea to open the market.

Pet economy is essentially an accompanying economy, which is an economic form of consumption in order to alleviate users' loneliness and anxiety. "shovel officials" actually raise pets in order to have an emotional support.

Although pet hardware is becoming more and more intelligent and digital, and relevant enterprises have saved a lot of pet trouble for "shoveling shit officials", science and technology can not replace the emotional communication between "parents" and "hairy children". It is also impossible to completely exempt from the hard work and responsibility of raising pets, and a certain amount of time and energy is essential.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: all-weather Technology (ID:iawtmt), author: Zhang Chao, Editor: Luo Lijuan

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