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

Another market barrier built by foreign brands has been broken.

In recent years, China's electric toothbrush market has developed rapidly. According to the China Business Industry Research Institute, China's electric toothbrush market increased from 4.3 billion yuan to 12.5 billion yuan from 2017 to 2021, and further to 18.5 billion yuan in 2022. Domestic brands also rise in response to the trend, accelerating the erosion of the share of foreign brands.

According to a brief report released by the China Oral cleaning Care Industry Association, from January to August 2023, the top five in the electric toothbrush industry were usmile smile Plus, Philips, Ole B, Feike and Mijia, whose online retail sales accounted for 28.1%, 20.7%, 9.7%, 4.8% and 4.5%, respectively. Domestic brand usmile smile plus grew by more than 80% year-on-year. Feike, which ranks fourth, has become two fast horses in the field of electric toothbrushes. Not only that, usmile smile plus also further widened the gap with the second Philips, sitting on the first position in the industry. At the same time, the latest Sullivan certification data show that in the first half of 2023, usmile ranked first in sales of toothbrush products in China, leading the sales of toothbrush products in China for three consecutive years from 2020 to 2022.

Behind this round of market occupation change, it is not only another victory of "changing the market with price" completed by domestic brands based on the manufacturing advantages of big countries, but also another story of domestic brands constantly innovating product routes and winning the first place in the industry.

The market pattern of electric toothbrush is loose, and domestic brands take advantage of the potential to speed up.

In China, electric toothbrushes can be regarded as an out-and-out "import", originated overseas, mature overseas, and permeated overseas. In the growing soil of favorable conditions, foreign brands have long set up competitive barriers to technology, products and brands, and have formed a strong head aggregation effect before entering the Chinese market.

Therefore, in the budding period of China's electric toothbrush market, the global electric toothbrush giants Philips, Ole B and Panasonic almost transplanted their overseas advantages directly to China. Until 2019, Philips and Ole B still occupy more than half of the domestic electric toothbrush market, and the oligarchy is almost solidified.

However, to some extent, the Matthew effect also brings the inertia of market competition and technological innovation to the strong. Also starting in 2019, when Philips and Ole B were still eating the technological "old roots" of decades ago and relying on brand volume to win the middle and high-end market, many domestic brands began to take off one after another, starting with the simplest imitation, follow and replication. step by step sweeping the electric toothbrush market which was originally dominated by foreign capital.

In the domestic forces that break through the hunting of foreign brands, we can obviously see two kinds of fighting methods: "price school" and "technology school".

To put it simply, the threshold for the production of a "vibrating" electric toothbrush is not high, with a collection of batteries, motors, shells and brush heads, and the overall structure is basically formed. As a result, a wave of Chinese manufacturers keen to make quick money are targeting entry-level consumers who pay more attention to price, by giving full play to their strong ability of "product replication" to set up simple production lines and launch electric toothbrushes that are much lower than the prices of the same foreign products. Quickly occupy the mass market.

In terms of complexity, it is difficult to develop an electric toothbrush that "can really surpass foreign products", but it is an inevitable move to really hold the lifeline of foreign brands and pry open the middle and high-end market.

Another wave of domestic brands, represented by usmile smile plus, has taken this "difficult but correct" path, seizing the excellent opportunity when foreign companies are still standing still, increasing investment in technological research and development with a long-term mentality, and launching innovative products with epoch-making significance. For example, usmile smile plus takes the lead in installing a smart "small round screen" on the product to complete the subversion of the traditional "toothbrush + motor", or the upcoming launch of the industry's first digital toothbrush that integrates hardware sensors, software AI algorithms, and cloud interconnection, all of which are bold innovations that foreign brands have never tried.

The simultaneous breakthroughs of the mass market and the middle and high-end markets have accelerated the change of the competition pattern. Today, not only usmile smile and surpass Philips to become the first in the industry, but also the overall weight of domestic brands is becoming heavier and heavier in the leading camp of China's electric toothbrush market.

Breaking through the inner cage, usmile leads the industry to the track of high-quality development.

While domestic brands collectively stir up the market pattern, China's electric toothbrush industry also returns to the origin of oral cleanliness in the reshuffle, leaving the track with parameters as the only index and heading for a higher quality development path.

Previously, the electric toothbrush brand has long been trapped in the inner cage of the "brush head, battery and motor", comparing the brush hair material with the brush head style, stretching as long as possible, and increasing the motor speed almost without limit. It seems that all brands follow the one-sided principle that "good parameters equals good products".

However, what should be the real evaluation criteria for electric toothbrushes? According to the 2023 Oral Care Consumer Insight report, 71% of consumers consciously improve oral problems by buying oral care products, and electric toothbrushes are one of the products with high expectations. This means that good electric toothbrushes should focus on daily oral care and focus on reducing oral morbidity rather than falling into a meaningless parameter trap.

This is the fundamental reason why usmile Smiles insists on starting from the oral origin and innovating the category of electric toothbrushes from the source.

Different from ordinary small household appliances, electric toothbrushes need to be oral-based and have a deep insight into what users really need. To this end, usmile smiled and visited dental hospitals at home and abroad, and carried out in-depth cooperation with dental experts to set up four professional oral laboratories to simulate the tooth surface environment and cultivate dental plaque in a special microbiological culture laboratory. Explore the principle of oral care with the "stupidest, most expensive and most scientific" method, and gain more than 500 related patents in this process, laying the technical foundation of "oral professional evidence-based".

On the other hand, electric toothbrush as a daily "oral care tool", its ease of use is also essential. With the goal of enabling everyone to get access to professional oral health care methods in one second, usmile Smiles plus spent another five years developing Superclea ®Cloud Power Technology, which can achieve the three major cleaning targets through the intelligent linkage of hardware, software and cloud data. This technology enables the electric toothbrush to automatically identify the brushing position and automatically switch the cleaning mode according to the tooth surface, which can not only improve the oral cleaning effect, but also reduce the user's learning cost and complexity.

Therefore, driven by the concept of "integrating professional oral care methods into product development and design", toothbrush products that really help to improve oral health have been born one after another. In this way, we advocate abandoning the ineffective usmile smile and turning to focus on the high-quality core of "oral cleaning effect". With our insistence on creating evidence-based innovative products for oral professionals, we will promote toothbrushes to achieve a revolutionary leap from electrification to digitalization.

Write at the end

The transcendence of usmile smile is not only the story of young domestic brands surpassing the established foreign giants, but also the story of domestic brands constantly innovating product routes and overtaking in the corner of technology initiative. Usmile smile as the origin, really insight into users' pain points, constantly polish products with innovative technology, and innovate users' every experience.

As a leading player in China's electric toothbrush industry, usmile smile and adhere to the "oral professional evidence-based" concept is like a force to clarify the root causes, promoting the electric toothbrush industry to a more professional, higher quality development path.

At the same time, as "the first brand in the electric toothbrush industry" and "the creator of the digital toothbrush industry", usmile smile adds the "double transcendence" in market share and product energy level, which is undoubtedly injecting a dose of heart tonic into the domestic brands that follow up to catch up, passing to domestic brands more confidence and confidence to compete with foreign giants in technology, products and market.

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