The “6 ยท 18” is coming, and the pet supplies circuit will add more fuel.
JD Pet recently disclosed for the first time that it will integrate the resources of JD’s entire platform in the next year to create more than 50 first-tier pet products new brands. Tmall also upgraded the category of pets to the first-level industry in the new financial year plan.
Obviously, the pet economy circuit, which is regarded as a “gold mine”, will face another round of fierce competition. However, on the one hand, Internet companies are adding to the market, and on the other hand, home appliance giants are following up.
The pet smart hardware market has become the “new highland” favored by Midea, Xiaomi and other giants.
Midea, a domestic technology and home appliance giant, recently revealed to the media that the company’s pet brands “Cat Attraction” and “Fluffy&Floppy” will debut at the pet exhibition in May.
Earlier, Xiaomi Group also invested in the pet intelligent hardware brand “cat, dog and dog”. The Mijia intelligent pet water dispenser and Mijia intelligent feeder products that the company cooperated with Xiaomi have achieved mass production. In addition, traditional household appliance brands such as Lake, Bear and Yadu have also launched their layout in the pet household appliance market.
Traditional household appliance brands have entered the market one after another, and Internet e-commerce giants have also stepped into the market. This seemingly good “fat meat” is not so easy for everyone to take a breath.
On the other side, the giants covet the head brands such as Pet Pet, which have been questioned repeatedly due to safety issues and have been caught in the storm of public opinion. Intellectualization may be the inevitable trend of science, but the “shoveling officials” who have zero tolerance for safety issues are becoming more and more cautious.
How to solve the problem of “masters” eating, drinking and labouring with high technology, and achieve hundreds of billions of markets?
A new round of “6.18” pre-sale is coming. The 28-year-old peach recently opened the major live broadcast rooms and e-commerce flagship stores, making strategies and comparing prices, just to improve the life of the two “cat owners” in the family.
Peach keeps a hairless cat and an adopted Chinese pastoral fat orange cat. In the past year, Peach has paid more attention to the necessities of cat food, cat litter and insect repellent. “Try to choose the best.” As for the cat nest, cat climbing rack and feeding bowl, Peach “can save, save”. After all, the monthly salary of peaches at that time was not high, and there was no spare effort to be rich in pets.
But it has changed recently. Peach changed his job and doubled his salary. As soon as the first month’s salary was paid, Peach decided to buy some gifts for the two “masters”, “after all, they are my money cats”.
After asking the pet group, Taozi focused on some smart goods. From the intelligent pet nest that can keep constant temperature, to the intelligent feeding and drinking machine that can be fed regularly, to the intelligent collar that monitors health data, Peach went to learn about it according to the feedback and suggestions of group friends. “Don’t look, don’t know, just look at the whole grass.” Although many products are enchanted, Peach decided to start with some products with lower prices and take advantage of the “6.18” discount to buy an automatic feeding machine and two intelligent collars.
In China, young “excrement shoveling officials” like peaches are increasing rapidly. Their concept of nurturing is different from that in the past. At the moment when new technological concepts such as cloud and 5G are widely spread, they are more willing to try those intelligent devices.
According to public data, pet smart devices are more and more popular with consumers. Nearly 40% of consumers are young people after 90/95, especially smart feeding devices and wearable devices. The proportion of consumption has increased rapidly in the past year.
As early as “Double 11” in 2018, Tmall alone sold 400 imported smart cat toilets in one day. From 2016 to 2018, the number of purchase of pet products of Tmall Global increased by three times, and the transaction amount increased by more than 10 times.
In 2020, the sales growth of pet smart products on all major platforms of “Double 11” achieved high growth. According to Tmall data, the sales of “Double 11” pet smart products increased by more than 500%, and the sales of smart feeders increased by 120%. In the Taobao system, the new customers of pet smart devices account for more than 50%, and both the search volume and consumption volume show a multiple growth. JD data also showed that 10 minutes after the opening of “Double 11” in 2020, the turnover of smart pet products increased 33 times year-on-year.
Peach’s feeling is more intuitive. “When I asked in the pet group, many group friends sent a bunch of photos of their smart devices, and felt that everyone had an intelligent feeding machine.”
A report by Guotai Junan pointed out that the total size of China’s pet market is expected to grow to 400 billion yuan to 600 billion yuan in the next four years. It is not hard to imagine that pet smart products will become the main force.
“On the one hand, the important selling points of many pet smart products are convenience and automation, which can free the hands of young pet owners. On the other hand, it has network monitoring and other functions, which actually aims at the pain point that young people can’t take care of their pets at any time when they go to work.” Sophia is an agent of a pet smart products enterprise. In her opinion, “With the increasing number of empty nest pets, the demand for smart devices by excrement shovelers is real, and the market cannot be underestimated.”
It is not difficult to understand why Midea, Xiaomi and other giants have cross-border pet smart devices. “At present, the competition in the food sector, including pet food and pet snacks, has been very fierce. The first echelon has been finalized, while the supplies sector is still in the state of rapid development and seizing the market.” Sophia analyzed that the giants chose to enter the market in the past two years, which is precisely the potential of this market
The “official who shovels excrement” is not willing to take risks by spoiling,
Security issues trigger a crisis of trust
Although the market potential is not small, problems are also frequent. Although young “excrement removal officials” are more willing to spend money for pets, this does not mean they are willing to pay for any products. Especially when it comes to pet safety issues, “peaches” must be extremely cautious and have zero tolerance for safety issues.
As the survey data of the 2019 White Paper on China’s Pet Industry shows, the safety and durability of the product account for more than 70% of the user’s consumption decisions on pet smart products.
IiMedia Research (AIMedia Consulting) has found that 55.7% of China’s pet intelligent product buyers prefer intelligent water dispensers in 2021H1, and 30.6% of consumers prefer intelligent pet feeding machines.
However, one important reason why Peach finally decided to buy a smart feeder instead of a smart water dispenser is that it is worried about the safety of the latter. As early as November 2020, the fire investigation of a fire in Chengdu showed that the high temperature electric arc caused by the fault of the electric line of the pet intelligent water dispenser ignited the surrounding combustibles and caused a fire. The intelligent water dispenser is from the head brand of pet intelligent products, Pet Pet.
Although in April 2021, Xiaopei Pet’s official microblog released an announcement saying that the company’s product had been tested several times without any abnormality. However, a large number of users expressed dissatisfaction with the statement. In the popular forwarding, many users mentioned the suffocation of Xiaopei’s pet cat nest and the leakage of the water dispenser.
In fact, Peach thinks that the safer intelligent feeding machine is not necessarily safe.
According to previous media reports, Anna Provitsova, a security researcher from St. Petersburg, Russia, said in a series of messages released on its Telegram private channel in 2019 that she had discovered bugs in the back-end API and firmware of Xiaomi FurryTail smart pet feeder. She accidentally found a way to invade and take over all millet pet feeders around the world.
Although in the follow-up message released by the above researcher, Xiaomi supplier confirmed the error and promised to repair it. But this still makes many “shoveling officials” question, “Are these so-called smart products really safe?”
“In 2019, Xiao Pei’s pet cat nest and intelligent water dispenser were frequently exposed to problems, and the brand side also recalled some products and made corresponding product adjustments, but the resulting crisis of trust is almost irreversible. After all, the previous risk is fatal, which is an unacceptable price for many pet owners.” Tang Ruiru, the head of a pet supplies store, told Zinc Scale, It is also because the potential risks of these smart products are difficult to predict. At present, her pet supplies store does not sell any smart products
After all, the safety problem of pet smart products is not an individual case. A recent survey by Kaspersky Laboratory, a global network security company, showed that 23% of pet owners surveyed bought smart devices for their pets, and 39% of them said that their pet technology had some failure (including failure and damage).
In addition to the safety issues, there are also some doubts that “gimmicks” are more than practical, which continue to impact this new track.
“There are many smart products that really sell as a gimmick, and some products that are generally accepted at present still have many problems with detailed design.” Tang Ruiru told Zinc Scale that she also bought a variety of smart pet products that were very popular for evaluation, “Although most of the products such as smart cat nests and smart feeding machines have been produced for more than three years, the quality is still uneven, and the same brand may also have unstable quality. For example, the expensive smart toilet I bought sometimes has the situation that the machine does not stop running, and also has the situation that the cat excrement falls back into the litter circle by circle.”
This has been recognized by Sophia, “At present, many pet intelligent products are still people-oriented, and many products are not mature and need time to polish, so it is true that many products will be put on the shelf for various reasons, and the owners will also feel that they have to pay the IQ tax.”
Thunder, heavy rain, little rain,
The capital “ignites” the market to follow the trend
Although the whole track is still in an immature stage, the capitalists began to bet heavily. According to incomplete statistics, more than 12 pet intelligent hardware-related enterprises have obtained financing, with a financing amount of hundreds of millions of yuan. Among them, 2020 is a peak period. Cats and dogs, a pet technology enterprise that has previously cooperated with Xiaomi, have completed a round A financing of tens of millions of yuan; Small Pet, a smart pet hardware developer, completed a C+round financing of tens of millions of dollars; Pet smart home company Xiaomeng Pet completed the pre-A round of tens of millions of RMB financing
In fact, there are two types of players who have captured pet smart products at present. One is “senior” enterprises that rely on pet food to make a fortune, such as Zhongchong Shares, which is mainly engaged in pet food, and Petty Shares, which is mainly engaged in pet chewing gum. These enterprises can rapidly open up the market by virtue of their original brand reputation and rapidly occupy market share in the initial stage by horizontally developing the product line of smart pet equipment.
The second is the head brand with pet intelligent equipment as its main business. Such as Xiaopei, Youpet, cat, dog, etc.
The latter was born later, but its momentum is not small. According to the enterprise investigation data, the head brand Xiaopei Pet is affiliated to Xiaopei Network Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., which was founded in 2013. At present, the brand has completed five rounds of financing, with a total amount of more than 230 million yuan. The background of the investors includes Sailing Capital, Lianxin Capital, Wang Gang, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Man Bang Group, etc.
The “cat dog”, which has been favored by Xiaomi since its birth, was founded in 2016. According to the relevant information of the company, shortly after receiving the pre-A+round financing of 6 million yuan from IMO Ventures, it announced that it would complete the A-round financing of tens of millions of yuan, with Junlian Capital as the investment and Qingtong Capital as the exclusive financial adviser.
As a result, some small and medium-sized enterprises started to follow the trend, resulting in extremely serious product homogeneity in the entire market.
“It is mainly from the perspective of fixed time and quantity, pet food preservation, remote monitoring, etc., and even the product has no big difference in shape. Put several head brands of automatic feeding machines together, the modeling function may be very similar. The same is true for intelligent collar products. Donis, pet Beibei and smart pet house are all focused on health monitoring, positioning, etc. From the perspective of the industry as a whole, the development mainly stays in product iteration, and in the overall substantive There is no major breakthrough in design or product innovation. ” Sophia pointed out.
Correspondingly, the growth rate of consumer habit cultivation is slow. According to the data, the domestic consumption of pet smart devices accounted for 7.57% in 2016, and the proportion of smart devices in the consumption structure of the dog and cat market this year was 9% and 11.7% respectively.
This means that many young consumers have not yet accepted this kind of hardware equipment under the “false fire” of smart pet products.
“In fact, many young people are still in the stage of exploring and understanding. It is easy to plant grass, but it is still a big step before they actually place an order. Moreover, according to the current market price, not all young people have enough spending power to buy smart pet products, such as the head-brand feeding device such as Xiaopei, which often costs thousands of yuan.” Tang Ruiru said that in the case of the entire market is not mature enough, Most of the “excrement removal officials” have not yet fully accepted the intelligent pet.
Moreover, according to Tang Ruiru’s evaluation, not all pets can accept intelligent pet supplies. “I have nearly 10 cats. Some cats do like automatic water dispensers, but some cats still only drink the water I changed, and even watch you change it.”
Therefore, it remains to be seen whether giants such as Midea and Xiaomi can change the industry status quo of “big thunder and small raindrops” after entering the track.
