Aofei Innovation: Carving a dream drone out of wood

At the Global Sources (Hong Kong) Mobile Electronics Show in April, a company launched a wooden drone that attracted a lot of interest. Founded in Hong Kong, Aofei Innovation Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. mainly promotes wooden drones, focusing on the education and entertainment market, providing a full range of drone education programs and technical support services. The process of Aofei Innovation's choice to combine drones with education is worthy of reference by many entrepreneurial peers.

"Are you spies?"

Before founding Aofei Innovation, Wen Fang was a technical engineer of a Fortune 500 foreign company in Hong Kong. Wen Fang has dreamed of building a large aircraft since he was a child, and the drone he encountered during his postgraduate studies at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University aroused his interest.

According to Wen Fang, although many companies have accumulated in the corresponding field of drones for many years, it was not until 2013 that DJI brought the concept of "drone" to the forefront, social and investment talents. Learn more about this market. These companies also do their best to develop their own application market. In general, the drone market gradually shifted from vertical to horizontal development around 2016.

In this year, Wen Fang and his classmate Wei Junhao established Aofei Innovation Company together. In order to tap the new UAV civilian market, Wen Fang decided to conduct popular science activities in second- and third-tier cities. However, the promotion did not go as smoothly as expected. Once, Wen Fang and his team were doing promotional activities in Wanda Plaza in Shijiazhuang. Just when they took out the drones for aerial photography, someone "watched" them and came over and asked, "Are you spies?" Shijiazhuang is the capital city of the province, and people's acceptance of new things is relatively high. But there are jokes in such places, and the situation in other places can be imagined." Wen Fang said.

This embarrassing misunderstanding made Wen Fang and his team understand that the public's awareness of drones is still very lacking, so Wen Fang decided to move the "battlefield". "Market cultivation is a long process, and when we entered the C-end market at that time, it would be attacked by both toy factories and DJI, and we needed enough funds to continue to face the C-end market, so we decided to start from the B-end market. Get up." Wen Fang said.

So, combined with the situation at that time, Wen Fang decided to implement drone education applications. He hopes to return the public's perception of drones to its normal "tool" attributes. The company has a slogan called "make interesting drones". Wen Fang and his team want to break people's stereotypes about drones and develop more interesting products and gameplay.

Solve STEM pain points and enter a broader market

It is 2017, and the competition in the domestic consumer drone market is quite fierce, even the market share of the industry leader DJI The first decline occurred in the third quarter of 2016. Wen Fang believes that in this case, focusing on the drone education market is undoubtedly a wise move to avoid fierce competition.

Just in this year, the Ministry of Education issued a series of relevant documents to encourage the exploration of STEM education in China. Previously, Aofei Innovation's business positioning was science popularization and drone education, and the market was relatively small. The characteristics of STEM education are generalization and popularization, and its concept must be the direction of China's education development. Wen Fang saw a way to a wider market.

Aofei Innovation has found many schools to cooperate with. During the contact process, Wen Fang's team learned that the existing DIY products on the market are aimed at drone enthusiasts, and the threshold is high. There is no drone on the market that is suitable for elementary school students. Aofei Innovation took this opportunity to develop courses to teach children to make drones, and to improve children's design and hands-on ability. Under the guidance of such ideas, Aofei innovatively founded the brand "Airwood", whose main products are pure wooden boards and hand-assembled drones.

Aofi provides training to teachers at educational institutions such as Shenzhen University and Bao'an Experimental School, who then choose how to deliver their courses. But whether children can turn the design team's whimsical ideas into results can only be understood through practice. Therefore, they will also send people to cooperative educational institutions to observe the effect of the course on the spot, and then collect feedback and make adjustments.

What Wen Fang sees is that although educational institutions have the will to offer STEM courses, their corresponding product development capabilities are not strong. And manufacturers that have the ability to manufacture related products lack the ability to continuously provide related courses. Aofei Innovation solves the pain points of the two and combines these two functions into one.

Regarding its own business model, Wen Fang explained that Aofei Innovation is not a pure drone seller, but an overall service provider of wooden drone design and manufacturing courses under the background of STEM education business.

Return the freedom of creation to children

Everyone has seen a lot of plastic and metal drones in the market, and suddenly they see a wooden drone, and they will feel bright. . "Wen Fang explained that the reason is that wood is closer to nature, and wooden drones are more like a handmade work. In this segment, there are fewer competitors, and the success rate of this positioning will be higher.

At the beginning, Aofei Innovations also chose the common plastic materials on the market, but the cooperative educational institutions must have cheap materials and simple structure, and it is best to have some space for their own design. The board has more plasticity. Even children with weak strength can easily and quickly process them into different patterns and styles. Children experience the sense of achievement in completing the drone. Wen Fang said that they want to make people work in If I like drones, I am also willing to assemble a drone.

Aofei Innovation also deliberately divides its products into two directions: most of the products for C-end users have been cut and formed. Structural parts; for the products of educational institutions, more tools will be provided, which are suitable for children to cut into desired shapes at will.

In Bao'an Experimental School, Aofei Innovation allows students to hand-paint design without any problems.

The drawings of the man-machine rack, and then processed according to the drawings, are unique UAVs that reflect the thinking results of the little "designers". This surprised many parents, so they also agree with Aofei's innovative teaching achievements

“With the development of artificial intelligence, drones are bound to become a widely used tool in the future. "Wen Fang also predicted that the recognition of science and technology education in the society will be higher and higher in the future, so Aofei Innovation will develop more product lines and markets horizontally while expanding brand awareness and product influence. He also added that he hopes to build Airwood into a brand equivalent to "Wooden Drone" in the future.

Photo/ Wenfang