Miao Guodong: Diversification, not following the trend

In the office of Xiamen Dinike Electronic Technology Co., Ltd., general manager Miao Guodong hurriedly dealt with the work at hand, then sat down to drink tea and open the chat box: "In the past, smart home can only be called automatic control, we need to do Smarter. In the future, the house needs a mind, which can link all equipment and automatically adjust a comfortable environment. With a mind, the original reinforced concrete house will have vitality.”

The main business is building intercom The system's Dinaco established two companies last year, Dinaco IoT Smart Technology Co., Ltd. and Dinaco Intelligent Transportation Co., Ltd., to announce its entry into the field of smart home and intelligent transportation. Like management guru Peter Drucker, Miao Guodong has concerns about specialized management: the advantages of focused management always lead to the danger of over-specialization, because every product, every method, every technology, every market will eventually Recession, too much focus on a certain market or product, the company will also enter a recession period.

In consideration of risk diversification, DiNike chose to take a diversified path: on the one hand, it participates in the construction of smart cities, and on the other hand, it enters the segmented field of building intercom. Miao Guodong believes that the strength of the company's industrial expansion lies in: the good reputation of the original business can pave the way for new business; the company has considerable accumulation in product design and research and development, and has used equity incentives to unite a large number of talents.

The new business should be able to borrow from the original business

Dinaco has won the "Top Ten Chinese Building Intercom Brands", and the building intercom products have been sold to 120 cities across the country and its surrounding areas area. Its building intercom products are mainly sold to real estate developers. If it enters the smart home industry, it will face individual consumers. However, Miao Guodong is not worried about the dislocation between target customers, but believes that the new business can borrow from the original business.

"Our original main customers were real estate developers, but products - such as walkie-talkies, alarms, etc. - have been installed in households' homes." He believes that when ordinary consumers have concerns about their products and brands After a certain degree of awareness, "it will be easy to expand the camera, control panel, etc.".

In addition, some of the related production and business activities can be combined, and the cost will not increase significantly. Miao Guodong explained: "Any new industry comes in, the cost increase only accounts for two parts, one is research and development, the other is sales, and the other parts are shared platforms. Customer groups and sales networks are shared, manufacturing, logistics administration, Advertising and marketing, planning department, personnel department and other platforms are all shared. Each company only needs fifty or sixty people.”

Most smart homes have security functions, and the elderly or children are at home Every move you make can be monitored through your smart home.

At present, China's civil security market is still a blue ocean. The penetration rate of civil security is only 8%, which is far from developed countries. "The civilian security market related to families is still blank. Not many families install alarm equipment, not many cameras, and not many smart control homes. With the intensification of aging, this is an incremental market, because all elderly care equipment It's related to security." Miao Guodong said, "This market is too big, and it needs 'everyone to gather firewood and the flames are high'. It is best for the big names to come in, Xiaomi to do it, 360, Baidu, and Tencent to do it, and develop the market together. "He is not afraid of a fully competitive market, and has thought of a countermeasure: expand the product line to other smart home products, providing consumers with a complete system of solutions.

Research and development capabilities consolidate the foundation of diversification

The research and development capabilities accumulated over the years by Dinaco provide a guarantee for the company's diversification strategy. The company has a R&D team of more than 100 people, distributed in Xiamen, Chengdu, China, Toronto, Canada and other parts of the world. In terms of technology, it has obtained thirteen invention patents and more than 20 utility model patents. It is also the editor-in-chief of international standards for the building intercom industry. unit.

In 2013, the International Electrotechnical Association authorized China to formulate international standards for building intercom. "The competition was fierce at that time, and Germany and Italy were also fighting for the right to formulate, because the West had this industry in the 1950s and 1960s, more than 30 years earlier than China." Miao Guodong recalled, "But in recent years, Chinese technology has It has developed rapidly, and has been upgraded from an analog system to a digital system, and many new technologies have been developed." China's communities have tens of thousands of households, providing a large number of test fields, which is rare in Western countries.

The building intercom industry is a small and diversified market. There are thousands of large buildings and three or five hundred small ones. The needs of customers are varied.

In terms of appearance, the company has set up appearance design, structure department and mold factory. From ID design to mold opening, the entire chain is done by itself, which can meet various needs of customers.

Secondly, in terms of product functions, for example, customers have different requirements for software functions, interfaces, embedded LOGO, advertisements, etc., the company also has a unique set of practices: in the software development process, all the underlying , Standard software that affects the function and life of the product are all packaged and decomposed into modules. Which function the customer needs, take out which module, and then only need to modify the application program. The application is relatively simple and can be completed by less experienced engineers.

Thanks to its strong research and development capabilities, Dinek's building intercom business has also extended to market segments, such as developing a one-click video call for help system for special places such as banks, hospitals, prisons, and schools. As long as the button is triggered, the surrounding facilities can be linked, and the information can be sent to all relevant personnel. In addition, they also transfer the original product development experience to the new business. Before deciding to enter the smart home and smart transportation industry, the company has established a new R&D team for this purpose, made a lot of industry research and technical reserves, and made the prototype of the product. After the establishment of the company, new products are also available soon.

The company has positioned smart home products, which can be summed up in twelve words: attractive, affordable, well used, and stable. Admirable: The product is beautifully made, exquisite, and the appearance and packaging are good-looking, which makes consumers like it at first sight; Affordable: The cost performance of the product is within the acceptable range of consumers, and the cost of a house is three or five Thousands of dollars, not tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands; well used: convenient functions, giving customers a good sense of experience; stable use: product quality is reliable and does not require frequent maintenance by consumers.

More products can not only provide a better customer experience, but also improve the cost performance of products. At present, smart homes have not been standardized, and most of the production of enterprises adopts closed systems, and the products are divided into separate ones. Consumers buy products from different brands and manufacturers, and it is difficult to achieve information interaction. The product development of DiNike adopts the same standard. Families that have installed the intercom system can also use other products to realize the linkage of the control terminal, thereby creating a good customer experience. In addition, a variety of products are packaged and sold, which also improves the cost performance.

Incentivizing employees with equity

Industrial expansion requires the support of a large number of talents. Miao Guodong allocated equity to the company's marketing and technical executives, and reserved a reserve for the management team of each industry. corresponding equity. His plan is that each industry chain has a group of professional professional managers and teams to manage, and use equity incentives to unite everyone to make a big enterprise. "The future is the era of partnership," he believes. "The economy is fully market-oriented, and everyone is under pressure. Our current department manager-level managers are in their 30s. They just got married and had children, and the economic pressure is relatively high. If employees feel that they can’t get the ideal compensation for work, they will want to go out and start a business. The environment is changing, and we must adapt to the development of the environment.”

Dike is currently preparing to go public, and Miao Guodong is promoting the company’s listing. The reason is to create a vision for middle and high-level managers, so that they can get greater economic returns. "It seems that we have lost a little share, but if everyone takes the company's business as their own, then there will be more things to do, and the industry will expand quickly."

The company is currently planning Entering the field of big health, making water and air detection equipment, researching the application of robots and drones in home security, etc. In the tide of enterprise diversification strategy, Miao Guodong is not blindly following the trend. His consideration for industrial expansion is based on reality: "The development of a certain industry is a bit stagnant, but related industries will rise."