Shao Guoguang: Jerry and the Elephant Battle

Speaker/Shao Guoguang

Source/Zhisheng Future Export Forum Shenzhen, Guangzhou Station

Organization/Ye Rushi (Intern)

Shao Guoguang, general manager of Shenzhen UMX Technology, gave a lively and interesting introduction to how his company, UMX, has developed new paths through product innovation and service innovation to achieve performance growth. Established in 2005, Umi is an international mobile phone OEM/ODM design and manufacturer. In the past nine years, Umi has sold more than 25 million mobile phones to global operators and distributors. Shao Guoguang led the beautiful technology award innovation gene and the internal incubation mechanism to perfectly combine, to promote innovation to find a breakthrough point to win the market.

▲ Shao Guoguang, General Manager of Shenzhen Youmei Communication Technology

Challenges brought by elephants

An intelligent hardware enterprise transforming from OEM/ODM, especially mobile communication, The most feared competitor is the "elephant" Xiaomi. Starting from mobile phones, Xiaomi has made headphones, TVs, air conditioners, action cameras, air purifiers, etc., and has kept the price very low. Xiaomi's low price and short chain sales method will not only cause great damage to all domestic manufacturing industries, especially the consumer electronics industry, but will also have a huge destructive power to overseas customers overseas. Now the overseas market is more than the Chinese market. About a year later.

From the perspective of the market, the best market has been taken away by central enterprises and state-owned enterprises, such as monopoly resources such as telecommunications, land resources and water. Some large and relatively good markets have been taken away by the monopoly consortium BAT, and now Xiaomi is added. Because they have hundreds of millions of users, when they want to cover an industry, it is almost done overnight, but it is very difficult for us to accumulate users.

Countermeasures

First, dig deep and find space in the market segment of vertical user segmentation. After Xiaomi released the bracelet at a retail price of around US$16, the lowest price of the bracelet in spring has dropped to US$6 or US$7. Nonetheless, this year we restarted the wristband project because we saw another opportunity for wristbands. Whether Xiaomi or BAT, although they occupy the widest market scope, there are still opportunities in the vertical market segment. For example, we can make a bracelet, which is particularly waterproof. When swimming, you can judge whether you are backstroke, butterfly, or breaststroke, calculate how many meters you have swum, how many calories you burn, and can correct your swimming posture. Elephant and BAT will not invest more resources in this niche market, because they need a large number of users, so we can dig deeper into the market segment.

The other is to create a market segment in the field of children's smart home. In 2013, we cooperated with 360 to launch a child positioning smart bracelet. Since everyone's design concept is not consistent, we want to create a new brand by yourself. Facing the domestic market, we spent a year building the background, server, APP, etc., and finally launched the first children's watch that can make phone calls - Wei Xiaobao in 2014. This concept is very successful, with two-way Call, intelligent positioning, one-key SOS and other functions. This is also a segment. The vertical field is our direction.

The second is Guangji Grain. The entrepreneurial environment in Shenzhen is different from that in Beijing. Now the best entrepreneurial environment in the country is Shenzhen and Beijing. Shenzhen is hardware innovation, and Beijing is Internet innovation. Shenzhen's genes are the genes of starting a business in the early years. Since 30 years ago, entrepreneurs have started businesses with money or no money. The foundation of Beijing's entrepreneurship comes from VC. Shenzhen's entrepreneurial genes, especially hardware entrepreneurship, are all done by themselves. That is to say, the products we sell must bring profits and be able to self-create blood. This is what most entrepreneurs in Shenzhen think of from the beginning.

In the case of our company, especially the elite without the Internet, how to make money is the most important. I have met many entrepreneurs in Shenzhen and entrepreneurs in Beijing. Beijing is basically burning money. Companies in Shenzhen have advantages in the industrial chain, supply chain and engineers in making hardware.

Third, be king. Be No. 1 in the segmented market, and concentrate superior forces to fight the war of annihilation

To be the first in the market segment, the segmented market itself is a small market. With a million users, you have to take at least 500,000 to survive. Therefore, it is necessary to concentrate superior forces to fight this market segment. We have telemedicine products for the elderly, and a series of products for smart watches; in the field of children, we have a brand of Wei Xiaobao, which concentrates all advertising resources on a brand breakthrough.

▲ "Zhisheng Future Export Forum" site

Three changes

1. From serving customers to serving users

From serving customers to serving There are very important key points in the change of users, which can be felt in the process of changing from hardware to intelligent hardware. In the past, when exporting hardware products, the standard was very simple. As long as there were no bugs, as long as the inspection company was established, the goods could go out. But when we are a brand, a user, and a smart hardware, it is completely different. The biggest difference between smart hardware and non-intelligent hardware is that if you add a label to your product with non-intelligent hardware, you don't know who the product will be sold to. In smart hardware, regardless of whether your brand is added or not, all users are yours. For every product sold, customer information can be fed back through the APP. This is a very big opportunity for us. We can now skip all the importers, agents, distributors in the middle, and jump directly to the users. The only thing they can do is to do porters and after-sales services for us.

2. The transition from quality to experience.

The transition from quality to experience, in the past, as long as the quality was stable and there was no problem, it was good to have a good user experience now. This is easier said than done, each country has its own cultural characteristics, so when you are developing a community, when you are developing an app, it is not as simple as hardware. The interactive experience of the APP you sell to Germany and the United States is completely different from the requirements of our Chinese and Asian users. Therefore, the experience has become very critical. In China, it can be spread through Moments and Weibo, and in the United States, it can be spread through Facebook, and the spread speed has become very fast.

3. The team has transformed from excellent employees to excellent partners.

If we want to keep excellent employees, we must realize the transformation from excellent employees to excellent partners.

Finally, let me summarize

The first one is to make the cake of children's products wholeheartedly. We will lock in the field of children and build a series of products for children, including positioning watches, children's height meters, weight meters, children's smart toothbrushes, and connect all wearables through the cloud.

The second is that user experience and product quality need to be done a lot.

The third is that in the new era, traditional hardware vendors must learn three strategies, financing, options, and e-commerce. Now the traditional OEM/ODM will be more and more difficult to do, but this will bring a very good opportunity, by establishing your own backend, server, and then locking your own segmented areas. This is the best time to build your own brand.