On the “difficult and crowded” track of the oral hygiene industry, there are foreign giants such as Philips and Oral-B on the one hand, and domestic leading brands Usmile, Shuke, and Sushi, etc. are chasing after victory. Under the scuffle, the new brand Biao Bai Technology, which positioned itself in a segmented market, with “horizontal use, vertical brushing” and “cleaning between teeth” as its prominent selling points, suddenly returned to the domestic market. However, the current competition in the electric toothbrush market is becoming more and more fierce. Since its establishment more than four years ago, the main product of Biao Bai Technology’s sales is “Small Cyclone Electric Toothbrush”, and it is still uncertain whether it can continue to maintain the growth of overseas markets.
The long way back for overseas brands
According to the official website of Biao Bai Technology, Biao Bai Technology was established in 2016. It is a modern enterprise focusing on building an electric toothbrush brand that has an impact on oral health.
Different from most electric toothbrushes on the market, Biao Bai Technology aims at the new scene of “prevention and treatment of dental diseases”. After determining the product direction in 2019, after two years of product polishing, Biao Bai Technology has launched a product that is suitable for most people with sub-healthy teeth. “Small Cyclone Electric Toothbrush”, and it was sold in the US market for the first time. After inquiring about the information, the author found that the current products of Biao Bai Technology are mainly concentrated in cross-border e-commerce and offline specialist clinics. Through the investigation, the author found that the main reason for consumers to buy this product is to solve the problem of non-standard brushing posture and thus fail to achieve better results. The problem of good cleaning effect shows that most of the current toothbrushes do have this pain point. With the differentiated advantage of “horizontal and vertical brushing”, Biao Bai Technology has achieved relatively rapid development in the overseas market in the past few years.
In fact, at the beginning of this kind of development, Chinese companies that went overseas to avoid the uncomfortable competitive environment, the routines of channel dealers, and the cumbersome publicity strategies will also face internationalization after gaining a foothold in overseas markets. However, the first step they take is to “return”, to return to China, and everything will be zero. Starting over, everything is familiar and unfamiliar.
For those at the helm, returning home may not be easier than bucking the trend and rushing to the other side of the ocean.
The rising sea levels of China and the United States are gradually flattening. This return from potential energy has to withstand the challenges of sea wind, temperature, and currents that are very different from when they came. But this return is in the direction of the bloodline of the helm.
International perspectives of Chinese entrepreneurs
Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, once compared the innovation styles of Chinese and American technology companies. In his opinion, one of the most important reasons why Silicon Valley, with a population of 4 million, can become a source of technology-driven development is here of companies, regardless of their starting point, are “born with a global vision”.
The product advantage highlighted by the flattening of overseas market channels is to quickly open up the international market with top Chinese brands represented by DJI, Zepp and OnePlus. As Liu Zuohu said, as long as the product is good, “others are fine”. Looking back at the beginning of the business, they went out to find a more suitable market for the product.
However, more overseas brands are actually smaller innovative companies like Biao Bai Technology.
Catalyzed by the epidemic in 2020, the market scale of oral cleaning appliances represented by electric toothbrushes has ushered in a high-end transformation of the industry. The data obtained by the author from iResearch shows that for the whole year of last year, the retail sales volume of the electric toothbrush market fell by 5.5% year-on-year, but at the same time, the retail sales volume of the market increased by 19.7% year-on-year. Driven by the two-way drive of consumers’ high-end demand and the promotion of high-end new products by leading brands, the average market price has increased rapidly. In 2021, the average price of electric toothbrushes will increase by 27% year-on-year to 267 yuan.
The author noticed that in 2021, the average price of Biao Bai Technology’s products on US e-commerce websites will be 570 yuan. Although the price has dropped by about 70 yuan compared to when it was first launched, it is still more than double the domestic industry average price.
And choosing to return to the domestic market, the price of the same product of Biao Bai Technology is directly locked within 300 yuan. Although there are advantages in origin and taxation, the price reduction is still not small.
“At present, the improvement of electric toothbrushes in materials is not so obvious. It is difficult for users to have a clear perception through the improvement of BOM finished products. Therefore, the advantage of Biao Bai technology does not lie in the stacking of materials, but in the new product form and new application scenarios”. Some industry analysts said that the biggest advantage of Biao Bai technology is that the application scenarios of the products are expanded, and the advanced technology is reflected in the innovation of mechanical structure. Although the mechanical structure is more likely to be copied, it is also easier to protect through patents. The “pan-medical” level system that Biao Bai Technology is proud of, specifically means that the product can solve some oral sub-health conditions while ensuring the functions and scenarios of traditional electric toothbrushes.
The author observed that other brands are selling electric toothbrush products in the market, which are basically “vibration”. Due to domestic usage habits and usage scenarios, the new consumption trend of “flexible consumption” has gradually emerged in the past one or two years, but the effect is indeed Biao Bai Technology is second to none. However, it is worth noting that in early February this year, a Korean brand launched a new electric toothbrush with a similar structure. The current pre-order price is 780 yuan, which is slightly higher than the current Biao Bai technology. It is foreseeable that in the future, Biao Bai technology ” The core product competitiveness of “pan-medical” may decline.
Focusing on the enterprise itself again, judging from the rapid development of Biao Bai’s technology, there are also some problems that need to be solved. As a start-up company, Biao Bai Technology’s current supply chain and production capacity may have some problems. After all, the production of hardware requires huge capital investment.
How to seize the next decade?
The overseas market has been in business for a long time, and it is inevitable to apply some ideas to the domestic market, which made Biao Bai Technology “take a lot of detours” at the beginning. TouchPal CEO Wang Jialiang believes that North American users are mainly middle-class, and their willingness to pay is concentrated on tool software that can help save time and improve efficiency.
Although Chinese companies with many years of overseas experience are becoming more and more mature in terms of quality, technology, capital, business model, and marketing, they have also begun to actively explore the path for the return of overseas brands.
However, in essence, this is a change faced by the entire industry. From cultural concepts, brand innovation, to product production, what the companies need behind is to make full use of the advantages of the supply chain to realize the transition from Made in China to Made in China. Run through localized operations from the inside out and integrate into the local market environment as much as possible. From the perspective of the business logic of returning to the overseas market, now, except for a few large Internet companies, there are no particularly successful cases, but it is worth looking forward to, at present, Chinese entrepreneurs are already on their way, and in the next ten years The answer will also appear slowly.
Solving the obstacles encountered in the early stage of return can be classified as localization in another sense. These obstacles will eventually dissolve in the blood of the founder with time and memory.
Aside from the dullness of public opinion and the coercion of capital, they returned to China in this trend that is not a trend.
In the beginning, there was no absolute relationship between “going out” and “coming back better.” When they tried their best to take root overseas, and when they returned to China and broke through many obstacles, the two evolved into an objective causal relationship. “Because you go out, it’s better to come back.”
Perhaps it can also be called the same destination in a sense.