Chinese products start selling fast around the world! This team took 7 years to become the world's number one

The brand comes from Inspur Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. Its founder Liu Jingkang was a "technical expert" in college . Last year, he was selected as one of Fortune's "40 Chinese Business Elites Under 40", and was listed on the same list as ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming.

According to recruitment information, the average age of employees at Arashi Vision is 29, and nearly half of them are R&D personnel. This young team has achieved the world's largest market share in the panoramic camera market, and has reached cooperation with many media and brands such as Xinhua News Agency, Leica, Apple, and Google, and has broadcast panoramic live broadcasts of major events such as the US Super Bowl, CCTV Spring Festival Gala, and the construction site of Wuhan Leishenshan Hospital.

"Fast" is the keyword for consumer electronics products, with fast innovation and iteration, and the same is true for Inspur's innovation. Liu Jingkang once said in an interview that the reason why a company can survive for decades is that they have found new growth points before the original business has declined.

As the epidemic continues, Arashi Vision uses rapid growth to combat market decline, with a compound annual growth rate of 81.42% in the past three years . In 2021, the company expects revenue of 1.251 billion to 1.351 billion, and expects to achieve a net profit of 255 million to 296 million, doubling the profit of the same period last year. In overseas markets, Arashi Vision's actions are also of reference significance to many cross-border e-commerce sellers.

Contents of this article:

1. Innovision’s overseas presence

2. Focus on products in niche markets

3. Pay attention to UGC, marketing becomes a plus

4. Find a good carrier platform for product export

V. IPO Process and Future Planning

Nearly 70% of revenue comes from overseas, insisting on channel diversification

Since its establishment in 2015, Yishi Innovation has focused on the research, development, production and sales of intelligent imaging equipment such as panoramic cameras and sports cameras. Its intelligent imaging equipment products have covered panoramic news live broadcast, sports events , political and legal police work, panoramic street view maps, VR house viewing, panoramic video conferencing and other fields.

Insta360 brand products are sold worldwide through a combination of online and offline channels. Online sales are mainly through the company's official mall, Amazon, AliExpress, Tmall, JD.com and other channels, while the offline sales network covers more than 60 countries and regions around the world , including Apple Store retail stores, Leica flagship stores, Canon Gold Medal Stores, Best Buy, B&H, Suning and other supermarkets or professional channels.

With the help of a comprehensive sales system, Arashi Innovation can fully cover potential target consumers in the segmented track. In 2018, 2019, and 2020, the company's revenue was 258 million yuan, 588 million yuan, and 850 million yuan respectively; the net profit was 18.287 million yuan, 56.2805 million yuan, and 120 million yuan respectively.

At present, about 70% of Inspur's revenue comes from overseas, with half from online and half from offline. Its e-commerce director Dyson said that the company's overseas markets are mainly the United States and Europe, where there are relatively mature outdoor sports market consumption habits; the main profit areas are developed countries with strong consumption power such as the United States, Japan, and Germany, which is normally distributed with the local GDP.

(Inspur Innovation’s main business income in different regions)

In the cross-border e-commerce industry, sales channels are diversified, and "putting eggs in multiple baskets" has become a consensus among sellers, and Innolux also regards it as a guiding principle.

Inspur's innovative overseas online channels include platforms such as Amazon. In recent years, as brand power has gradually increased, independent websites and local cross-border e-commerce platforms have become Inspur's most important channels.

On Amazon, Inspur and its subsidiaries have a total of 15 online stores in Europe and Asia, the U.S. and Japan . In 2020 and the first half of last year, the company's revenue on Amazon was 71.39 million and 59.71 million yuan, respectively.

With the rise in Insta360's brand awareness and the initial round of sales in the official store when new products are launched, the performance of Insta360's independent website has grown significantly. From 2018 to the first half of 2021, the sales revenue of Insta360's official store was 33.8 million, 89.27 million, 198 million and 172 million yuan respectively. In the first half of last year, the independent website's revenue accounted for 29%.

Dyson introduced that Arashi Vision adheres to the "multi-channel strategy" based on the following four considerations:

1. At present, the size and brand influence of Shadowstone can support the operation of an independent website;

2. The company needs to control a complete and independent CRM (customer relationship management), have a more comprehensive grasp of the user's various shopping touchpoints, and divide them based on user tags and regions to carry out some differentiated CRM and user reach, which requires its own position.

3. The company noticed that some things happened on third-party platforms like Amazon last year, such as account suspension, commission changes, warehousing logistics and after-sales policy changes, which would have a greater impact on the brand , so multi-channel has become a good choice to share business risks.

4. On third-party platforms, some operations rely on the other party's templates and are difficult to extend, such as virtual services, creative promotions, etc. However, through its own platform, Shadow Stone Innovation can achieve richer gameplay and creative displays.

On this basis, Arashi Innovation has made more investment in the independent website sector. However, Dyson also admitted that if the independent website is to be professional enough, sellers need to invest a huge amount of money, manpower and energy. Whether small brands choose independent websites or other third-party platforms as entry points should be determined according to local conditions.

Like most companies going overseas, Innolux encountered localization challenges in the process of opening up overseas markets.

"You need to localize your products, markets, and services, which means you need to recruit more foreigners overseas. They understand local consumption habits and conform to local user perceptions, and can help you do better marketing. In the product localization process, on the one hand, we need to create products that cater to overseas needs and adapt to overseas usage scenarios and local languages; on the other hand, the APP must also cater to local user habits. If a user calls to inquire after buying something and wants to return or exchange the product after sales, we need to provide local services at this time.

Our difficulties come from localization, and risks and opportunities also depend on it. A very important point for the company's real-time brand mechanism to take off is to do a good job in localization. "Dyson said.

The focus of product localization is to cater to overseas demand. As a domestic brand, Insta360 established a global awareness at the beginning of its launch. It has a clearer understanding that some innovative technology products and its main consumer groups will be more mature and stable overseas.

Let the product speak for itself and focus on the product in the niche market

Dyson, the e-commerce director of Inspur Innovation, said that compared with similar products on the market, the biggest advantage of the company's products is technological innovation. At the company level, 70% of the company's business is based on products, and 30% is based on marketing. The technical content of the products is relatively high. Technological innovation is the biggest core competitiveness of the products. The company relies on continuous investment in technology research and development to form a moat.

It is understood that the main products of Arashi Vision are consumer-grade smart imaging devices and professional-grade smart imaging devices. According to its prospectus, the sales during the reporting period were made up of major products as follows:

Because the products are of high value and the company continues to launch new products, the average customer unit price of the entire product line of Inspur Innovation is relatively high. During the reporting period, the average unit price of the company's consumer-grade smart imaging equipment was RMB 1,510.55, RMB 1,795.48, RMB 2,142.18 and RMB 2,148.07, respectively, and the overall unit price increased year by year. The average unit price of the company's professional-grade smart imaging equipment was RMB 17,436.52, RMB 24,965.51, RMB 26,338.16 and RMB 27,829.75, respectively, showing an overall upward trend.

From January to June 2021, the revenue from consumer-grade smart imaging equipment accounted for 82.21% of the main business revenue. In this category, the ONE series is the absolute leader and is also a popular series created by the company.

Dyson said that our ONE series is actually a lifeline of the company. At the beginning, the team accidentally discovered that this series of products has a unique advantage in anti-shake performance. Because it is composed of two 210-degree cameras, it can achieve a higher intensity of anti-shake function through large-area cutting. This area just caters to the label of sports cameras. The entire outdoor sports circle needs cameras with high-precision anti-shake performance, so this series stands out in the outdoor sports circle. At the same time, in the field of panoramic cameras, it relies on very rich and innovative gameplay and the company's APP's excellent editing functions and creative gameplay, which has won the attention and favor of more outdoor sports groups, thus forming one product after another. Detonation point. At present, this series is the best-selling and most popular product line of the entire company.

ONE R also won the German Red Dot Design Award, the Wired Recommends Editor's Recommendation Award and the British Stuff's best five-star rating for its innovative design, which for the first time realized the function of convenient switching between panoramic, wide-angle, Leica and other lenses in one camera.

The iteration speed of Arashi's innovative products is relatively fast, because Arashi has increased its investment in research and development. During the reporting period, its cumulative R&D investment was 298 million yuan, accounting for 12.96% of the cumulative operating income during the reporting period. As of the end of the reporting period, the company had a total of 288 R&D and technical personnel, accounting for 46.30% of the company's total employees, and had 238 domestic and foreign authorized patents, including 43 invention patents.

With the help of the ONE series of popular products, Insta360 has already gained a certain degree of recognition abroad. As a relatively successful overseas brand, Insta360's overseas experience is worth exploring by cross-border sellers.

Previous studies have shown that young consumers aged 18-24 in international markets are most likely to associate Chinese brands with positive attributes such as innovation and high-quality products. Many successful overseas brands have verified this.

Pay attention to UGC, marketing becomes a plus

The overall age of SHEIN users is between 18 and 35 years old, and 70% of users are between 18 and 27 years old; 80% of TikTok users in the United States are between 16 and 34 years old, and 60% are between 16 and 24 years old. When Inspur carefully studied which users were buying the company's products, it was also clear that in mainstream European and American countries and even Southeast Asia, users are still mainly young people. Therefore, Inspur Innovation is also paying attention to the millennials and Generation Z, and hopes to gain some breakthroughs and users' recognition of the brand.

The commonality among these brand user groups is probably not a coincidence, but the culture and self-expression of young people are universal. Based on this, young people may become a breakthrough for Chinese products to go overseas.

Dyson believes that companies must know where the users of their products are and set up appropriate consumption scenarios based on the users. Only with consumption scenarios can they better package their products and then find the corresponding consumer groups. Only by being targeted can the conversion be accurate.

With an innovative product foundation and a comprehensive sales system, appropriate marketing promotion will add icing on the cake to performance, which is exactly the strength of Yishi Innovation.

Innosilicon has diversified promotion channels, and has comprehensively enhanced the company's brand influence through news media reports, vertical industry KOL recommendations, social media advertising, and well-known domestic and foreign exhibitions.

"Marketing is our strong point. In fact, we have done two things that are quite successful. The first is that we have had global awareness for a long time, so we have built an international overseas team to better implement the localization of marketing promotion. They have done a good job in seamlessly connecting with overseas markets. The second is that we have accumulated 1 million fans on Instagram, which is rare among Chinese electronic consumer brands going overseas, and the fan interaction rate and viewing data are very high."

In addition, Yishi Innovation also has a lot of cooperation with KOLs (opinion leaders) on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, which has become a regular job.

Max, head of Insta360's overseas markets, once said: " UGC (user-generated content) is very important to us. It truly reflects the user experience of using our cameras. The more content that users capture, the more special the content will be. More people will participate and share the content, and more people will learn about our brand. " This is one of the reasons for GoPro's success, and Insta360 Innovation has taken it a step further through its own software features.

The clever use of social media marketing has boosted Arashi's business in the United States and parts of Europe, giving it a certain degree of recognition in mature overseas markets. However, Arashi is not satisfied with the status quo and is expanding into more markets and looking for new carriers for its brand to go global.

Leveraging the global AliExpress platform to quickly enter emerging markets

Dyson introduced that in addition to the development of existing markets, Arashi Innovation is also constantly exploring emerging markets. In 2021, the company saw a relatively good growth trend in the Italian and Spanish markets. At the same time, the growth momentum in Russia, Brazil, and South Korea is also relatively good. For these regions with growth trends, the company will focus on developing new markets.

In countries and regions showing growth trends, Insta360 will actively integrate with third-party platforms, follow up in new regions where relevant platforms focus on expansion, and make use of the platform's early support policies for merchants to achieve a smooth entry for Insta360.

Luna, head of the Yingshi Innovation AliExpress platform , said that in 2021 AliExpress will focus on developing the Brazilian market and informed merchants that there will be a series of support policies. The company followed suit and found that the Brazilian market was growing particularly fast. Subsequently, Brazil quickly became the third-ranked market for the company's AliExpress site.

Luna further said, " We not only see the development prospects of our own brand on AliExpress, but more importantly, this platform can complement the company's shortcomings. For example, our products have a relatively high average order value, and cross-border shipments are affected by factors such as the epidemic and weather, which takes a particularly long time. Customers may be worried, and packages may be lost due to some problems, resulting in poor customer satisfaction. AliExpress's overseas warehouses can just make up for this shortcoming. After we prepare goods for AliExpress's overseas warehouses, the product page will have logistics compliance, and customers can clearly understand the delivery time, so the purchase rate will also increase accordingly."

(A corner of AliExpress overseas warehouse)

The most direct example is the Korean market. Last year, AliExpress launched the Weihai warehouse. Weihai and Korea are separated by only a strait. The company prepares the goods in the Weihai warehouse, and it can be delivered to Korea in 5 days. In addition, AliExpress will set up a special liaison shop and provide some resources for participating in Korean activities, so our Korean market is also growing rapidly.

In addition to the advantages of overseas warehouses, Luna was also impressed by the service of AliExpress's customer service. Luna said that during the Double 11 and Black Friday last year, AliExpress's customer service linked the brand to suitable Spanish online celebrity anchors to bring goods, and reached cooperation through affiliate marketing, coupons, etc. In just half an hour of evaluation, the number of Spanish visitors increased by 180% compared to before the live broadcast.

Through this event, Arashi Vision's products became popular in the Spanish market, and sales in the Spanish market also exceeded the original key market areas, becoming the second market for Arashi Vision's AliExpress store.

After entering AliExpress, Inno3D has expanded into emerging potential markets and achieved further growth in overseas performance by relying on the platform's overseas warehouses, policy support and other resources.

In the future, Arashi Innovation will continue to cooperate with AliExpress. Dyson said that Arashi Innovation's stores will closely follow the rules of the AliExpress platform, preheat traffic and marketing before big promotions, and cooperate with industry shop assistants to form internal and external linkages. For example, in terms of data estimation of inventory, the store will cooperate and make predictions on the market and logistics.

In addition to the AliExpress platform, Innolux also has relatively clear development plans for other channels.

Continue to increase investment in online channels

The sudden outbreak of the epidemic has impacted the interests of cross-border sellers, while also pushing up the value of online channels.

The outbreak of the new coronavirus has had a significant adverse impact on the global economy. The resumption of work of suppliers and customers of Inspur Innovation has been delayed due to the epidemic, which has had a certain impact on the company 's financial situation in 2020. In 2020 and the first half of 2021, the company achieved operating income of 850 million and 600 million respectively, an increase of 44.58% and 70.08% respectively over the same period last year. Dyson said that the epidemic has a certain impact on the entire industry. As far as we are concerned, the brand is actually fighting this decline through rapid growth, so the overall brand still maintains a relatively high growth rate.

It is also because of the epidemic that Arashi Vision has seen the value of online channels. Dyson believes that the epidemic has lasted for three years and may continue in the future. Under such circumstances, online channels are far more worthy of investment than offline channels, as they have better stability, income and returns.

Dyson further said, "We will continue to increase investment in overseas online channels and actively expand new markets and third-party platforms. However, we will be very cautious in choosing e-commerce platforms, taking user experience as a major principle. When expanding the market, we will be more inclined to expand on the platforms where local users are more accustomed to shopping."

At present, Arashi Innovation has completed tens of millions of dollars in Series D financing and is striving to enter the Science and Technology Innovation Board. Talking about the company's overall future development, Dyson said: "In the future, the company will focus on product research and development and technology-driven development to create products that better meet user needs, and use technology as the primary driving force to create innovative products . "

Creating products is a hardware service. In the future, while Arashi Vision will focus on hardware products, it will also make plans in the software aspect. The company will make some simple-to-operate tools based on the characteristics of the hardware to meet the needs of users for some differentiated editing needs.

As an overseas brand that has achieved certain results, Insta360 also has higher expectations. Dyson said that we have already won the well-deserved first place in the field of panoramic cameras, but our goal is not just that. Our brand vision is to become a world-class smart imaging brand, and we hope that by going overseas, more people will see the excellent imaging brand from China.

Domestic expert groups focusing on cross-border e-commerce: The Cross-border Observation Group also contributed to the original article

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Insta360 Shadow Stone