Topped the Amazon category TOP 1 for two years, Shenzhen's big seller "smartly breaks into the 3C red ocean"!

On January 13, Wang Lingjun, Deputy Director of my country's General Administration of Customs, showed the media a meaningful customs declaration form at a press conference in the series of "China's High-quality Economic Development Achievements".

This is a batch of translation headphones shipped from Shenzhen to Japan. In the words of Director Wang, this customs declaration "puts a perfect end to China's foreign trade imports and exports in 2024."

Under this news, one netizen said: "Shenzhen's translation headphones, this is almost @Time and Space Kettle's name." The next day, the official Weibo account of Time and Space Kettle "claimed" it, confirming the netizens' speculation.

(Photo source: Tikmekettle official microblog)

Two years after its establishment, the product ranked TOP 1 in Amazon category

According to information, Tikmekettle is headquartered in Shenzhen and was founded in December 2016. In June 2017, it became one of the first 25 projects selected for Tencent AI Accelerator. Its founder Tian Li graduated from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and worked in Huawei's global sales department.

As a fiercely competitive 3C category, the headphone market has always been surrounded by strong competitors, including SoundCore, Oladance, HHO, etc., which are all leaders in the North American market. However, Tikmekettle has opened up its own track with its unique selling point - cutting into AI translation technology, combining artificial intelligence with smart hardware.

Tikmekettle’s mission for itself is to “ help global users communicate and connect ”, which has to do with the original intention of the brand’s creation.

At that time, Tian Li's parents were traveling abroad, and the language barrier was a thorny problem. The existing translation tools not only needed to be downloaded to the mobile phone, but also needed to be typed first and then the mobile phone was passed between people who spoke different languages, which was quite inconvenient. Tian Li realized that this was an opportunity. After investigation, Tian Li decided to take this as his entrepreneurial direction.

At the beginning of its establishment, Tikmekettle set its sights on overseas, and chose the United States as its first stop . This is related to the national conditions of the United States. As a country of immigrants, the United States has a large number of people speaking different languages, so there is a huge demand for cross-language communication tools.

In the early stages of development, Tikmekettle set a strategy to promote its products to the target market through cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Amazon. On e-commerce platforms, the brand quickly improved its product sales rankings to gain customer trust and positive reviews, thereby driving more sales and increasing brand awareness. This strategy has achieved remarkable results, allowing the brand's market share to successfully exceed 30%, and also achieved many outstanding results on Amazon:

In 2018, its simultaneous interpretation headphones WT2 Plus were officially mass-produced and became the top-selling product in the category on Amazon in the United States that year; in 2020, its WT2, ZERO, and M2 jointly ranked in the top three of the category list on Amazon's US site, consolidating Timekettle's position as the top-ranked product in the Amazon translation headphones category .

Now, Timekettle has become an undisputed leading player in Amazon's translation headphones.

In addition to achieving remarkable results on cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Timekettle is also actively building an independent website . Similarweb data shows that the total number of visits to timekettle.co in January reached 228,300, and the average monthly number of visits from November 2024 to January 2025 reached 219,400.

Different from the strategy on Amazon, Timekettle's independent website focuses more on building its own brand image and providing a more comprehensive and personalized user experience . Through detailed product introductions, case studies, video demonstrations and other content, the company's technical strength, product features and application scenarios are demonstrated. At the same time, the independent website also focuses on user interaction and community building to improve user loyalty and brand advocacy.

Of course, Timekettle has also made great efforts on social media platforms . Taking YouTube as an example, the video "Foreign Girlfriend Meets Boyfriend's Mom" ​​under its account has been played 210,000 times.

Product development is the key, and “ crowdfunding ” to verify market demand is also essential

After achieving success in the United States , Timekettle 's export footprint has continued to expand, gradually expanding to Europe and East Asia, and further covering Southeast Asia, South America and Australia, with an annual overall export volume growth of more than 80% . The main product, the W series translation headphones - also the translation headphones in the last customs declaration form displayed by the General Administration of Customs in 2024, has an annual export growth of more than 100%.

Currently , Timekettle has more than 300,000 users worldwide, with products in more than 200 countries, a monthly translation vocabulary of over 100 million, and covers more than 4,300 industries.

(Image source: Timekettle independent website)

Here we have to mention Timekettle's "crowdfunding". In the second year after the brand was established, Timekettle's product WT2 translation headphones was crowdfunded on Kickstarter. This crowdfunding was quite successful, with 1,640 people supporting it and the crowdfunding amount exceeding 270,000 US dollars. However, its response in the market was not as expected.

Subsequently, Timekettle continued to focus on product research and development, and the new products still received a good response in crowdfunding: the world's smallest portable translation headset released on Indiegogo in 2019 raised about US$550,000; the ZERO series raised more than 70 million yen in Japan and more than 22 million New Taiwan dollars in Taiwan.

For Timekettle, the "function" of "crowdfunding" to raise money is secondary. What is more important is to test the reaction of users to the product. Only after the crowdfunding is successful, will Timekettle's product proceed to the next step. Facts have proved that this method is feasible, and many of Timekettle's products have achieved good results after they were launched on the market.

Of course, getting a good response from users ultimately depends on the brand's accurate market positioning and technological innovation .

In terms of market positioning, Timekettle, as a " company that provides cross-language communication solutions ", focuses on developing products that can help users communicate in foreign languages ​​naturally and fluently. The product design revolves around high-frequency communication scenarios, such as business communication, travel, education, etc., and solves the pain points of users in these scenarios by providing efficient translation tools .

At the same time, Timekettle has also invested a lot of energy and money in technological innovation. Data shows that Timekettle's R&D investment has accounted for as much as 25% over the years , and it has won nearly 100 internationally renowned awards such as the IFA Technology Innovation Award and the CES Innovation Award. It also has more than 100 patents worldwide and has built a Hybridcomm technology system with completely independent intellectual property rights.

In addition, Timekettle also covers different user groups through a multi-price, multi-functional product portfolio : for example, the X1 simultaneous interpreter and W4 Pro are mainly used in international conferences and business negotiation scenarios, supporting simultaneous translation of 20 people in 5 languages; the WT2 and W3 translation headphones focus on daily corporate communication and cross-border collaboration, combining portability and high cost performance; the T1 translator and M2 headphones are aimed at travel and daily learning scenarios, emphasizing practical functions such as offline translation and long battery life to expand market penetration.

With the continuous advancement of technology, "Made in China" is transforming into "Smart Manufacturing in China". As Director Lv Daliang, spokesman for the General Administration of Customs, said: "From large 'sea giants' to small translation headphones, we can make everything with excellent quality." As a representative of this transformation, Timekettle is showing the unique charm of Smart Manufacturing in China on the international stage with its outstanding innovation capabilities and continuous investment in R&D. In the future, Smart Manufacturing in China will continue to shine in the global market as a synonym for Chinese brands.

Big Sell

AI

3C Red Sea