After more than a year of going overseas, Shenzhen sellers have achieved annual sales of over 100 million yuan

Most of the popular overseas brands in recent years have strong technological attributes. Large amounts of R&D investment are their moat and the capital that enables them to avoid competing with other brands in terms of price.

Is it true that the only way out for cross-border e-commerce is to make so-called "high-end" products? A Shenzhen company has given the answer.

A brand selling thermos cups has annual sales of over 100 million

Relying on the seemingly inconspicuous thermos cup, a Chinese brand has achieved sales of hundreds of millions of yuan overseas.

Recently, a thermos cup has become popular on TikTok. The brand behind this thermos cup is Meoky from Shenzhen.

Public information shows that Meoky is affiliated to Shenzhen Toudan Technology Co. , Ltd. The company focused on kitchen supplies in its early days and only started the thermos cup project in 2018.

After the thermos project was launched, it was mainly targeted at the domestic market, but it was found that the competition in the domestic thermos market was already very fierce at that time, and it was difficult for the product to have a premium space.

So the team decisively turned its attention to overseas, hoping to avoid internal competition in this way and find a second growth curve for the company's revenue.

Unlike many overseas brands, Meoky focused on TikTok from the beginning, instead of first deploying on Amazon and then slowly radiating to other channels.

Meoky's founding team said that the reason they chose TikTok was because of its huge inherent traffic, and subsequent results also confirmed their ideas.

Although Meoky has only been in TikTok Shop for more than a year, its performance is very impressive. Data shows that in 2023, Meoky's annual sales in TikTok Shop exceeded 100 million yuan, and during the Black Friday promotion, the monthly sales exceeded 150,000 orders.

In this year's summer sale in the United States, Meoky set a record of selling 30,000 orders in one day. It is no exaggeration to call it the strongest dark horse this year.

How did the dark horse brand come into being?

On TikTok, thermos bottles do not have particularly good potential to become popular compared to other products, and phenomenal hits such as the Stanley water bottle have already appeared, which has added a lot of obstacles to Meoky's overseas expansion.

Under such circumstances, Meoky's early overseas expansion was not smooth. The head of Meoky's TikTok business once said that the early sales on TikTok were not ideal. At that time, they only focused on shooting videos, but because the brand was not well-known, users did not buy it at all.

By chance, a consumer who had placed an order for a Meoky thermos decided to help promote the product on the shared bike because he thought the product was good. Unexpectedly, the effect was very good, and the thermos that was promoted became a big hit.

After realizing the effectiveness of this model, Meoky quickly made adjustments and focused its work on influencer marketing. Data shows that Meoky has established cooperative relationships with more than 40,000 influencers so far, and the output videos have formed a brand coverage matrix.

In addition to marketing, Meoky has also made a lot of innovations in its products. First of all, compared with Stanley's traditional thermos cups, Meoky's cups look younger and more colorful. Secondly, Meoky's marketing in terms of functions is also very unique. Under normal circumstances, normal people should think of the heat preservation effect, but Meoky promoted the cold preservation ability of its thermos cups in the marketing video, and the effect was surprisingly good.

In addition, Meoky will also launch corresponding holiday limited editions according to different festivals . For example, this Halloween, Meoky launched a thermos cup with pumpkin and ghost patterns printed on the cup. It can also take advantage of the holiday atmosphere to do a wave of marketing on TikTok, and the traffic will naturally not be bad.

While laying out the influencer channel, Meoky also attaches great importance to live streaming. Although the model of live streaming with goods has not yet been fully rolled out overseas, as more and more consumers begin to accept live streaming with goods, its potential cannot be ignored.

Currently, Meoky has been exploring various ways to live broadcast on TikTok and testing the most effective scripts for live broadcasts. After compiling them into experience, he can share them directly with influencers to help them quickly form live broadcast routines.

In addition, homemade videos posted under Meoky accounts are usually linked with influencers, which can enhance the viewing experience of homemade videos and prevent users from feeling that videos produced by brands are crude.

After gaining a foothold on TikTok, Meoky set up its own independent brand website to further strengthen its brand attributes.

On the official website, Meoky has set up multiple sections based on product categories and added product customization services so that every user can find products of interest.

Scroll to the bottom of the webpage and you can see Meoky’s brand story section. Through the brand story, Meoky can establish a deeper connection with consumers and increase user stickiness, which plays a vital role in the long-term development of the brand.

Small cup, big market

The global thermos bottle market is indeed no longer a blue ocean, but it still contains potential opportunities.

Data shows that 65% of the world's stainless steel thermos cups are produced in China. From 2017 to 2021, the export value of China's stainless steel thermos increased from US$432 million to US$1.108 billion, with an annual compound growth rate of 20.7%.

Until now, this number is still growing. As the industry develops, a number of excellent companies will naturally emerge. In addition to Meoky, Zhejiang Jiayi Insulation Technology is also a leader in the relevant track.

Its semi-annual report shows that Jiayi's operating income in the first half of this year was as high as 1.164 billion, of which overseas income was the main sales channel. It is worth noting that Jiayi is also one of the OEM manufacturers of Stanley mentioned above. After Stanley became popular, its performance will naturally not be bad.

As consumer purchasing power increases, thermos cups have begun to transform from simple functional products to consumer goods. Today's consumers' demands for thermos cups have risen from basic insulation functions to higher levels such as appearance, personality, and environmental protection.

In this context, if new sellers also want to enter the related field, they can try to innovate in these aspects to differentiate themselves from other brands.

brand

Shenzhen

TikTok

Thermos Cup