Former employees of major companies such as DJI and Anker formed a team to sell over 5 million units of a single product per month

In the past few years, some people believed that due to inflation and other economic issues, the 3C industry has become quieter than before. However, in the past two years, industry insiders have said that "with the empowerment of AI technology, the 3C industry may usher in a new revolution", and Ennet has noticed that some brands have gained a advantage in this change.

Monthly sales of single product exceeded 5.6 million yuan

Last June, a card recorder called Plaud Note came out of nowhere. When it was first launched on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, it broke the category record with a sales of US$1.1 million.

After that, Plaud Note went online on another crowdfunding platform Indiegogo and raised $2.38 million . During the entire crowdfunding process, it received more than $3.48 million in support. In addition, during the pre-sale stage , Plaud Note's sales reached about $6 million . In early July , Plaud Note stated on its official website that its total online sales had exceeded $10 million .

Besides being thin and light as the name suggests, what other advantages does a card recorder have that deserve such recognition from consumers?

According to the introduction of Plaud Note , Plaud Note is the first product under its brand PLAUD . It was launched in June 2023 and is the world's first AI voice recorder equipped with ChatGPT (now equipped with GPT-4o).

What makes it different from other recording products is that it can be attached to the back of the iPhone, solving the problem of not being able to record calls on the iPhone without installing additional apps or authorization.

As we all know, for many years, due to user privacy issues, Apple has had the shortcoming of being unable to record calls, but Plaud Note has specifically solved this problem for Apple users.

From the user experience point of view, Plaud Note is light, portable, compact, and supports MagSafe magnetic suction , which greatly increases the user favorability .

On the technical level , Plaud Note also introduced large AI models such as ChatGPT and Claude 3.5 Sonnet, making its products more different from other recording products on the market in terms of recording functions .

The efforts made in the product have brought great positive feedback to the brand PLAUD . In addition to the outstanding results on the crowdfunding platform mentioned above, Plaud Note has quickly topped multiple global technology lists and major technology product new product sales lists since its launch, becoming a global hit product of AI hardware in 2023 .

Official account information shows that after Plaud Note started regular retail deliveries at the beginning of this year , it sold more than 100,000 units in half a year , with cumulative sales reaching tens of millions of dollars .

Today, Plaud Note is available on platforms such as Amazon. According to a search on Amazon US, there are 30 listings for Plaud Note on the platform , with product prices ranging from US$159 to US$178.

Among them, the main card recorder priced at US$159 sold more than 5,000 units in July alone. That is to say, this single product brought PLAUD at least US$795,000 in revenue, close to US$800,000 (equivalent to RMB 5.67 million) .

In addition , the listing page shows that the product was only launched on Amazon US on April 16 this year. Currently, Plaud Note ranks first in the BS list of the " Digital Voice Recorders " category in Amazon.com , and is identified by Amazon as " Amazon's   Choice ” and “Overall Pick” products .

PLAUD stated in its battle report that since its launch, Plaud Note has achieved outstanding results such as the first place in pre-sale of new smart hardware products in the world, the first place in monthly single product sales on TikTok Shop in the United States, and the first place in the category on the US and Asia sites .

At this year's CES, Microsoft CEO Nadella also visited the brand's booth .

Most of the team members come from large companies

In the field of going overseas, it is not uncommon to use consumer electronics as a spear to attack the market, especially in Shenzhen, a distribution center for 3C electronic products. Many 3C brands going overseas, such as Anker, Shokz, and Shanji, have settled here. These big-selling brands have also taken advantage of the advantages of the industrial belt to thrive overseas, with good news on revenue and profits.

PLAUD 's parent company is also from Shenzhen. In 2021, Shenzhen Jizhi Connection Technology Co., Ltd. ( hereinafter referred to as "Jizhi Connection" ) was established and located in Nanshan District, Shenzhen.

Nanshan District in Shenzhen has been ranked first among the top 100 districts in China for seven consecutive years . As a nationally renowned economic district, science and technology district, and innovation highland, it has nurtured more than 5,000 national high-tech enterprises . This year, nine Shenzhen companies have made it to the Fortune Global 500 in 2024 , and Nanshan District accounts for one-third of them.

The strong scientific and technological innovation atmosphere has attracted a number of emerging technology companies, and Smart Connection is one of them.

As the co-founder and CEO of Jizhi Lianlian , Xu Gao has more than 10 years of investment experience in the technology industry and overseas expansion.

Perhaps because of this, he has a better insight into the potential of this field.

In media reports, Xu Gao once said that he chose to make AI voice recorders because "big companies don't like it and small companies can't do it", so this track has been relatively quiet in the past decade. From the perspective of entrepreneurial goals, he hopes to be a company with a chance of longevity. To achieve this goal, the product must be the world's number one and have a differentiated advantage in technology .

To achieve this goal, Jizhilianxiang has recruited a group of partners from Internet technology companies.

PLAUD official information shows that Jizhilianjian is a founding team composed of serial entrepreneurs, senior investors and executives of well-known Internet companies.

The team size is close to 70 people, covering professionals in various fields such as hardware R&D, product design, Internet products, AI algorithms, marketing, sales, supply chain and after-sales service. These members are from well-known companies such as Sogou, DJI, RELX, Insta360 and Anker , and more than 20% of the employees have overseas study or work experience.

The resumes of the members are really impressive. In fact, the overseas market has already attracted a large number of executives and employees from large companies.

For example, Commense, a cross-border fast fashion brand founded by ByteDance veteran Zhou Jingjin, has repeatedly appeared on various overseas brand influence lists. Earlier this year, there were also reports that the vice president of ByteDance's virtual reality business PICO would launch an overseas brand after leaving the company.

After Zhu Mingming, the former head of Alibaba Studio, left his post, he founded the overseas brand Rokid, which entered the cross-border e-commerce industry with AR glasses. In the ten years since its establishment, it has accumulated billions of financing. According to statistics, between 2016 and 2024, it has accumulated 12 rounds of financing, each of which reached hundreds of millions of yuan. In 2022 alone, Rokid received 4 rounds of financing totaling more than 1.3 billion yuan. In 2023, it received two rounds of financing of more than 100 million yuan, and at the beginning of this year, it won nearly 500 million yuan in investment. Today, Rokid's market valuation has reached 1 billion US dollars, making it one of the "unicorn" companies.

Chen Hang, the former CEO of DingTalk, left Alibaba to start his own business and launched the digital optical brand HHOGene. After only one and a half years, his products were officially launched overseas, with users covering more than 47 countries and regions.

Zhiling Technology is a smart home brand that has been exported to other countries. Its brands DEKCO and AOSU, which target different income groups, are hot sellers on Amazon. During the promotion period, its monthly sales volume ranked among the top ten in Amazon's sub-categories. This company was founded in 2020 by Ding Zhen, the former general manager of the smart camera of Qihoo 360 IoT Division.

Yao Li, who once served as global vice president and general manager of the smart connected devices business unit at Lenovo, founded the overseas smart home brand Cozyla. The CTO of the team, Yin Ruiping, had served as R&D director at Hisense and Lenovo. The other core team members also came from Lenovo's smart connected devices business unit.

The track for going out to sea is visibly becoming more and more lively, and if the seafarers want to catch more prey in this sea area, their combat power still needs to be continuously strengthened.

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