New track? Shenzhen sellers just received 400 million yuan in financing

The future of pool cleaning, machines replace manual labor!

Traditional pool cleaning has an obvious pain point, which is expensive. This pain point is even more obvious in Europe and the United States where labor costs are high. Coupled with problems such as insufficient cleaning power and waste of water and electricity, pool cleaning robots came into being and quickly gained market favor with their high efficiency, energy saving and intelligence.

Companies that have invested in this market have gradually attracted the attention of capital and obtained large amounts of financing.

Yuanding Intelligent won 400 million yuan in financing

Recently, it was reported that Shenzhen Yuanding Intelligent Innovation Co., Ltd. completed over 60 million USD (about 436 million RMB) in round B and round B+ financing. The round B financing was led by CMB International, followed by Fosun Ruizheng and Fengqiao Capital, and old shareholder XVC increased its stake; the round B+ was led by a global leading new energy enterprise, and old shareholders continued to increase their holdings.

Many sellers may not be familiar with Yuanding Intelligent, but they must be familiar with the Aiper swimming pool robot brand. In particular, the brand was recently listed on the "Google x Kantar BrandZ China Global Brands 2024" growth star list, becoming one of the 15 brands on the list.

In fact, Aiper was established as early as 2015. It initially focused on the production of outdoor portable energy storage products and garden products, but in 2019 it began to focus on the pool cleaning robot market.

At that time, this market was dominated by a few foreign brands, including Israeli brand Dolphin, Spanish brand Polaris, British BWT and American Hayward. However, the pool cleaning robots of these companies were all wired, and there was almost no innovation in the past two decades. After observing this, Yuanding Intelligent quickly seized the opportunity and launched the first wireless pool cleaning robot.

It was this shift that made Aiper successfully break out of the circle and became famous. As the pioneer of the wireless pool robot category, Aiper now accounts for more than 70% of the wireless pool robot market and has become the preferred brand of wireless pool robots.

At present, the cumulative shipments of Aiper swimming pool robots have exceeded 1 million units. They are not only popular on online platforms such as Amazon and independent websites, but have also successfully entered offline channels in Europe and the United States such as Home Depot, Lowe's, Walmart, Costco, Sam's Club, OBI, and Leroy Merin. It is expected to enter more than 7,000 offline stores by 2024.

In terms of revenue, the global revenue of robotic pool cleaning equipment is about 453.5 million US dollars in 2023, and it is expected to reach only 909.8 million US dollars by 2030. Obviously, this is an extremely niche category. However, it is such a track that has repeatedly attracted the attention of capital.

It is reported that in the past three years, Aiper has completed three rounds of financing, with a total financing amount of more than 75 million US dollars. Investors include XVC, Xinwanda, CMBI, Fosun Ruizheng and Fengqiao Capital. Such a huge amount of financing is extremely rare in the cross-border circle.

The independent website alone has an annual revenue of 200 million yuan

It is obvious from observing Aiper that it is taking the branding route. How can you build a brand without an independent website? From the data performance, Aiper's independent website is operating very well.

In terms of performance, in 2023, Aiper's independent station sales will be close to 200 million yuan. In terms of visits, similarweb data shows that in the past three months, the number of visits to Aiper's independent station has exceeded 530,000, and direct visits and natural searches account for a large proportion, reaching 42.81%.

Of course, Aiper has also made a lot of efforts in marketing. For example, it has established accounts on TikTtok, Facebook, YouTube, and INS. Through video presentations and collaboration with influencers, it has comprehensively demonstrated the characteristics and advantages of its products, attracting a large number of potential consumers. For example, Aiper's official account on TikTtok, aiper_official, has already gained 42,800 followers (fans).

Similarweb data shows that among all traffic sources of Aiper's independent station, traffic from social media accounts for 20.38%. Not only that, the efforts made on social media also drive some direct visits and natural searches.

In addition to social media marketing, its search advertising is also doing well and is willing to invest. Similarweb data shows that paid search accounts for 20.14% of website traffic.

Of course, for Chinese brands going overseas, online layout cannot avoid Amazon, so in addition to the independent website, Aiper also settled in Amazon.

Aiper ranks among the top three in the global swimming pool robot market and ranks first in the online channel market. Therefore, its performance on Amazon is also very significant.

In an article published earlier, Yien wrote that Aiper occupied 14 seats in the BS list of Amazon's "Pool Cleaning Robot" TOP 100. Among them, a wireless pool cleaning robot with automatic parking function and a usage time of 90 minutes took the BS list TOP 1 in this category. The monthly sales reached more than 8,000 units and there were more than 8,000 buyer reviews.

Big sales quietly layout

The field of pool cleaning is a growing field with relatively few players. According to industry reports, the global pool stock will be 30 million in 2022, with a compound annual growth rate of 6%. With the steady growth of the market space, the market size has exceeded RMB 7.3 billion. The coverage rate of pool cleaning robots in households with pools has increased year by year and has now reached 21%.

However, there are not many companies going overseas in this field, and there are even fewer brands. Apart from Aiper, there are no other brands emerging. How can cross-border e-commerce sellers not be tempted by such a blank market?

Een.com found that there are already two cross-border giants quietly taking action. One is the smart cleaning giant Dreame Technology, and the other is the mobile phone case giant Gemtek.

Dreame Technology registered a swimming pool cleaning robot company in 2023 and brought its first wireless swimming pool cleaning robot to the 2023 World Robot Conference held in Beijing in August of the same year.

Currently, the product has been listed on Amazon, and one of the products has accumulated 27 reviews, 90% of which are five-star reviews, but the product is currently out of stock.

The manufacturer column in the product information is "WYBOTICS CO., LTD". People who pay attention to this field must know that WYBOTICS is Wangyuan Technology, which is a well-known ODM supplier in the pool cleaning robot market. Its products had a global market share of 18% in 2022, ranking third in the world.

The stone thrown by Dreame Technology into the field of swimming pool cleaning robots has caused ripples. Perhaps sensing the crisis, not long after Dreame Technology officially announced its first product, JMET suddenly issued an announcement stating that it plans to use its own funds to increase the capital of Shenzhen Siaotuo Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Siaotuo") by RMB 8.8 million.

SEAUTO is a company that focuses on underwater cleaning robots and other smart water products and outdoor products. Its pool cleaning robot brand SEAUTO has always had good sales performance on Amazon. One of its models even ranked 33rd on the Amazon BS list. More than 800 units were sold in the past 30 days, with a single unit price of $359.84, which means that the monthly sales of this listing exceeded $288,000 (about 2.09 million yuan).

In summary, European and American swimming pool robots started early and the market is relatively mature, but technological innovation is relatively slow, which provides an opportunity for Chinese brands to overtake. However, we must also recognize that this is an industry with high technical barriers and capital investment, so not everyone can enter the industry. However, as long as these two problems are solved, this category still has great opportunities.

Pool cleaning robot

Aiper