No distribution this time! Sun Caijin quits Zebao and starts a new brand

Few people in the cross-border circle are unaware of the mess involving Zebao founder Sun Caijin and Xinghui Holdings.

In the past, Sun Caijin founded Zebao and achieved sales of over 100 million yuan in just three years. Since then, the performance has been soaring. Sun Caijin hopes that Zebao can also squeeze into the capital market like Global Easybuy at that time. In 2018, Xinghui Shares acquired Zebao for 1.53 billion yuan, and Zebao completed a backdoor listing.

But three years later, Sun Caijin left Zebao. In the same year, he started a new cross-border overseas enterprise.

After leaving Zebao, he founded another overseas brand

According to Qichacha information, Shenzhen Huyi Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Huyi Technology") was established in November 2020 with a registered capital of 20.81 million yuan and the legal representative is Sun Caijin.

In August 2020, Sun Caijin withdrew from Zebao. Three months later, he founded Huyi Technology.

According to the equity chart, the largest shareholder of Huyi Technology is Shenzhen Huyi Investment Development Co., Ltd., which holds 96% of the shares. The second largest shareholder is Shunze Growth (Hainan) Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership). Both companies have deep ties with Sun Caijin.

Information shows that Sun Caijin is the legal representative of Huyi Investment and the ultimate beneficiary, and the actual controller of Shunze Growth Fund is also shown to be Sun Caijin .

In other words, the founder and actual controller of Huyi Technology is Sun Caijin.

What does Huyi Technology do? It positions itself as a hard-core technology company. From the product point of view, it mainly focuses on the field of small household appliances and makes high-end smart kitchen appliances.

In external materials, Tiger One Technology is described as follows:

1. Founder & CEO Mr. Sun Caijin graduated from Peking University and has been deeply involved in the consumer technology industry for more than 20 years.

2. Team members come from world-renowned technology companies such as Tencent, Huawei, Apple, Alibaba, MTK, OPPO, Midea, KPMG , and Dyson.

3. 60% of the R&D team members have backgrounds from world-renowned universities such as MIT and Harvard.

4. The company has established R&D centers in both China and the United States.

It is not surprising to have such a background when making smart products. The only difference is that all team members are from super well-known manufacturers, and the R&D personnel also have backgrounds from prestigious schools. This is enough to show Sun Caijin's determination to build a brand overseas. This may also be related to the fact that the distribution method of Zebao Daxing, which he founded before, was eventually cut off by Amazon.

Since Amazon has banned his account, it is not difficult to understand why Sun Caijin wants to build an independent website for his brand. Although the products of Typhur , a brand under Huyi Technology , are also sold on Amazon, the establishment of an independent website, typhur.com, is also essential.

Typhur has high reviews on Amazon

It is natural to expand overseas, build a brand, and vertically cultivate a certain channel.

But why did he choose small household appliances? In Sun Caijin's long entrepreneurial history, household appliances were also a category in which he performed relatively well. First, there was the health kettle brand that was acquired by Joyoung, and later there was the small household appliances category in cross-border distribution.

In 2019, Zebao's small household appliances category contributed 615 million yuan in revenue, with a gross profit margin of 51.92%, accounting for 17.60% of Xinghui's total revenue; in 2020, small household appliances achieved revenue of 1.796 billion yuan, a surge of 192% over 2019, accounting for 37.62% of Xinghui's total revenue .

Now, even though Sun Caijin has left, Zebao is still operating in the home appliance category and has become the most important source of revenue for Xinghui Co., Ltd. In 2021, the revenue from this category accounted for 40.34% of its total revenue, 47.52% in 2022, and 43.31% in 2023.

Not only does it have a history of entrepreneurship in similar products, but home appliances are also rigid necessities, and the global market demand will not be easily affected by consumption downgrades and other reasons.

At the same time, Europeans and Americans like frying and deep-frying , so Huyi Technology has further subdivided its vertical field and selected products such as air fryers.

According to Typhur’s official website, it has currently launched four main products, namely the integrated vacuum cooking machine Typhur Sous Vide Station, the air fryer Typhur Dome, the food thermometer Typhur InstaProbe and the wireless food thermometer Typhur Sync .

At present, Typhur 's products have won multiple design awards including the Red Dot Award, Good Design Award, and iF Award. Last year, they also participated in CES (International Consumer Electronics Show) and were reported by authoritative media such as CNN.

Qichacha data shows that in more than three years since its establishment, Huyi Technology has already owned 134 intellectual property information, including 89 patents and 28 international patents.

On Amazon, Typhur 's products are priced from US$78.99 to US$400. Although the sales of a single listing in April did not exceed 1,000, as a high-priced product, the monthly sales range is between 300 and 700 pieces, which is a good result. In addition, although the number of reviews is not high, the product rating is not low, basically at 4.7 stars.

In addition, many of Typhur's products are also marked as " Overall Pick" and "Amazon's Choice" , and its food thermometer was rated as the best digital food thermometer in 2024 by USA Today .

The brand has been growing slowly overseas

Although Huyi Technology was founded in 2020, Typhur may be a brand that is officially launched in 2023.

Judging from the Amazon product listing page, many of Typhur’s products will be launched in 2023.

In addition, Google Trend also shows that the global search popularity of the brand Typhur will gradually increase after September 2023, reaching its peak in November 2023, and ushering in a second small peak in March 2024 .

With the precedent of Amazon’s account suspension in mind, building one’s own independent website and getting rid of being manipulated by third-party platforms is a consensus among many brands going overseas, and Typhur is no exception.

Typhur 's independent website typhur.com is also growing slowly. Similarweb shows that in April, the total number of visits to typhur.com was 90,000, and the traffic mainly came from the United States (30.61%), Hong Kong, China (12.31%), the United Kingdom (7.35%), Canada (6.97%), and Germany (6.78%).

In the past three months, the total number of visits to typhur.com was 303,700, with an average of 100,900 per month. Although the number of visits is far less than that of other independent websites of overseas brands that have an average of millions of visits per month, Typhur is already slowly getting started.

The overseas home appliance market is huge, and the dividends are still being released. Amazon data once pointed out that kitchen appliances are one of the fastest growing and most promising categories on Amazon, and smart products are the general trend; in addition, the growth of some subdivided kitchen appliances is particularly obvious. For example, in the past few years, air fryers have been the horses in the European and American home appliance markets, and they are still releasing consumer demand today.

After leaving Zebao, Sun Caijin started a new business and chose home appliances; and Zebao’s former partner, Wei Lihu , also founded Shenzhen Hesheng Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. in September 2020, which also focuses on smart home appliances, with the Amazon platform as the core, and its product line includes home appliances and kitchen appliances.

Sun Caijin has returned to cross-border overseas business. His fate this time is unknown, but his past is still full of conflicts.

Not long ago, Xinghui Co., Ltd. announced that it would file a lawsuit worth 240 million yuan against Sun Caijin and others regarding the payment of money to tax bureaus in many overseas markets ; the year before last, Sun Caijin was also sued by Xinghui Co., Ltd. to return the acquisition transaction price of 1.043 billion yuan .

  Carrying the burden of the previous cross-border journey while embarking on a new overseas journey, how far can Sun Caijin take Typhur this time?

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