With the upgrade of pet consumption, intelligence is unstoppable.
The emergence of intelligent pet care products not only solves the troubles of pets being left alone at home, but also improves the quality of pet care life on weekdays.
How do pet smart products change from "available" to "easy to use" and become popular?
Smart products, liberate the hands of pet owners
Pet owners tend to be younger and face heavy work or study pressure. The emergence of intelligent pet care products not only solves the troubles of pets being left alone at home, but also improves the quality of pet-raising life on weekdays.
From feeding and watering to shoveling excrement and drying after bathing, this year's pet owners make full use of technological intelligence to free their hands.
On the demand side, with the deepening of the concept of scientific pet raising, pet smart products are deeply loved by pet owners. During the Double Eleven last year, the sales growth rate of pet smart products on major platforms all achieved high growth. Tmall's "Double 11" pet smart product sales increased by more than 500%, and smart feeders increased by 120%.
The new customers of Taobao pet smart devices accounted for more than 50%, and both the search volume and consumption volume increased by multiples.
Only 10 minutes after the opening of Double 11 last year on JD.com, the transaction volume of smart pet products increased by 33 times year-on-year.
On the supply side, the hot track has attracted many new and old players to flock to this track.
At present, there are three forces competing for emerging pet product brands, old pet food brands, home appliance brands and smart device brands.
First, "newcomers" who specialize in pet smart devices, such as pet pets and pets with pets.
Such enterprises focus on the vertical field of smart devices, with a high degree of product segmentation and rapid implementation of innovative ideas, without considering the configuration of multiple product lines within the company's internal resources.
At the same time, it is also a type of company with a relatively high probability of star smart pet raising brands.
Second, senior-level enterprises that "be from a professional background" rely on pet food to make their fortunes, such as China Pet Foods, which specializes in pet food, and Petty shares, which specializes in pet chews.
These companies can expand the product line of smart pet equipment horizontally, and can quickly open up the market with the help of the reputation of their original brands, and quickly occupy the market share in the initial stage.
Third, the cross-border "spoilers" of the pet smart track, such as Midea, Xiaomi, Tencent and other giants.
The domestic technology and home appliance giant Mei opened a flagship store for pet products on Tmall, and launched a water dispenser for cats to cut into the field of pet smart products.

What is the dilemma of pet smart products?
Hardware technology needs to be broken through
Pet smart products basically start from the needs of "eating, drinking and sleeping", and are roughly divided into automatic cat litter boxes, water dispensers, feeders, companion devices, monitoring, etc.
Among all categories, smart water dispensers and smart feeders are the most popular.
Due to the low barriers to entry, there are too many tasteless products with "speculation concept" in the market, and the product homogeneity is serious.
Today, when we look at these smart products, it is not difficult to find that the smart devices related to pet diets on the market are all from the perspectives of regular ration, pet food preservation, remote monitoring, etc., and even the products are not much different in shape.
She said: "Most of the smart products on the market have been used, and the overall feeling is that the technology of most pet smart products in China has yet to be broken through.
How should I say it, let me give a simple example. I have used many smart water dispensers before and after, including Xiaomi, Xiaopei, and some unknown products.
On the one hand, the service life is short. Basically, the service life is 1-2 years, and some will fail after three or five months.
On the other hand, the workmanship is slightly rough. There is a water dispenser that I have taken apart, and the raw materials are only a sponge and a motor. Although most automatic water dispensers have this virtue, your filter device must be a force! "
As the demand for intelligence continues to increase, pet owners will have higher and higher requirements for products.
It is the right way to improve the hardware conditions of your own products, otherwise, no matter how good the appearance is, it will not go far.
Safety issues are frequent and need attention. Now the family status of pets cannot be underestimated.
"You can travel with peace of mind, just leave your pet to me." is the value proposition of many products.
Safety is always a chord in the user's heart, and only ensuring the safety of your cat is king.
But in recent years, pets have encountered many safety problems when using smart products.
For example, when the automatic litter box is in operation, there is a danger of getting stuck in the cat's body.
There have also been reports of cats being electrocuted while using inferior automatic litter boxes.
Just in 2019, a certain brand of smart cat litter products exposed major safety hazards, resulting in the death of 4 cats.
A pet-friendly netizen said: "When I buy small pet appliances, the first thing I pay attention to is safety, and the second is whether it can free my hands, feeding pets is simpler and more scientific, if the quality of this product is a problem when I buy it, then I am sure Will not buy, would rather choose ordinary products.
And if there is no smart product, my fur child is still alive and well! "
Yes, before the automobile was invented, humans only wanted a faster carriage.
The high cost of intelligent products is mainly reflected in R&D investment, of which professional technicians and patents are the core resources of enterprises.
Moreover, most smart brands also need to establish a pet network social database, using big data and artificial intelligence, on the one hand to do a good job in the tracking of pet's living habits and movement trajectory; and other characteristic analysis.
In particular, the service object is pets, they will not read the manual, nor will they use it according to the design method. If the brand wants to use technical means to fight against these, it will take a very long process and may not achieve the expected effect. The longer the time, the higher the cost.
At the beginning of its establishment in 2015, Xiaopei, a pet smart brand, spent almost all of it, pouring more than 10 million yuan into a product that monitors pet movement and sleep data.
Xiaopei Pet COO Guo Weike said: "At that time, we hired a R&D team of more than a dozen people, which was already a relatively large-scale R&D team at that time. Now our product line has covered a very wide range, with nearly 200 categories. Smart products mainly revolve around three categories of products: drinking, feeding and cleaning.”
Indeed, after a long period of market verification, pet food utensils, water utensils and cleaning products are more in line with the current market demand.
How do pet smart products break the game?
Faced with various problems such as homogenization and safety, where is the breaking point of pet smart products?
Category innovation
Compared with the domestic pet smart product market with serious homogeneity, the products of most overseas pet smart equipment companies are concentrated and single, which is conducive to the construction and promotion of brand concepts, and has reference significance for domestic companies.
According to the American Pet Product Manufacturers Association, it is expected that by 2023, the investment in pet monitoring equipment will reach 2 billion US dollars.
For example, FitBark, which mainly focuses on pet dog motion data monitoring equipment, records pet daily motion data and analyzes it to generate pet health index, which has a certain reputation overseas.
This wearable device specially launched for pets monitors the movement status of dogs around the clock, so that owners can know whether their pets have enough activities (FitBark will set a certain exercise target according to the amount of exercise required for a day), avoiding their own Dog is not happy.
There is also a pet intelligent anti-lost tracking wearable device launched by squeaker, which integrates LED night lighting, temperature sensing, activity tracking, and location positioning functions.
Not only monitoring equipment, but also domestic pet smart equipment category innovation can be carried out in many fields such as pet eating, drinking, playing, and health.
Enhance the practicability and experience of pet smart products
According to a survey by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), more than 70% of pet owners prefer to buy smart pet equipment in physical pet stores, nearly 50% choose e-commerce channels, and 40% choose large commercial supermarkets.
It is not difficult to see that most pet owners prefer to buy smart products through offline channels.
This is mainly determined by the practicality and strong experience of pet smart products.
Enhancing the practicality and experience of smart products can start from the following aspects:
Product side: pay attention to details and continuously optimize.
For example, most of the feeders on the market will have food jams, insufficient container sealing, and material deterioration due to long-term use, leading to insects and bacteria breeding.
Another example is the self-contained drinking fountain, hair loss after drinking water, residual water pollution, etc.
From the perspective of solving these problems, there are still opportunities for most products.
Channel side: step up the layout of offline stores.
Dogness (DOGZ.US) is an international leading manufacturer of pet smart products, mainly involved in the research and development, production and sales of pet IoT application systems, smart devices, traction products, etc.
Dogness is well aware of the importance of offline channels. Since November last year, Dogness has reached a partnership with Petco to expand the sales of its smart pet products from the latter's e-commerce platform to its 1,600 offline pet chain retail stores.
Among domestic brands, Xiaopei’s offline layout is earlier. At present, Xiaopei Pet has reached 50+ stores in Shanghai Yicheng direct stores, and has 1,500 franchised stores nationwide.
Under the high customer unit price, complete the market education. Compared with pet food, pet smart products currently have a low penetration rate.
The main reasons include: the price range of pet smart products ranges from 100-2000 yuan, and the price is relatively high; the lack of investment in the brand market has led to insufficient consumer awareness of the product and has not yet developed the habit of use.
Let's take Homan as an example to see how it completes market education under the condition of high customer unit price.
Founded in 2015, Hörmann specializes in smart products such as pet dryers and water dispensers.
In particular, dryers are definitely a well-deserved "luxury" among smart products. According to CBNData data, from the price distribution of online pet smart devices, the mainstream price of drying boxes is between 1500-2000 yuan.
Homan hopes to use live broadcast as a marketing channel to continuously expand his voice, and is also constantly establishing long-term cooperative relationships with some head and waist anchors, such as Weiya, Nicole Master, Sydney and other anchors.
In August this year, Homan's third-generation wireless water dispenser entered the Weiya live broadcast room.
This product was recommended to the Weiya team, and it was actually broadcast after two months of testing by Weiya's pets. In the cooperation between the brand and the anchor, the anchor's approval of the product is the first element.
Brands need to pay attention to two points when it comes to the choice of popular anchors:
First, whether the user portrait of the anchor has a high degree of match with the brand.
Second, whether the anchor can clearly and completely understand and express the product functions and usage scenarios.
Although consumers are more prone to impulse purchases in the live broadcast environment, on the contrary, Homan hopes that consumers can fully understand the products through detailed explanations by the anchors in the live broadcast room, so as to make rational consumption decisions and buy products that are truly suitable for them.
Only by continuously increasing market investment can category education be carried out and brands can be implanted in consumers' minds.
Under the consumption upgrade, the trend of intelligent pet products is unstoppable.
This naturally attracts the attention of capital.
Furthermore, in October, pet smart home brand CATLINK announced the completion of the first round of financing, and the investor was Xinruipeng Pet Medical Group.
Founded in December 2017, CATLINK is a smart pet product brand with the mission of "using technology to perceive pet health". It is committed to providing a pleasant and intelligent experience for pet lovers around the world. Intelligent hardware, software and services make people healthier and accompany them for a long time.
Domestic pet smart products are still in the initial stage of continuous breeding and growth, and the total market volume is small.
The earliest companies involved in pet smart products have grown up from a combination of export and domestic sales, and some leading pet food companies have begun to deploy in this segment.
In the future, as the size of the domestic market continues to increase, there will be a steady stream of entrants, and the competition will become more intense. If you want to make smart products "universal", first of all, the product quality must be good enough.
When pet smart products really go from "available" to "easy to use", it will become a popular item, then it will not be far from the arrival of the era of pet intelligence.