"Since I have a cat at home, I have gritted my teeth and bought a three piece hair removal set: Stone sweeping robot, Dyson vacuum cleaner and Tim Mopper. Cat owners know who uses who smells." Last year, Chen Chen (a pseudonym) spent tens of thousands of yuan on three cleaning artifacts to solve the problem of hair loss of hairy children. Not limited to multi cat families, "lazy three piece set" has captured a large number of middle-class consumer groups. As one of the most popular small household appliances in the living room in the new consumption era, the floor sweeping robot has stepped on many vents - the just need of cat families in the economy, the lazy economy in the post epidemic era, the social networking in the circle of friends with a strong sense of science and technology, etc. it is certain that the floor sweeper has become the top of the small household appliance track. In the track, especially the A-share big white horse stone technology is the most eye-catching. However, in the past two years, the "rising stars" of cleaning smart appliances have become more and more intensive, and stone technology has gradually lost the aura of "brother of sweeping robot". In the secondary market, in the past six months, the share price of stone technology seems to be on a downward roller coaster, falling all the way. Although the share price of stone technology has picked up in recent days, it has shrunk a lot from the peak of 1492.15 yuan / share in June 2021. As the earliest company in China to layout sweeping robots, stone technology may have received a blue ocean dividend. However, with the activity of the underachievers, stone technology will face the dual test of the consumer market and the capital market. Dyson Mengpo If we summarize why stone technology can be listed in just six years and become A-share white horse? Maybe just one word: fast. When the industry was still in a blue ocean, Chang Jing, CEO of stone technology, chose to bet on the floor sweeping robot, which was a quick step. At that time, because there were few products on the market, the floor sweeping robot was joked as "artificial mental retardation" and "adult toy". By virtue of its lidar + positioning algorithm, motion control module and other technologies, stone technology effectively realizes that the sweeping robot walks accurately according to the route planned by the navigation algorithm, and solves the obstacle avoidance ability of the robot. In September 2016, after the launch of the first floor sweeping robot manufactured by stone technology for MI family, it quickly occupied the market by virtue of product quality and reputation, and corrected the name of the floor sweeping robot for the first time with 99% praise rate of JD. From the market share of LDS (laser ranging sensor) global planning product line, according to the monitoring data of zhongyikang, from January to June 2019, "Mijia intelligent sweeping robot" and "Stone Intelligent sweeping robot" developed by stone technology accounted for 27% and 26% of the online retail sales of domestic LDS global planning products respectively, In total, it accounts for 53% of the online retail sales of domestic LDS globally planned products. A fact is that due to the low popularity of intelligent cleaning appliances, online channels have been the main export for a long time. According to the prospectus of stone technology, in the first half of 2019, stone technology achieved the market share of products in the global planning online market of LDs, ranking first in China, and once became Dyson in the category of domestic sweeping robots. At that time, relying on the ready-made channel support of Xiaomi ecological chain, stone technology was not worried about traffic problems and user problems, which allowed stone technology to concentrate on R & D in the early stage. However, stone technology does not want to be just a contract factory for Xiaomi. According to the stone prospectus, in the first half of 2019, the company's revenue from Xiaomi brand, private brand and accessories accounted for 40.58%, 58.48% and 0.94% respectively. Independent brands accounted for more than half of the revenue, and the company's "de millet" achieved initial success. Brand independence is a key step for stone technology to weaken the title of "OEM" and become China's "Dyson" brand. This is certainly the ambition and dream of stone technology. However, the great shackle is that the R & D thinking of stone technology lacks Dyson's innovative thinking. One fact is that the sales of floor sweeping robots declined in 2019. The reason is that users are no longer satisfied with the pain point that robots can only sweep but not drag. At that time, Yunjing, a rookie in the industry, launched an intelligent washing, sweeping and towing machine for disposable mops, which solved the pain points of mopping, caused various brands to follow up, and increased the sales volume in 2020. The first intelligent sweeping robot with floor sweeping function released by Yunjing Stone technology has changed from a leader to a follower. "What if there are a bunch of people waiting to copy my product after I make something?" This is a problem that has plagued Chang Jing since the founding of stone. The implication is that stone technology's own competitive moat and technical advantages may not be as deep as expected. This has also led to stone technology becoming the Chinese version of "Dyson", which is not gradually closer to the goal, but farther and farther away. have enemies in front and rear From 2013 to 2018, the compound annual growth rate of sales of domestic sweeping robots was 58.66%, far exceeding that of other household appliances. In 2019, after the sweeping robot cooled down briefly, it hit the epidemic head-on. Affected by the epidemic, Chinese people have increased their consumption of "lazy products" in the past two years, ushering in a new round of outbreak of the "lazy economy" that began to be popular in earlier years. In 2020, the sales volume of floor sweeping robots will return to 6 million units, with a sales volume of 9.41 billion yuan. According to the data of ovicloud, the total online sales of floor sweeping robots from January to July 2021 was 5.262 billion yuan. With the explosion of demand, stone technology is no longer the only one. According to enterprise survey data, in 2020, the total investment and financing amount of the domestic robot industry reached 26 billion yuan, of which the cleaning robot track dominated by sweeping robots accounted for about 13%. In the past 2021, the sweeping robot has completed more than 10 enterprise financing of sweeping robot, and tens of millions of brands have completed financing almost every month. On June 15, 2021, Lesheng intelligent announced the completion of tens of millions of yuan of round a financing; On July 19, Li completed the round a financing of 50 million yuan; On September 21, trifo completed a round of C1 financing of hundreds of millions of yuan; In November, beetle intelligence announced that it had completed two rounds of financing, with an overall financing amount of more than 100 million... If anyone's products have no characteristics and are seriously homogenized with their peers, they will eventually be "rolled up". There are still pursuers behind and tigers in front. According to the latest data of ovicloud, in November 2021, stone technology accounted for 16.6% of the retail market share of the floor sweeping robot online market, which is still far from the leading kevos (47.6%), behind Yunjing (19.8%), but has surpassed its former owner Xiaomi. In other words, stone technology ranks third in the existing domestic market share. It is worth mentioning that the second cloud whale in the industry was established in October 2016, later than stone technology. At present, it has obtained six rounds of financing, and Sequoia, Hillhouse and byte are its important investment institutions. The "fellow apprentices" of stone technology only entered the vacuum cleaner field in 2019, but the sales exceeded 2 billion in the second year. In October 2021, the company sought to complete round C financing of RMB 3.6 billion as a dark horse in the industry, refreshing the financing record of the industry. In contrast, chase started with wireless handheld vacuum cleaners. At present, its category has covered intelligent floor washing machines and floor sweeping robots integrating sweeping, dragging, washing and drying. Compared with the single product line of stone technology, its imagination space is larger. In addition, covos, the industry leader, incarnated as the "golden father" and acquired Tianke, a head brand specializing in intelligent floor washing machine, to make up for the lack of high-end cleaning products. In the grass planting community, clean household appliances with the same price and function will be evaluated together AI blue media collects the floor sweeping robot on tmall and the self-cleaning washing, sweeping and towing machine with a gear of 4000 yuan. The monthly sales of kovos, Yunjing and Shitou are all 10000 plus. It can be said that the head of the industry is fully competitive in category, appearance, function and price. Stone technology, which is only good in the field of sweeping robots, is suffering from enemies from both sides. In terms of financial report, the 2021 interim report of stone technology shows that it has achieved a revenue of 2.35 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32%; The net profit attributable to the parent company was 650 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 42%; Deduct non net profit of 574 million, a year-on-year increase of 32%. In the same period, kevos, another listed peer, achieved a revenue of 5.36 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 123%; The net profit was 850 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 543%; Deduct non net profit of 815 million, a year-on-year increase of 781%. Comparing the two listed companies of sweeping robots, it is found that the financial growth of stone technology shows signs of slowing down. On the left is the 2021 semi annual report of stone technology; On the right is kovos 2021 semi annual report It is worth mentioning that stone technology accounts for nearly 80% of the business in the overseas market. The reason why the growth rate slowed down was explained in the financial report by stone technology that due to the impact of the suspension of Yantian port in Shenzhen in the second quarter, some customer orders could not be recognized because they were not delivered in time, which dragged down the revenue growth in the second quarter. But in fact, the revenue growth rate of 22.9% in the third quarter of stone technology is not only less than 55% of the floor sweeping robot category in kovos in the same period, but also less than 33% of the company in 2019. It should be emphasized that the growth rate of the whole floor sweeping robot industry in 2019 is declining. Under the double attack of performance pressure and peer pressure, although stone technology is still in the first echelon, it has become a fantasy to become the Chinese version of Dyson. At present, the domestic sweeping robot competition has only begun, and the industry has only begun to fully compete. Stone technology has to maintain the ability of continuous hematopoiesis in order to gain a firm foothold on the "card table" of clean smart appliances. (Xinhua News Agency)