Zhejiang University female student sells screwdrivers, Lei Jun "endorses"

Venture State

2024-06-29 12:31Entrepreneur official account

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01Little Monkey Technology, founded by Liu Lidan, an industrial designer of Zhejiang University, focuses on high-quality living tools, starting from the to C market, and has now entered 56 countries and regions around the world, with annual sales of one billion yuan.

02Liu Lidan participated in the research and development of ZTE289, ZTE's first mobile phone, and later joined Designaffairs, a German strategy and design consulting company, and accumulated rich design experience.

03 The first explosive product of Little Monkey Technology is the "24-in-one" screwdriver set, priced at 99 yuan, and 5,000 sets were sold in 8 minutes, and Lei Jun personally promoted it.

04In addition, Monkey Technology has also launched innovative products such as electric screwdrivers and laser rangefinders to meet the needs of consumers for use experience in life.

05At present, Little Monkey Technology no longer relies on the Xiaomi ecological chain platform and has begun to operate its own brand to expand the category boundary.

Technical support is provided by Tencent Hybrid Model

Author丨Zhao Xiaoxiao

Editor丨Guan Ju

Source丨Midjourney

After deciding to start a business as a tool, Liu Lidan found an entrepreneurial boss and expressed his concerns to him: the track is not big enough, the industry is mature enough, and the ceiling is quite low.

The entrepreneurial boss asked Liu Lidan about the scale of the company, and she replied, "The sales volume is 100 million." The big guy asked the industry boss how big he was, and she replied, "100 billion." The big guy immediately said, "You are a stall, what is there to dislike the small track, when will you become the boss of the industry, and then discuss the ceiling with me." ”

Liu Lidan is an industrial designer, who participated in the research and development of ZTE289, ZTE's first mobile phone, worked as a designer for several years at Medion, a consumer electronics company in Germany, and also founded his own design company, which was later acquired by Designaffairs, a German strategy and design consulting company.

In 2016, Liu Lidan established Little Monkey Technology HOTO, positioning itself as a "boutique" life tool, to C. In 2017, Little Monkey Technology joined the Xiaomi ecological chain, from the company's start to the birth of the first product, there is the guidance of Liu De, co-founder of Xiaomi, and Zhang Feng, former partner of Xiaomi. Today, this is a very "luxurious opportunity".

The first product is a "24-in-one" screwdriver set, priced at 99 yuan, and 5,000 sets are sold in 8 minutes. Lei Jun posted a Weibo on the same day to personally promote this product.

Since its establishment, Monkey Technology has completed three financings, and the investors behind it are Dingxiang Capital, Alibaba, Zhonghai Investment, Xiaomi Group, and Shunwei Capital.

Starting from a small product, Little Monkey Technology continues to break through the upper limit, covering more target consumers and more accurate SKUs, and its products are sold to 56 countries and regions around the world, with annual sales from 100 million to 1 billion yuan.

Find a narrow door

When I met Liu De, Liu Lidan was planning a second venture, with a direction but no inspiration.

Liu De talked to Liu Lidan about the track of hand tools, the domestic situation is extensive, backward, scattered, serious price polarization, no brand, no design, is an industry that can be transformed.

Doing research in this direction, the head of the industry is monopolized by Bosch in Germany, as well as Skadden and Stanley in the United States, with annual revenue of tens of billions of US dollars. The more well-known tool manufacturers in China include Wax, Greatstar Technology, Chervon Holdings, Chuangke Industry, etc., most of which are mainly OEM exports.

Most of the application scenarios of these products are construction sites, which do not pay much attention to the use experience of consumers in life, and lack a sense of design.

"If young people want to buy a good-looking, practical, and preferably cheap household tool, there is no brand to choose from." Liu Lidan said, "Many products haven't changed for decades. ”

"You've found your chance." Liu Lidan said that she thought that in 2010, Xiaomi entered the mobile phone market, and the key to winning was design and product strength. This is what Liu Lidan is good at, and she already has enough design experience before founding Little Monkey Technology.

Liu Lidan graduated from Zhejiang University with a major in industrial modeling design, went to ZTE after graduation, and in the second year of employment, ZTE set up a mobile phone research and development department, Liu Lidan participated in the whole process of design, production and sales, and ran through the whole industry chain, she would even go to the supplier to see the whole process of production process such as coatings, surface treatment, and sheet metal processing.

After resigning from ZTE, Liu Lidan went to study at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, where she had the opportunity to meet the design directors of famous German companies such as Audi, and go deep into different workshops to observe various instruments more directly and closely, and understand the characteristics of materials.

During his study abroad, Liu Lidan joined the design department of MEDION, a German consumer electronics company, as a designer, and most of the products he participated in the design were sent to the local century-old supermarket ALDI for sale. She stayed here for five years until she returned home.

Yitian Design is her first entrepreneurial project, mainly doing boutique design, most of the clients are foreign brands who want to enter the domestic market, and the project is relatively small, such as designing some mobile devices for Intel.

In 2010, Designaffairs, a German strategy and design consultancy that planned to enter the Chinese market, acquired Yitian Design, and the whole process took only two hours, and Liu Lidan became one of the partners as the director of operations in China.

This is the most fulfilling stage she has experienced, and she has taken on many big projects, such as participating in the design of smart cameras of Zeiss, a German optical instrument and lens brand, the early planning of COLMO, a high-end brand of Midea, and Siemens' home smart batteries. In 2018, Designaffairs was acquired by Accenture, the world's largest management consulting firm.

Later, I started a business to make household tools, with Liu De's encouragement, and Liu Lidan's understanding of the industry after research, she believes that tools are a track that can greatly add points to design, and China's household tools are a "blue ocean", large companies can't look down on it, small companies don't do a good job, and the market demand is there.

"Little Monkey to fill in the gap." Liu Lidan said. It's like finding a narrow door, which distinguishes it from the niche, the incision may be small, but it can be infinitely magnified.

Designers need to be able to define the product

The narrow door that Liu Lidan found is a living tool that ordinary consumers can use, and contemporary young people tend to repair precision items by themselves, and have requirements for the accuracy and use experience of tools. They may not have much awareness of the brand, but they want something good.

To create such a "superb" tool, you need to have a good design team, a good design concept, if the design can not reach a high level, can not be achieved at first sight, everything else can not be talked about.

Liu Lidan said that she has two very important entrepreneurial mentors, one is Liu De, who helped Liu Lidan analyze and establish the direction of entrepreneurship, and encouraged her to challenge the bottom line of the industrial industry with design.

Liu De is remembered by the public as the co-founder of Xiaomi and the head of the Xiaomi ecological chain, and the identity of an industrial designer is thus covered. Liu De is an industrial design background and has been engaged in industrial design before joining Xiaomi.

There are many good designers, but there are very few designers who can make business successful, and Liu De is one. Under his leadership, within four years of its establishment, the Xiaomi Eco Chain has won all international design awards. So he understands the value and importance of designers in the industrial field.

In 2016, when Little Monkey Technology was established, Zhang Feng just joined Xiaomi, and he founded Zimi in 2012, and later became one of the Xiaomi ecological chain enterprises, mainly doing mobile power supply, which is the first company in the real sense of the Xiaomi ecological chain. In 2020, Zhang Feng became a partner of Xiaomi and has now left.

Zhang Feng is a product-oriented talent, in order to make a good product, he will "stumble" to the end, and he also has a strong ability to coordinate the supply chain. After Liu Lidan decided to start a business as a tool, Zhang Feng provided a lot of references in the supply chain and products.

One year after the company's launch, Monkey Technology chose to join the Xiaomi ecosystem. Around 2016, it was a period of rapid growth of the Xiaomi ecological chain system, which basically recorded 100% or even 200% growth every year.

The empowerment of the Xiaomi ecosystem to cooperative enterprises lies first in strategy, that is, communication methodology, values, and business insights; The second is tactics, that is, through the internal testing of the product within a limited period of time, using the potential energy of Xiaomi's channel endorsement, creating a number of popular models, playing the category mentality, and quickly making the market scale of the highly advantageous field.

For startups, this is a great opportunity to grow quickly. Xiaomi has a very complete methodology, and following this methodology greatly increases the probability of a hit.

Be the "best" tool

The first thing the team decided was to make a delicate, unique, and youthful "24-in-1" screwdriver set. In terms of design, Liu Lidan gave a vague and difficult requirement to complete - to have a sense of certainty and make people fall in love at first sight.

To meet this standard, it is necessary to overturn all designs on the market, including materials, processing, and surface treatment.

Liu Lidan personally flew to Germany to discuss cooperation with Wiha, the industry's best hardware tool brand, to replace the chrome vanadium steel commonly used in the industry with S2 tool steel. In terms of process, Liu Lidan requires that all the steel stamps on the batch head must be of the same depth, the bottom line must be consistent, and the surface color should be consistent, and there should be no spots or scratches, nor can they be rusted.

"24 in one" is reflected in the fact that 1 tool holder and 24 different types of bits can be used for 90% of daily object repair and disassembly, simplifying many things that are not commonly used in daily life.

In terms of storage, the magnetic design is done inside, and the "click" is clicked, and the bit head is in place in response, with a very crisp sound, reminiscent of a very precise instrument. On the external storage, the aluminum storage box can be opened and closed with one press. When closed, the overall size is small enough to fit directly into your pocket.

"That's certainty." Liu Lidan said that Xiaomi's products are like this, with an almost paranoid pursuit of design.

In 2017, the "24-in-one" screwdriver set priced at 99 yuan was sold in Xiaomi Mall, and 5,000 sets were sold in 8 minutes, and they were directly out of stock. Lei Jun posted a message on Weibo that day: "It's much better than the screwdriver set I'm using." This product has also become the first explosive product of Little Monkey Technology, and more than 2 million sets have been sold in a year at most.

But the process was not so smooth, "I also questioned at first, maybe there are no more people to screw it." Liu Lidan said. Some people will even say directly, "How do you make a tool, and it's still so unintelligent." ”

After the plan came out, the product manager of Mijia saw it and said, "No, it's too niche." More skepticism in the industry is, "Nobody has done this, it's not a tool." The founding team also changed twice, and in the end, only Liu Lidan was left, and he pulled the team again to polish the product.

After this product, Little Monkey Technology determined the company's R&D direction - household tools, and grasped the neglected needs of users.

When the second product, the electric screwdriver, was launched, it was crowdfunded in Xiaomi Mall, and 45,000 were raised in less than 30 hours.

This electric screwdriver removes the color of red and willow green on the market, and replaces the left and right splicing methods in the industry with the structure of plugging up and down, and there are no screws and screw holes on the surface of the entire product. The supply chain has also been reorganized, and the supply chain of core components, such as motors, gearboxes, etc., is the use of tools. In terms of appearance, it is used as a supply chain for electronic products to achieve delicacy and refinement. The storage bag is used by the supplier of the headphone bag.

An entrepreneur who has been in contact with Xiaomonkey Technology commented, "Use a streamlined way to define products, and then use technology and supply chain innovation to achieve extremely high cost performance."

According to this set of logic, Little Monkey Technology rebuilt the tools and products with high frequency such as laser rangefinders and electric drills one by one by scientific and technological means.

For example, the intelligent laser rangefinder only retains a button and a function to measure the length, and the measurement data is transmitted to the APP at the same time. The smart electric drill can be picked up and screwed, and it will automatically stop at the end, and there is no need to adjust the torque.

Find your bearings

At the end of 2020, Liu Lidan and his team began to operate the brand of Little Monkey Technology, and no longer only rely on the Mijia ecological chain platform.

In terms of categories, Little Monkey Technology has expanded from household tools to travel equipment, vehicle equipment, home life, cleaning tools and other categories to expand the boundaries of the brand.

This is also the status quo of most companies in the Mijia ecosystem, which will eventually gradually get rid of their dependence on a single platform and start operating their own brands.

The various categories of the Xiaomi ecological chain have also encountered growth bottlenecks in recent years. In March this year, Xiaomi's ecological chain department was reorganized and implemented the "SAN hierarchical management strategy", which divides many ecological chain categories with three classification logics: S, A and N. This is also the biggest reform of Xiaomi's ecological chain model in the past decade.

S class will be the most critical category in the future of Xiaomi's ecological chain, Xiaomi has sorted out speakers, routers, door locks, and cameras in four directions, and this category has the opportunity to achieve a market size of 50-10 billion in the future. Category A is a category that has the opportunity to exceed 1 billion yuan in the future, including air fryers, rice cookers, water purifiers, air purifiers, etc. Category N mainly targets categories with a scale of less than 1 billion yuan.

The Xiaomi ecosystem is no longer like 8 years ago, setting its own record rate. Lei Jun previously set a goal to "copy" 100 small millets with the millet ecological chain, and now there are 77 companies in this chain, which is still one-third away from the goal.

There is a lot of uncertainty in these times, and the only certainty is to grasp the trends of the moment.

In the 8 years since its establishment, Little Monkey Technology has entered 56 countries and regions around the world, covering 2 million users, with annual sales of one billion yuan.

From the perspective of market size, the global manual + power tools is a market of about 60 billion US dollars, and even now, China still does not have a tool brand that is familiar to ordinary consumers.

From this point of view, there are still great opportunities for Monkey Technology, whether it is room for growth or to become the head of the new tool brand. Liu Lidan said that he will focus on the field of tools for a long time in the future.

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