Text/Leju Finance Yang Kaiyue
Some people call Homestyler a game-changer in the home improvement industry, pushing the quality and efficiency of design work in the entire home furnishing industry to a new level.
Homestyler is a one-stop digital design tool and global designer content community platform under Homestyler, committed to providing advanced AI design tools and high-quality rendering services for designers in more than 220 countries and regions around the world.
Homestyler is the overseas version of the designer, which is more like a "low-key student" who is silent and powerful, and has a lot of popularity in the international design circle.
Of Homestyler's 16 million registered designers, 14 million are from overseas. Among the overseas users, about 33% are from Europe, 28% from Asia, and 23% from North America, especially in the head countries such as United States, Italy, United Kingdom, Russia, China and Brazil, and the number of users of Homestyler exceeds one million, which shows the brand influence.
Today, Homestyler has not only become the three major grasps of the digital and intelligent transformation of Homestyler, but also an important boost to the home's overseas strategy.
"If you don't go to sea, you will be out" has become the current industry consensus, and the strategy of going to sea has entered the next stage. Wang Linpeng, chairman and CEO of the company, said in a recent interview that international business is the core part of the company's strategic development, "I plan to use five years to achieve overseas business scale growth, and the goal is to 'rebuild' a home overseas."
The results of "going to sea" are blooming everywhere
"Going to sea" has become the key word for the development of the house in the past two years, and it has also become the main position for the house to defend its leading position and transform and develop.
On March 30, 2024, the Phnom Penh store of the home in the capital of Cambodia opened, which is the first store opened overseas by the home furnishing company, a leading domestic home furnishing company. Wang Linpeng said at the opening ceremony: "The Phnom Penh store is the first stop for the internationalization of the home, and in the next 3 to 5 years, we will complete the strategic layout of ASEAN countries." Specifically, Easyhome said that it will start with Cambodia, focus on Thailand, Viet Nam, Malaysia, Indonesia and other countries, and plan to build more than 10 Easyhouse commercial centers.
On the same day that the Phnom Penh store opened, Wang Linpeng went to Malaysia and signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Pavilion Group, confirming that the two sides will carry out all-round cooperation in the home building materials industry, new retail and trade logistics in Malaysia, and collaborate and innovate in park development and cross-border e-commerce.
Just three months later, as of June this year, Easyhome has set up directly operated stores or branches in Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and Singapore.
The latest disclosed data also shows that the home has achieved remarkable results in market expansion outside the mainland market. In July, the investor research minutes disclosed by the company showed that as of June 20, the investment rate of the Cambodian Phnom Penh store was 98.06%, and the cumulative orders exceeded 1 million US dollars, achieving good business performance and opening up the company's international business operation model.
Among them, Dongwo + Homestyler, just like a pair of wings inserted for the strategy of going to sea, provides a strong acceleration power for the home to expand overseas markets.
During the Milan International Furniture Fair in April this year, the designer held a global partner conference and the investment conference of the imported brand of the house, and the executive president of the house, Wang Ning, said that the house successfully built China's first imported furniture collection in 2010 "Home Honor", providing global brands with full-link supporting service solutions for China's high-end consumer groups, and helping the circulation of the global home furnishing industry. The new business model of the full-link digital and intelligent industrial service platform of "physical experience store + traffic operation platform + logistics delivery" built by the home brings priority placement, dealer and designer resource recommendation, professional operation plan and overseas collection warehouse + China bonded warehouse + logistics supporting services and other assistance programs for imported brands, aiming to create a closed loop of pan-home consumption and empower upstream and downstream partners in the ecological chain.
At the meeting, in the face of overseas markets, Homestyler officially released its global partner recruitment plan in Italy. At present, a total of 13 global partners have been recruited, and 9 direct customers have been signed. In addition, there are currently more than 10 high-intent overseas partners in negotiation, covering design agencies, furniture retail, real estate, software agencies and other industries.
High-quality overseas strategy
In the second half of the year, Homestyler will continue to make efforts to participate in major overseas exhibitions, and take international exhibitions as an opportunity to accelerate its global layout and partner recruitment. Through close cooperation with overseas partners, on the one hand, we can establish partnerships with local service providers and quickly open up the local market; On the other hand, it is also possible to lay a user base through design tools and gradually strengthen the influence of the designer and even the house overseas.
The temptation of overseas markets is big enough, and according to the "2024 Global Furniture Market Insights Report", the global furniture market revenue will reach $766.2 billion by 2024. From January to April 2024, China's furniture exports reached 168.55 billion yuan, an increase of 20.4% year-on-year, creating a new high in the same period in history.
It can be said that the home has preferred a more high-quality "going to sea" model, which is different from the "money-throwing" acquisition model of home furnishing companies in the early days, opening overseas flagship stores can be said to be a way with lighter assets and more conducive to their own brand popularity.
However, going out is not just as simple as opening a flagship store, how to better manage and operate overseas stores, open up the industrial chain such as production and delivery, and even a series of sales processes such as installation and after-sales have become the key for home furnishing companies to compete for overseas markets.
Wang Linpeng said that the home is not simply copying the domestic home furnishing store model overseas, but keeping up with the trend of the times and presenting a panoramic view in the form of a smart home experience center. In terms of online business, the "Cave Nest" of the House has successfully cooperated with a number of overseas offline stores to build an overseas industrial service platform.
As a digital and intelligent industry service platform for the home improvement and home furnishing industry that empowers the home and serves users, Dongwo can easily achieve online supply and demand docking and interaction by opening terminal services and international payments in Singapore, Cambodia, Thailand, Macau, Malaysia and other places.
And combined with the supporting services of cross-border warehousing, if international trade is done in accordance with the model of cross-border e-commerce, the traditional international trade mode will be completely subverted. "At present, we have started this business in Singapore for less than a month, and we have an average of more than 100 orders per day, and the development momentum is very good." Wang Linpeng pointed out.
Whether it is to promote the transformation and upgrading of the furniture industry, or to respond to the national initiative of the "Belt and Road" construction, to drive the construction of Viet Nam and ASEAN, home furnishing enterprises "going to sea" is a good thing for the benefit of the country and the people, and has also been strongly supported by relevant national policies.
Looking forward to the future, the company has a firm strategy, developing "internationalization" into an important engine for future growth, and further improving its design concept and technical level through exchanges and cooperation with international brands, so as to build the home into a leading international home furnishing brand in Southeast Asia. At the same time, it will play the exemplary role of "pioneer in going to sea", drive the internationalization process of upstream and downstream industrial chains such as raw material supply, logistics and design, "water" overseas markets with resources, and "feed" the development of the industry with the market, so as to achieve a win-win situation for all parties.