Since the second half of last year, smart door locks have begun to receive widespread attention and have become a "net celebrity" in the smart home industry. As a result, in the terminal product market, there are also many cross-border players influx, such as home appliance companies (Haier, Midea, Skyworth, etc.), Internet companies (Yunyou, 360, etc.).

In the face of these foreign entrants, how do traditional lock companies respond?

01

The market that has always existed VS the sudden arrival of the wind

In the eyes of these orthodox lock companies, smart door locks are not a new concept that appeared overnight. In fact, it has always been. These traditional hardware accessories and mechanical door lock companies generally began to design smart door locks very early. and development.

According to Li Xujun, director of industrial design of Yajie, Yajie designed the first smart lock as early as 2005. However, at that time, the industry did not call it a "smart lock", but an electronic lock or fingerprint lock.

Some traditional lock companies are thinking about the relationship between mechanical locks and smart locks from the perspective of door lock product function upgrades. Unfortunately, there is little reaction in the market. Zhu Haitao, marketing director of Sakura Hua, said frankly, "Even in 2014 and 2015, the monthly shipment of Sakura smart locks was only a few hundred pieces. ”

The sudden popularity of smart door locks should be attributed to the strong publicity of smart home concepts over the years. Although the smart home market itself has not seen a spurt of growth, it has accidentally brought fire to smart door locks. Li Yu, general manager of Huitai Long's intelligent business unit, said frankly: "At least before last year, mainstream smart home companies did not pay attention to the smart door lock market, and few smart home companies took the initiative to contact us. ”

Smart home players have been working hard in their field for many years and finally found a single product that can quickly impress users? Smart door lock. And it eliminates the convenience of having keys and matching keys, and it is easier to promote to ordinary users. Smart door locks are rapidly impressing more consumers with their "disruptive user experience".

From the perspective of the integrity of smart home solutions, home appliance companies expand their products from indoor (smart home appliances, smart homes) to outdoor (smart door locks), and look at smart door lock systems from the positioning of smart entrances to homes, so they need to enter this category. The emerging Internet door lock companies targeting the apartment rental market have also defined smart door locks as an indispensable standard from the perspective of convenience of business operation and management.

The joint efforts of many forces have made the smart door lock break out slightly in the second half of last year, and it continues to heat up this year. Shipments are expected to at least double this year to more than 600 million units.

02

The confidence and confidence of traditional lock businesses

Even if it suddenly became a hot industry because of the attention of all parties, these old lock companies generally said: "Thank you for these cross-border players to help us do marketing and market education, but in this market, we still have our own unique advantages, and we are not afraid of cross-border competition from these emerging players." ”

According to Li Yu's analysis, at present, no matter how smart locks promote their smart side, in fact, ordinary consumers still position them as building materials products, rather than smart hardware or smart home products. This psychological positioning has brought obvious advantages to these traditional enterprises that started with hardware building materials and mechanical locks:

From the perspective of sales channels, these traditional lock brands are more likely to reach end consumers who need to buy door locks. Since door locks need to provide a series of services such as installation, commissioning, and maintenance, online channel sales account for a relatively small proportion, and offline channel sales account for the vast majority. And ordinary users have become accustomed to buying door locks to go to the building materials market, not to the home appliance store. These traditional lock brands have opened online stores across the country, generally in the largest building materials markets in various cities.

Second, consumers have psychological inertia for every brand in the field of daily necessities. For example, consumers will recognize Haier's refrigerators and washing machines, but not Haier's soy milk machine. In the same way, ordinary users will recognize Haier and Midea's home appliances, but not necessarily Haier and Midea's access control KS. Every brand entering a new market faces the problem of rebranding, and even leading brands have to face this problem. Brands such as Sakura, Yajie, and Huitai Long clearly have advantages in this regard.

In addition, these traditional lock brands have also established good cooperative relations with agent dealers and local home improvement companies and housing development companies around the world. Door locks are often packaged with hardware products and provided to home improvement companies and home development companies. These are all things that new players don't have.

However, Li Yu also said that this hot market is still in its infancy, and new players are welcome to make the cake bigger, and the size of this market is enough to accommodate players from all walks of life.

03

The fast-growing market tests the internal strength of enterprises

As Li Yu said, in China, the smart door lock market is still in its infancy. The data shows that the penetration rate of smart door locks in European and American countries is more than 50%, and the penetration rate in Japan and South Korea is as high as 70%-80%. At present, the industry consensus is that the domestic penetration rate is 2%-3%, not more than 5%, and the market development space is obvious.

Just like the blue ocean market is advancing by leaps and bounds, there are also a lot of chaos in smart door locks. According to Zhu Haitao, marketing director of Sakura Blossom, the current smart door lock market is uneven, and the three factors of quality, price and after-sales service will determine the standardization of the entire market. In the case of increasing shipments, how to ensure the stability of quality and the speed of after-sales maintenance will test every brand player.

Taking after-sales maintenance as an example, even if the failure rate of the product remains unchanged, when the shipment volume increases ten times or even dozens of times, the number of faulty products will increase by the same multiple. The timeliness of repairs must be guaranteed. This is not an easy task for manufacturers. Door locks are very special products. The requirements of users for repair services are very high. Manufacturers need to provide 24-hour maintenance services. Management capabilities and operating costs are the test.

Brands that cannot provide good after-sales service will gradually lose their market reputation and brand influence. This is a problem that all smart home hardware product companies must face. If you can't cultivate excellent internal strength, you can only be shuffled and eliminated by the industry.

According to Zhu Haitao, Sakura is exploring the store model of smart door locks, and plans to open more than 100 smart door lock stores across the country this year, hoping to establish Sakura's brand awareness in the field of smart door locks with a terminal image. Shop and transform cherry blossoms from a store. Build industry brands into consumer brands.

04

Whether the sudden rise of the smart door lock market marks that the entire smart home industry will gradually usher in prosperity remains to be seen. But at least it shows that consumers are willing to pay for upgraded home products with better experience and more convenient functions.

Although the current door locks with networking capabilities account for less than 10% of the entire smart door lock market, or even lower, in the long run, smart door locks will be integrated into the entire home intelligent system as part of the smart home system. Trends and necessity.