In 2020, the stay-at-home economy boom triggered by the pandemic has pushed the small home appliance market into a period of rapid growth. Compared with the increasingly saturated traditional large appliances, small home appliances with smaller size and more affordable prices have spawned many sub-segments under the diversified iteration of consumer demand, thus bursting out with extremely strong development potential. However, as the epidemic becomes normalized and the macro-economy is under pressure, the domestic small home appliance market has entered a bottleneck period where the market is returning to rationality and growth is slowing down. Therefore, going to overseas markets has become the best solution for many small home appliance companies. According to data from Statista, the global small appliance market will be worth approximately US$243 billion in 2023 and is expected to reach US$305 billion by 2028. On the international stage, developed regions in Europe and the United States are highly mature and have strong consumption, while emerging blue oceans such as Southeast Asia and Africa have broad growth potential and are riding the fast train of development. With the vast opportunities in the global market and the release of dividends from cross-border e-commerce, it is the right time for small household appliances to go overseas. Many domestic companies are leading Chinese manufacturing to go abroad, take root overseas and grow into globally renowned benchmark brands. On this hot track, SharkNinja It is one of the best among them - a small appliance brand that once set a sales record in Amazon's small appliance category. At first glance, many people may be unfamiliar with SharkNinja, but if you mention the name of Joyoung, a national brand, most people must be familiar with it. In fact, the two are brother companies from the same mother. In 2017, Joyoung's parent company JS Global acquired the American small appliance giant SharkNinja, thus forming a global multi-line layout with Joyoung focusing on the domestic market and SharkNinja harvesting overseas markets. Founded in 1998, SharkNinja is headquartered in Boston and has businesses in many countries around the world, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, China, and Japan. It owns two major brands, Shark and Ninja. The former focuses on the vacuum cleaner vertical category, while the latter focuses on the small kitchen appliances track. Together, they have been the top sellers on Amazon for many years. However, although the small home appliance market where SharkNinja operates is highly mature, with a high penetration rate of smart homes and strong consumer demand, the market competition is also extremely fierce. Faced with multiple challenges such as fierce internal competition and product homogeneity, it is not easy to stand out and win widespread recognition from consumers. In such an environment, Shark and Ninja went against the current. One has topped the US vacuum cleaner sales list for four consecutive years, and the other has remained at the top of the small kitchen appliance sales list. After being incorporated into JS Global, they jointly shouldered the growth responsibility of overseas expansion. What did they do right? Shark: Differentiated competitive barriers Shark's main categories are small cleaning appliances such as vacuum cleaners, sweeping robots, and steam mops. Looking at its market, leading cleaning appliance companies such as Dyson and iRobot These old-fashioned robot vacuum cleaner giants have each firmly occupied their own market share. Shark has been able to stand out from the crowd of giants thanks to its differentiated competitive barriers. In terms of brand positioning, Shark is targeting the mid-to-high-end market, and has differentiated itself from high-end brands such as Dyson by emphasizing its high cost-performance advantage. Looking at its Amazon product layout, nearly 70% of its vacuum cleaners are priced below $200, with the main focus on affordable prices and high quality. In terms of product strategy, Shark also adheres to the user-centric approach and continuously expands product categories based on the diverse needs of consumers. Specifically, while Shark is deeply engaged in the mainstream market, it is also targeting the blank market that has not been fully touched by big brands. On the one hand, its main vacuum cleaner category has developed popular items such as upright vacuum cleaners and stick vacuum cleaners; on the other hand, it has extended the large category to the two major fields of personal care and air treatment. Both tracks have broad development prospects. The personal care field is full of giants, but there is still ample room for growth outside the division of leading enterprises, while air treatment lacks a benchmark enterprise with strong dominance. For this reason, Shark quickly emerged in the emerging field by relying on its accumulated brand advantages and market experience, coupled with a differentiated competitive strategy. In 2021, Shark launched air purifiers and hair dryers. The Shark FlexStyle hair dryer set the fastest selling record on Amazon and Walmart as soon as it was launched. In general, Shark is in the cleaning small appliance market that emphasizes products and R&D, and believes that technology is king. To this end, Shark, based on its supply chain + channel advantages, places great emphasis on innovative R&D and diversified expansion of products, and builds a brand differentiation moat with the support of strong product strength. Ninja: Vertical Deepening + Comprehensive Expansion Another brand, Ninja, focuses on various small kitchen appliances, including blenders, coffee machines and pressure cookers. In contrast, small kitchen appliances can be said to have come to the dominant area of its sister company Joyoung. Therefore, with the empowerment of Joyoung's market experience and channel advantages , Ninja has been able to quickly expand its product categories in the European and American markets and further consolidate its dominant position. Relevant reports show that Ninja initially focused on small kitchen appliances such as blenders. After being acquired by JS Global, it expanded its product categories to emerging cooking and cookware fields through the integration of R&D technology and product layout with Joyoung, and launched many innovative new products in accordance with local conditions in combination with overseas local operation strategies. In contrast, the overseas small kitchen appliance market is characterized by diversified and segmented product categories, and development tends to be intelligent and humanized. In terms of insights into consumer demand pain points, quality and safety are two key factors. The characteristics of the kitchen appliance category also determine Ninja's brand strategy: focusing on differentiated positioning in the mid-to-high-end market with high cost performance, and leveraging the advantages of the domestic supply chain to achieve rapid product iteration and innovation, thereby meeting the ever-changing and diverse needs of consumers. On the one hand, Ninja has made good use of Joyoung's advantages and, relying on the strong domestic supply chain, has established sufficient advantages on the cost and product sides. On the other hand, its product strategy has achieved an organic integration of highly vertical + comprehensive expansion. In the early days, Ninja entered the market with the product of blenders and became the industry leader in the market segment. As market competition continues to intensify, Ninja's product matrix continues to grow, and it has developed multi-functional, full-scenario featured products in different market segments such as cooking and cookware. In general, the reason why SharkNinja has been able to dominate the sales crown on e-commerce platforms such as Amazon for many years is mainly due to its strong product strength, innovative technology and global market layout. Shark focuses on cleaning appliances, while Ninja focuses on kitchen appliances, but the brand strategies of both are oriented around user experience, using distinctive product positioning and innovative technologies that keep pace with the times to gradually gain market share. With its high overseas market share and strong sales performance, SharkNinja has become a major growth engine after being incorporated into JS Global. Its revenue in 2020-2022 was US$2.753 billion, US$3.727 billion, and US$3.717 billion, respectively, and it continued to grow. In 2022, due to the pressure on the overall industry environment, JS Global's revenue and net profit both declined, among which Joyoung's performance was a drag to a certain extent. In contrast, SharkNinja has achieved counter-cyclical growth, with its market share in Europe and the United States continuing to rise. Cleaning appliances led by Shark have a market share of 34.6% in the U.S. market, Ninja has a market share of 26.2% in cooking appliances and 36.1% in food preparation appliances. According to the latest financial report, SharkNinja achieved revenue of US$4.254 billion in 2023, equivalent to RMB 30.773 billion, a year-on-year increase of 14.43%. However, facing the popular SharkNinja, JS Global Life However, in 2023, it made a major decision: to split the SharkNinja division and list it separately on the New York Stock Exchange with the stock code SN. After the spin-off and listing, Wang Xuning, the executive director of JS Global Lifestyle, remains the major shareholder and chairman of SharkNinja, but SharkNinja is no longer a subsidiary of JS Global Lifestyle. Why did JS Global want to divest SharkNinja? In fact, the divestment of SharkNinja can bring greater capital gains, obtain more liquidity after its independent listing, further enhance its competitive advantage, enrich financing channels and share operating risks. On the other hand, divesting SharkNinja will also benefit JS Global's multiple business layouts at home and abroad. SharkNinja focuses on the small home appliance market in Europe and the United States, and Joyoung Group It will focus on the domestic and Asia-Pacific regions, deepen its core businesses and formulate flexible and diverse development strategies based on local conditions. After the SharkNinja division was eliminated, JS Global spun off the North American, European and other specific regional businesses and operated them independently. For example, for the Asia-Pacific business, SharkNinja launched new cleaning appliances, small kitchen appliances and personal care appliances, and launched new products and new categories through consumer insights in different markets, enriching product portfolios and marketing activities. In addition, SharkNinja also acquired Mann & Noble entered the distribution markets of Australia, Singapore, New Zealand and Malaysia, further deepening its global layout. It can be seen that although SharkNinja has accumulated a dominant position and occupied a certain market share in the European and American small appliance market through years of deep cultivation, the current overseas small appliance market has both opportunities and challenges and risks. Therefore, for small appliance companies going overseas, it is particularly important to continuously improve their own brand power and build a brand moat. Looking around the world, from the European and American markets with large scale, high penetration rate and strong money-making power, to blue ocean markets such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East with broad incremental space and strong growth potential for new categories and new fields, the small home appliance industry is showing a trend of intelligent, diversified and segmented development, which also puts higher demands on the strategic policies of small home appliance companies. Overall, it is not difficult to see from SharkNinja's successful experience that in the face of complex and changing overseas markets, only product strength and brand strength are the unchanging magic weapon for success. On this basis, it is necessary to clarify the positioning of its own products, deeply understand the local market and strengthen brand building, so as to form a strong competitive barrier. The overseas market for small household appliances is hot and has great potential, but only by finding the right direction and moving forward can we truly grasp the code to make money. |
