Congratulations to pidan, which has finally transformed from a luxury pet products brand into a cat litter brand.

The igloo cat litter box is at its peak when it debuts

In 2016, the launch of pidan’s “igloo” cat litter box made the industry shine:

Strong product power

In an era when people were proud of copying Japanese cat litter box designs, although the price of the igloo was not cheap, the original design with both high-end aesthetics and functional practicality made people feel expensive. It makes sense. In the past, Daoda was just a product with an "affordable luxury" price but lacked actual product power.

The blessing of the Red Dot Award makes people exclaim, Wow, It turns out that the product can also do this.

Brand high-end and consistency

Early brands usually directly reflect the aesthetics of the owner.

pidan’s products, copywriting, brand visual system and consumer touchpoint design not only have a high-end aesthetic, but also maintain consistency. It is one of the few pet brands with a “brand sense”, which has given the industry Brought a new idea.

The exploration of the lifestyle of human pets makes people respect

Pets and people share the same living space, and there are many considerations that need to be weighed, such as:

Pet supplies Functionality vs functionality of furniture and household items

Aesthetics of pet products vs aesthetics of home life

Pet comfort vs comfort of pet parents

These are long-term propositions, and pidan's attempts are full of expectations.

"In an age of materialism where plagiarism is rampant, exploration itself deserves respect"

Ideals are respectable, but survival depends on business

Some people are surprised However, after its stunning debut, pidan quickly turned to higher-frequency cat litter.

This is a completely unexpected and reasonable choice:

1. The positioning of light luxury goods is neither high nor low, and it is impossible to solve the repurchase problem

Although It is called "light luxury", but the most popular igloo cat litter box only costs a few hundred. It cannot be purchased for 10 years like a real luxury product, and there is no repurchase of low-priced and high-frequency products.

2. It is difficult to establish barriers for pet products

In China’s competitive environment with no lower limit, designs are the most vulnerable to plagiarism and there are no barriers.

While people applaud pidan’s design, many plagiarists have already flocked to it.

Some people say that pidan betrayed his ideals, but in fact, only by living can he be qualified to talk about ideals.

What is really interesting is that there were so many teams entering the pet market from supplies at that time, why was pidan the one that finally emerged?

1. Seize the financing window

Ideals and long-termism are two different things. It is often difficult to distinguish between persistence in ideals and foolish persistence.

The judgment of the market situation and the selection of the transformation time point reflect the team's cognition and ability. In this regard, pidan is undoubtedly excellent.

2018-2019, the year of pidan’s transformation, is the easiest time for pet brands to make money.

But capital is rational. If pet products are not popular, the conditions for continued financing will not be very good. Pidan bowed to capital realistically and took the money to reserve ammunition for transformation.

Another group of outstanding teams are still struggling, thinking they can educate the market or wait until the market changes. As a result, they miss the financing window and the market opportunity period for transformation, and end up struggling.

2. Seize the window period for upgrading the cat litter category

At that time, high-frequency products included cat food and cat litter.

Compared with cat food, cat litter is less dependent on channels, has low trust cost, and is easy to express content. It is more suitable to rely on social marketing to adopt the DTC model (Direct To Customer, that is, mainly e-commerce, marketing direct-to-consumer model).

pidan wants both, but cat litter is the most popular in the end.

Timing, timing, 2019 is the time window for cat litter

pidan’s official statement is that pidan created the mixed cat litter category. In fact, the more important reason is that pidan seized the opportunity in 2019 An excellent time window for the cat litter category.

Before 2019, except for a few high-end cat litter brands, the mainstream of the market was still low-end products. A large number of nutrition brands even used cat litter directly as a traffic-draining product, without considering profits at all, directly suppressing the market. There is room for upgrading the cat litter category.

But in 2019, as Weishi transforms into staple food, nutritional products are obviously more suitable as a traffic-draining product for staple food. People no longer put money into cat litter. Cat litter suddenly became a normal category, and a market window appeared.

With the momentum of the igloo cat litter box, pidan launches a micro-innovative product of mixed cat litter, and enters this market at the right time.

Win the game with ruthless people

With successful financing, pidan spent a lot of money to increase sales, locking in the first place in the ranking list of an e-commerce platform for a long time.

Don’t take a month, pidan can last for half a year or even a year. Of course, the full cooperation of the factory is indispensable in the meantime.

The good price and domineering operation also attracted Taobao customers. For a time, making pidan cat litter seemed to have become a trend, and it quickly became the best.

Wonderful content dividends

2019 is also the time when Xiaohongshu’s dividends are the largest, but unlike many brands who are planting grass, Taoke, who makes pidan cat litter, is also on Xiaohongshu The book contributes a lot of content.

pidan does not spend much money but produces a lot of content, forming a virtuous cycle with e-commerce harvesting.

Challenges

In the 0-1 stage, closed-loop growth can be achieved by relying on hot products or the saturated penetration of a single platform. In the 1-10 stage, category expansion, global operations, corporate culture, etc. Put forward higher requirements for brands.

pidan’s 0-1 stage more reflects the victory of choice (understands beauty, is realistic, and is good at choosing). In the future, pidan will face the challenges that all new brands will have, 1-10 is A real tough fight.

However, there is no need to go into details about these conventional challenges. Those who are interested can read our previous article "In Depth: Gao Ye's Family, Is Pampering the New Rich or a New Consumption Bubble?" 》

As a benchmark in the pet industry, we naturally have higher expectations for it. We are more curious about whether pidan can find a way out in terms of branding.

How to integrate pet products and food into the same brand system?

pidan uses "beauty" to enter the market, which is actually a kind of differentiation and personalization. The essence of pet food that will be developed in the future is scale and efficiency.

The team genes required by the two and the brand value proposition presented to the outside world are completely different. , few companies can achieve perfect integration.

But since we claim to be a brand, we must have a brand value proposition, what we believe in, and what we want to fight against.

If the beauty of pet products is value, then what is the brand value of pidan staple food?

How can the value propositions of staple foods and supplies be integrated under the same brand system?

At present, except for the repeatedly mentioned "beauty" in the commodity period and the empty "love" now, pidan has no other better answer.

Although you can hire the most artistic director, pay an expensive price, and shoot a commercial shortlisted for Cannes, you can't hide the brand's sense of fragmentation and mediocrity.

This question may ultimately be unanswerable, but we respect all branding efforts.

Finding words

"It is no exaggeration to say that pidan is almost the only new pet brand that has successfully launched."

If the staple food can be produced, I believe that more important investors will join in and we can move toward listing.

If the staple food cannot be produced, at least it is a pet brand with a good brand image and profitability, and has acquisition value.

The sudden epidemic in 2022 has restricted the performance of some teams that have the ability but missed the financing node, giving pidan an extra good card.

But China does not need another pet food manufacturer. We hope that pidan can find the answer to this question for many people in the industry: What is the value of a pet brand?

Then, become a brand that makes ordinary users like the product and core users agree with the point of view.

Let’s wait and see!