A cat litter box sells for 365 yuan, will anyone really buy it?

Not only are some people buying them, but they are also selling millions of pieces. Stars such as Han Han and Fan Bingbing are using them. Fresh graduates who have just graduated from the Moonlight Family want to buy them, not for anything else, just to make their homes look "good". .

The cat litter box, which sells for up to 10 times the price of similar products, is sold like crazy. This "sexy operation" comes from the pet brand pidan.

Not only that, after the cat litter box, pidan launched mixed cat litter, which sold 12 million pieces a year, taking the top spot in the cat litter category, and also won the category championship this year. According to the founder, pidan’s annual sales in 2021 will reach 400 million.

According to iiMedia Consulting statistics, the scale of China’s pet economy industry will reach 493.6 billion yuan in 2022. As the industry enters a period of rapid development, the blue ocean of the pet economy has attracted many entrants. competition is becoming increasingly fierce.

How did pidan "make a fortune in silence" and become the top cat litter seller on Tmall platform? For pet track practitioners, what is there to learn from pidan’s operating methods?

Today the operation agency will dismantle the pidan brand.

01 How magical is the pidan cat litter that sells millions this month?

pidan was founded in 2016. It has attracted the favor of many VCs in the early days of the brand’s establishment, and there are many investors such as Qingshan, Qingliu, and Qifu. The operation agency found that the reason why pidan "debuted" upon its launch and was chased by capital for investment may have a lot to do with pidan's ability to create hit products.

Previously, Zhang Ye, founder of Tsingshan Capital, said when talking about the reasons for investing in pidan:

“pidan has developed many high-quality products that are not originally on the market but are in direct demand from users. It has a strong ability to grasp consumer aesthetics."

1) Seize the pain points and itch points to differentiate and compete

pidan starts from the extremely popular "cat litter". Subdivided categories into the pet track.

Because the founder discovered that this category on the market at that time was still dominated by tofu cat litter and bentonite cat litter. However, these cat litters all had the same problem - they could not take into account the tendency of clumping. Fast, good deodorization, less dust, easy to clean cleaning needs.

In 2019, the founder realized that cat owners had an urgent need for “easy-to-use cat litter”, but pet product merchants have been slow to provide new products. Through micro-innovation, pidan uses 70% tofu litter and 30% bentonite clay, and then adds deodorizing particles. It is the first to launch mixed cat litter in China, which can absorb water and deodorize at the same time, solving the problems of traditional cat litter consumption. Pain points.

As a highly consumable product for pet owners, pidan quickly occupied the cat litter market. In the first year after the cat litter was launched, the brand’s revenue exceeded 100 million.

In addition, the operation agency found that pidan’s strategy of creating hot products is very user-oriented. In addition to solving pain points, it is also good at meeting diversified needs, providing convenient consumption, and ensuring security. The appeal of safety products impresses consumers to increase repurchase rates.

In response to the different needs of cat-raising families, differentiated products with different functions such as better dust control, better deodorization, and additional stool blood detection are launched to meet diversified purchasing needs.

When you buy cat litter online, the weight can range from 5 pounds to 20 pounds or even more. We arrange free shipping with SF Express for cat litter products. Not only does it arrive quickly, but you only have to sit at home and wait for it to be delivered to your door. This is so convenient. The professional service has won the hearts of the people

The product test report and the traceability of raw materials are disclosed, and "pet insurance" is given out with the order during store activities, and the selling point of "safety card" is used to win the trust of users.

With these detailed services, pidan sends a signal to pet owners, "I can give you whatever you need." It has added 2 million new users a year.

2) Selling the "most expensive" cat products, pet consumption upgrades

The reason why pidan cat litter can sell millions of dollars a month has a lot to do with the pricing of the product.

Before making mixed cat litter, pidan first launched an "igloo" cat litter box. At that time, the price of domestic cat litter boxes was generally in the price range of 30 to 70 yuan. The Alice cat litter box imported from Japan was only 288 yuan, while the "Snow House" cat litter box was directly priced at 365 yuan, which was even as high as some affordable prices. 10 times the size of a cat litter box.

In the founder’s view, only “pricing” can directly tell users the value of a product. Moreover, at this price, high customer orders and high profits allow start-ups to successfully survive in the first year and quickly become the subject of market discussion.

Continuing the idea of ​​"the most expensive cat litter box", we started selling "the most expensive cat litter".

pidan cat litter is officially on the shelves and sells for 6 yuan per pound, which is almost the same price as the pet food sold by its peers. Even when others are promoting, it is not discounted much. Cat litter is a product with a very thin gross profit margin. While pet product merchants are still trying to attract traffic at low prices with an average price of 3 or 4 yuan per pound, pidan has already sold cat litter for 29 yuan per pack, making profits from cat litter.

Is this kind of pricing that is too aggressive for start-ups? In an interview with @36氪, the founder said:

If the pet market wants to upgrade, cats should be the best category. Because the unit price and feeding costs of cats are relatively high, owners spend a lot more than 400 yuan a month on their cats. Many serious cat owners may spend 700 or 800 yuan.

From the expenses of cat-raising groups, it is not difficult to see that cat owners are more willing to spend a lot of money to meet the needs of their pets. pidan is seizing the opportunity to upgrade pet consumption and starting from the cat supplies subcategory. , using differentiated products and high pricing to create recognition as a mid-to-high-end pet brand.

3) High-looking and eye-catching design, amplifying social attributes

As young people gradually become the main force of consumption, products with functional attributes alone can no longer meet their needs. Founder People have found that impressing young people with "good looks" is the key to making new brands break through quickly.

pidan first got out of the circle with an "igloo" cat litter box. Unlike the traditional cat litter box that looks like a storage box, the "Snow House" is shaped like an ice and snow cabin. It is all pure white and has a curved hollow corridor design inside. The overall look has a "high-end feel".

This novel cat litter box has attracted many users. 6,000 copies were sold within six months of the product being put on the shelves. Celebrities such as Han Han and Fan Bingbing are also using it.

Among the many pet products, pidan has attracted the attention of young people with its good-looking and strong design products. At the same time, these products have also become an interesting social currency when paired with pet photos.

Some people took photos to check in the "star-style" cat litter box;

Some people posted pictures of their pets sharpening their claws on the animal scratching board;

Some people posted pictures of their cats being tired. Sleeping in the cat's nest...

The high photo conversion rate has continuously increased Pidan's attention on social media. In the end, these hot spots have prompted users to flow to the purchase platform, completing a closed consumption loop, while maintaining a high unit price. It also achieved a double increase in brand volume and sales.

02 Ranked first in the category, with annual revenue of 400 million yuan.

What is the operation method of pidan?

pidan’s annual sales in 2021 will reach 400 million. Compared with the “dazzling” market performance, pidan’s marketing settings are surprisingly “simple”.

In the interview with Daofa, the founder revealed that before 2021, pidan’s market rate will not exceed 10%. There are only two people behind the popular model with monthly sales of over one million. pidan’s operations are all in the end. What tricks?

1) Delivery strategy: platform classified delivery, top live broadcast detonation

After research, the operation agency found that the reason why pidan can quickly increase the volume and detonate the "cat slave circle" is that the most One of the important factors is its delivery strategy.

pidan’s delivery strategy has period characteristics, and the focus of delivery in each stage is different.

Starting from the early stage, focusing on the two major platforms of Xiaohongshu and Weibo.

Xiaohongshu, which has strong "planting grass" properties in the form of notes, is the main site for advertising. The main partners for cooperation are pet KOLs and household KOCs.

@王多猫, a popular science blogger in the pet field, has collaborated with pidan many times. He promoted cat food in the content "Anxiety of Cat Raising for Newbies" and introduced cats in the sharing of "Lazy People Raising Cats" Sha, with the trust of popular science bloggers as "reliable", fans willingly ate wave after wave of Amway.

In addition to meeting rigid needs, pidan's products also have high aesthetic value, so the brand has also launched some pet home bloggers to grow products by showing beautiful home environments for pets.

For example, @Martaya, a home blogger who raises cats, the pictures on her homepage are all kinds of flowers, green plants, and exquisite meals. Her life is full of fireworks, and she lives alone in a small home in peace and quiet. It’s very enviable. When I see the fluffy cat on the balcony getting into the pidan “snow nest”, users who also have pets want to ask the blogger to move out and live in it themselves.

In order to achieve higher conversion of products in the launch, the bloggers that pidan cooperates with have certain identity tags, such as photographers and designers. These bloggers who also produce home content have a more detailed and detailed perspective. It is more aesthetically pleasing; at the same time, the bloggers placed are concentrated on "junior experts" with about 10,000 to 30,000 followers, and they can achieve large-scale coverage with low marketing investment.

On Weibo, pidan’s advertising strategy is different. The cooperative accounts are mainly beauty and fashion, emotional, film and television entertainment bloggers, and the proportion of beauty and fashion bloggers even reaches 59%. (Data comes from fruit set data). In this regard, the operation agency analyzed that the logic of brand placement is still to "invest in (potential) target users", and among the fans of beauty bloggers, the number of pets is considerable.

Xiaohongshu focuses on planting grass, while pidan’s placement on Weibo focuses more on product promotion. The cooperation content mainly includes the release of new products such as “pidan” and “cat litter”, as well as joint activities and other news.

Among them, Xinshixiang released the topic #热精品中国#, focusing on "new domestic brands" with "Tmall" and "Li Jiaqi". As a new domestic brand, pidan participated in the collective declaration and the number of reads reached 31.93 million.

After relying on advertising to accumulate word-of-mouth, the founder hopes to expand brand awareness and will only start to get involved in the live broadcast field in June 2021.

For the first live broadcast, I chose to cooperate with the head anchor Li Jiaqi, and the products were sold out in an instant. With the help of Li Jiaqi’s traffic express, pidan achieved sales of 45 million yuan in a single month.

When Li Jiaqi introduced cat litter, he also mentioned: "We give it to you every month and let you stock up every month." Many cat-raising "girls" squat in the live broadcast every month During the period, the cat owners at home are replenished with pidan cat litter on time, and the sales volume and repurchase rate are guaranteed.

pidan’s main sales battlefield is Tmall stores, but omni-channel distribution is a goal set by the founder long ago. So at the end of 2021, we cooperated with the Make a Friend live broadcast room and relied on "Douyin No. 1 Brother" Luo Yonghao to bring goods and began to penetrate the Douyin platform.

2) Marketing strategy: Topic marketing breaks the circle, and joint cooperation increases fans

Compared to the crude investment of money and traffic, pidan is more bold in marketing strategies, especially content polishing :

Bring the cat litter box to Iceland, invite photographers from all over the world to take photos together, and shoot the most beautiful "igloo" at any cost; open an animal back and three tails brand experience store, and create an art installation space by the way. Product retail; holding the "Gallery by the River" exhibition, it has nothing to do with pets, just an immersive exhibition for designers...

These actions seem to involve more investment than output, but the logic behind them is actually the original People have an insight into the marketing that "one communication channel does not suit everyone" and reach users through various methods such as visual aesthetics, offline experience, and artistic resonance.

In April this year, pidan collaborated with Xin Shixiang to launch the first brand short film, "Heart of the Broken Sun" directed and created by Bi Gan. What’s interesting is that they only provided money but did not appear in the show, allowing Party B to make the movie freely. In the 15-minute “cat movie”, pidan only appeared for about 5 seconds in total, but it received a lot of discussion.

The operation agency found that using topic marketing to increase brand awareness is a very good trick.

From the moment the co-director was selected, this short film was destined to have its own traffic. Bi Gan himself is a popular artistic film director. As soon as his short film with a strong personal style was released, it immediately attracted the attention of loyal fans and movie fan circles. Is Director Bi's new film a high-quality film or is it just the director's own pleasure? Everyone was talking about it, and the traffic of this "cat movie" started to rise.

Speaking of which, this short film is actually a commercial, but pidan did not intend to shoot a regular brand TVC, but instead used the form of a "proposition composition" to allow the director to turn it into an artistic creation. The short film was shortlisted for the short film competition at the Cannes Film Festival, triggering discussions in the entertainment and business circles on whether commercial advertising and artistic creation have "walls" or "no walls". People who eat melons also lamented that "pidan's bet has won", and they have paid tribute to this marketing Added fire.

Not only that, pidan also cooperates with seven podcast programs to share content from creators in the fields of art, film, culture, psychology, women, lifestyle and other fields. In the discussion of the relationship between people and pets by different groups of users, Continued the popularity of the topic. From the perspective of the operating agency, the essence of pidan’s marketing is to target the “pet-owning” crowd, using topical marketing to expand its voice and expand a wider range of multi-circle groups to support the growth of the brand.

Leveraging the momentum of online topic marketing, pidan then promoted offline cooperation to expand product usage scenarios.

During the Children’s Day period, pidan and Heytea launched a Children’s Day limited edition cat nest, limited to 6,000 pieces, not sold separately, and will be given away with orders when spending 61 yuan or more. This cat nest is simple and easy to assemble. It is not only equipped with a cat scratching post but also a food and water basin. You only need to drink two or three cups of milk tea to get it. Many poop collectors rush to grab the cat nest and arrange it for their owners on Children's Day. Gifts and check-in photos posted on social platforms.

03 Conclusion

After aggressive high-profile marketing and financing, pidan also exposed some problems.

As a flagship product of the brand, mixed cat litter has been revised and upgraded many times. The corresponding specifications and price increases have caused dissatisfaction among users. Some people reported that "the product is not as easy to use as before", while others were angry that "the price has increased too much." Outrageous”.

The stage of relying on single cat litter products to boost sales has passed. Now that pidan wants to upgrade to a full-category pet brand, it must continue to polish its own products and improve the cat food product line while maintaining the cat food brand. sand competitiveness.

Previously, pidan provided users with a "door-to-door cat feeding" service during the Spring Festival. Due to a large number of orders and the inability to fulfill the contract, the cats were hungry, causing serious public relations problems and triggering negative comments from netizens, which not only reduced users' trust in the brand Due to the epidemic, there are many dissuasive comments on social platforms, which also makes it difficult to attract new employees.

The founder believes that the brand’s growth relies largely on the reputation accumulated over the years. However, in the opinion of the operating agency, pidan’s neglect and lack of private domain operations has affected user maintenance and growth. If the brand wants to go further in the blue ocean of pets, it still needs to work harder on operations.