Wie viele dreijährige Jubiläen sind noch nötig, bis wir das ideale "Lebensraum" für die Menschheit erreichen?

The home decor and furnishing business has never been an exciting one. It doesn't attract the full attention of the public like the electric mobility sector, nor does it have an infinitely high storytelling potential like artificial intelligence. It lacks appeal for investors, and for entrepreneurs, it is a business with low entry barriers and low standardization.

For this reason, there have been a series of trust crises in the home decor industry in the past two years: The furnishing service provider Zhu Fan suffered a crash, the platform Hao Hao Zhu shut down its operations, and Dongyi Risheng was auctioned... Instead, people's need for a comfortable living environment has turned into a public gamble on trust, rationality, and technical limits, which ultimately leads to a strict examination of the basic viability and long - term thinking of companies.

In this turmoil, one name stands out in particular: Habitat.

This smart home brand, founded by Shen Yanan, the former president of Li Auto, was established in 2022 and has since represented the approach of "building homes like cars". At first, this sounded like the romantic idea of a technology enthusiast for a lifestyle, but now, in 2025, in the middle of the industry's trust crisis, it is celebrating its third anniversary.

This makes one can't help but ask: What has Habitat left behind in the three years when the industry was changing? What has it preserved?

It's not just about home decor, but about establishing home products

Three years ago, when Shen Yanan first proposed to "build homes like cars", the first reaction of many people was "not very realistic". After all, "furnishing" sounds old - fashioned and disorderly, has no technological presence, and no in - depth value - creation chain. It seems more like a complex but low - value service sector: relying on construction workers, experience - based logic, and the customers' learning from their own mistakes.

It has long not been regarded as a real "product", but rather as a "process" that customers inevitably have to go through.

Obviously, Shen Yanan was not satisfied with accepting "living" as a passive experience. He was involved in the founding of Li Auto from the ground up and witnessed the wave of electric mobility. His concept of a "product" includes not only technical content but also clarity, systematicness, and the customer perspective. As he repeatedly emphasized in interviews, the furnishing business is so off - putting because it lacks a high degree of controllability, transparency, and consistency in the experience.

He said: "In 2007, I furnished my first home, and in 2021, my second. I found that this industry has not developed at all in 15 years."

This assessment is not an emotional complaint but a sober reflection from an industry perspective. Compared with the automotive, mobile phone, and household appliance industries, which have undergone several systemic restructurings in the past decade, the home decor industry is still almost at the stage of "labor deployment" and "budget management". In the traditional view, furnishing is a "custom - made service process" without a unified product definition and measurable delivery standards. Design drawings, construction methods, supply - chain cooperation, and delivery quality all depend on experience and negotiation, and the end result is often "frustrated customers and scolded providers".

Therefore, the founding of Habitat was obviously not aimed at the role of a "furnishing company". Shen Yanan did not want to enter a service market but a consumer sector whose industry logic was mis - placed: the improvement of the living environment.

From the beginning, Habitat was not a traditional "furnishing company". It is more of a product company that "manufactures end - products for living spaces" - with research and development, quality control, digital twin simulation, and a manufacturing process comparable to that in the automotive industry.

What it does is to re - conceive the furnishing business as a "product". Although this logic does not match the traditional view of the home decor industry, it becomes understandable if one follows the idea of an industrial product and considers the "home" as a product, a systematic integration of space and scenario.

The specific implementation is to reshape the hardware and software of the living space using an integrated and standardized system logic. It's not about 'how to furnish a home', but about 'how a home should be'.

The flagship product L32, released in 2025, perhaps makes this clearer. Habitat compares the home to an "intelligent space terminal", integrates the four environmental systems of air, water, electricity, and light, and uses artificial intelligence to combine intelligent inference with living behavior to create an "evolving home".

In short, what Habitat offers is not simply a "functional integration", but a systematic reshaping after the technical and structural reduction of the living experience. With the approach of "car - building", the consistency and controllability of product delivery are achieved, and uncertainty is minimized.

This is also the biggest difference from the traditional furnishing industry: One is a systematic project, the other is a manual adaptation. One relies on a process to ensure consistency, the other on the experience of "old hands" to avoid mistakes.

In this sense, Habitat doesn't just sell a furnishing offer, but has really created a "household operating system" for the first time.

This approach gives, in a way, the old concept of "home" a measurable, replicable, and further - developable modern industrial form. And this product concept has been lacking in the home decor industry in the past few decades.

So, when looking back at Shen Yanan's statement "build homes like cars", it may sound romantic or even inappropriate at first. But after three years, it has at least proven that homes can be designed as products. And if the product logic really penetrates this traditional industry, it may no longer be just home decor, but an industry that has long been misunderstood and needs to be re - defined.

Changes and constants after three years

After three years, Habitat has actually changed.

It has evolved from an experimental cross - over project to a brand for smart homes, which is represented in eight cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, and Hangzhou, has its own manufacturing capabilities and a sales network. From the first technical models and lifestyle concepts to the actual delivery of the first product L32 and the transition to the phase of intelligent further development of version 2.0. The most important success metric: It has completed the first closed cycle from idealism to commercial reality.

All this didn't happen overnight. It is not based on Internet marketing strategies but on a steady approach that is inspired by the philosophy of industrial products: product logic first, systemic standards as the basis, and the focus on the customer experience. Habitat has not made blockbuster offers and has not launched massive advertising campaigns, but it has achieved an unexpectedly high level of recognition and attention in the industry. In the volatile year 2025 of the home decor industry, it has proven itself like pure gold, the higher the heat, the stronger its character.

The biggest change may come from the founder Shen Yanan himself. At first, he mainly talked about "methodology": How to promote the consistency of product delivery through technological accessibility, how to eliminate aesthetic discrimination through equal - rights design, and how to restructure the furnishing industry through system integration. But on the occasion of the third anniversary, he talks mostly about "trust" and "cognitive costs".

As a new species without historical precedents, the concept of "intelligent living space terminal" has to reshape the customers' perception of "home": It is neither the traditional "luxurious furnishing" nor a "combination of smart household appliances", but a systematic concept where the space itself is the product. There is a huge gap from technical feasibility to customer acceptance and ordering. A new product category has no existing markets to rely on and no competitors to draw inspiration from. It takes a lot of time to shape the market perception.

"At first, we thought it was the most difficult to build the homes. Later, we found that it is the most difficult to convince the customers that it is worth it," admitted Shen Yanan. He realized that the real challenge of a new product category is often not the technical difficulty but the customers' willingness to re - inform themselves.

Another important change was the arrival of Yan Jia, a partner and COO. If Shen Yanan stands for the technical system logic, Yan Jia brings industry experience and organizational maturity.

She worked for many years on the front - line in companies such as Boloni and Ai Kong Jian and witnessed the development of the furnishing industry from "custom - made design" through "package solutions 1.0" to the current phase of "package solutions 2.0", which focuses on delivery efficiency and scenario integration. From her perspective, the traditional furnishing industry has reached an efficiency limit, and Habitat's approach exactly hits the transition point to a "product - based overall solution".

"If the first phase targeted construction workers and the second phase targeted package selection, then the third phase will target product development, intelligence, and brand communication," Yan Jia told 36Kr.

But despite all these changes, there were also things that didn't change.

The core is the "first principle" that Habitat has not changed from the beginning: A "happy home" for customers, a space that offers beautiful relationships, naturalness, elegance, health, and comfort.

This original idea has not changed despite reality. It sounds idealistic, but it runs through the design logic of L32. From the open - kitchen design to the retention of the home theater to the emotion - regulation algorithm of the lighting system, every detail silently answers the question: What kind of living experience do Chinese families really need?

Even in the design of the air system, Habitat doesn't just strive for maximum parameters but chooses a combination of self - adaptive regulations and AI algorithms to create a "sensitively different" feeling of comfort. And in the water system, details such as the child - cold - protection function, filter inspection, temperature regulation, and UV disinfection are not based on simple "technology accumulation", but on the understanding of real usage scenarios in families.

Shen Yanan said in an internal notice: "Of course, we strive for efficiency and growth, but our starting point is always: Is this home a place where one feels comfortable?" These words are all the more important in 2025, when the market is highly volatile and customers' trust is lost.

And it is precisely this motivation of "designing not for delivery but for life itself" that forms the unique value basis of the brand Habitat. On platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Zhihu, customers are starting to share their experiences independently, from the comfort of the air system to the improvement of sleep quality through lighting regulation to the reaction of children to the water purification system. Everything revolves around the keywords "safe", "worthwhile", and "livable".

This user - generated content (UGC) may not be as impressive at first glance as official data, but it forms the subtlest and most irreplaceable brand perceptions from the real lives of customers.

How many more three - year cycles until the "ideal Habitat"?

Today, Habitat still faces great challenges. Given the declining consumer inclination, furnishing is still not a "frequent purchase decision - field". In an industry where trust is exhausted, customers are naturally suspicious of "furnishing companies". And a new species that positions itself as "smart living" has to struggle in a market without reference points with higher mediation costs and difficulties in closing sales.

For example, after the official presentation of L32, there was a clear split in customer perception - Is it a high - quality furnishing offer? A smart home offer? Or a super - luxurious product? This unclear definition exactly shows the dual nature of a new product category: If you are unique, you have to explain everything on your own.

But precisely this "from zero to one" positioning gives Habitat the chance to start the next decade.

With the development of the smart home concept from "function accumulation" to "system integration", consumers are also moving from the passive... (The text seems to be incomplete here)