Ausländer schnappen sich chinesische "Wunderwaffen" in Hektik, und einige Händler verdienen jährlich hundert Millionen Euro mit einem einzigen Produkt.

A country house might be the dream of many people. However, in Europe and America, it costs a lot of money to maintain the yard.

Firstly, mowing the lawn is a necessary task. Take the United States as an example: On average, a family mows the lawn 24 times a year. If you hire workers to mow the lawn each time, it costs about 90 US dollars each time. Thus, the annual cost amounts to 2,160 US dollars (about 15,380 yuan).

Secondly, shoveling snow is also a rather annoying task. In parts of the United States and Canada, it is a fixed rule of the neighborhoods or even the government to regularly shovel snow during winter and after snowfalls. If homeowners do not shovel the snow within the prescribed time, they can be fined or even prosecuted. The price for hiring people to shovel snow is at least a few hundred US dollars.

Thirdly, maintaining the swimming pool in summer is also costly. The pool walls are usually cleaned about twice a month. In Europe and America, the average fee for manual pool cleaning is relatively high and the cost - effectiveness ratio is low. According to a statistic from the American company Lawnstarter, pool owners spend an average of 1,432 US dollars (about 10,200 yuan) per year on pool maintenance.

Driven by the global wave of intelligent applications, Chinese robot manufacturers are no longer satisfied with cleaning indoor spaces, but are looking at the vast outdoor world - the yards of families in Europe and America.

With the maturity of cross - border e - commerce platforms and the advantages of the supply chain, a series of yard robots quickly emerged, whose core functions are "pool cleaning, lawn mowing and snow shoveling". They have become the new "necessary equipment" for middle - class families in Europe and America. They not only solve the problems of high labor costs and heavy physical burden, but also redefine the way of yard maintenance with "high cost - effectiveness ratio + high intelligence".

Chinese intelligent yard cleaning devices - represented by the "three yard helpers" lawn mower, snow - shoveling robot and pool - cleaning robot - are penetrating into the consumer landscape of people in Europe and America.

Snow shoveling and lawn mowing - sources of annoyance for Europeans and Americans

A Chinese company from Shenzhen solves everything at once, with an annual sales volume of 200 million yuan achieved by a single product

"If you search for snow - shoveling robots on the consumer online platforms in Europe and America, you will basically only find our products," said Cao Limeng, co - founder of Hanyang Technology, to the newspaper "Tianxia Wangshang". This company based in Shenzhen is currently one of the few in the world that mass - produces fully automatic snow - shoveling robots. Its greater goal is to create an integrated yard robot system with a "universal main unit + modular add - on parts".

The product logic of Hanyang Technology is based on an insight into the needs of yard life in Europe and America - lawn mowing and snow shoveling not only improve the comfortable life, but are also mandatory regulations of the community and national laws. "If you don't shovel the snow within the prescribed time, you can be sued," said Cao Limeng.

In view of these application scenarios, Hanyang Technology developed the modular, multi - functional consumer yard robot Yarbo in 2022. With the architecture of "1 main unit + N function modules", it has expanded the application scenarios from the original snow - shoveling task to more than 20 types of yard maintenance needs such as lawn mowing and leaf blowing.

This automated equipment and the modular solution fully meet the urgent needs of the market in Europe and America, where labor costs are high and efficiency is relatively low.

In the past, traditional yard equipment was mostly "heavy machinery" with simple functions and large storage space requirements. "Such products are too cumbersome. We don't want users to spend their time and money on equipment maintenance instead of yard maintenance," said Cao Limeng. Hanyang Technology has chosen a more forward - looking path - a universal main unit + interchangeable modules.

According to her description, users only need to buy one main unit and can then realize various functions such as snow shoveling, lawn mowing, leaf blowing and salt spreading by exchanging the modules. This design solution not only reduces the costs and storage space requirements for users, but also conforms to the original goal of "maintaining the yard, not the equipment".

In terms of product performance, the snow - shoveling robot of Hanyang Technology supports fully automatic operation without human intervention and can handle snow cleaning under extremely cold environmental conditions. The lawn - mowing function has a design that directly returns the mowed grass to the ground, so no collection and disposal are required.

In 2023, Hanyang started delivering its products to consumers. Its first product, the yard robot Yarbo, then had an average selling price of about 5,000 US dollars (about 35,600 yuan) per unit for the combination of the main unit and modules. After the pre - sale action in the prepayment method in the first year, it received more than 6,000 orders from customers. This means that it achieved an annual sales volume of over 200 million yuan with just one product.

And the strong growth trend of these multi - functional yard robots continues - Cao Limeng said that a three - to four - fold increase in sales is expected this year. The main customers are middle - class families between 35 and 60 years old.

"However, in the development curve of every To - C hardware category, the strong upswing usually occurs between the 8th and 9th year." Although Hanyang Technology is already a billion - level consumer brand overseas, the yard robot as a whole is still in the market cultivation phase and is far from reaching the take - off point for the upswing.

But she believes that the path of modular applications is a very good commercial route for Chinese robot manufacturers. This essentially means that the company proposes a "holistic solution" for the yard area - it is no longer satisfied with breakthroughs in individual functions, but tries to build an expandable and iterable intelligent yard ecosystem.

Annual savings of thousands of yuan in pool cleaning:

Chinese robots start a "cost - effectiveness revolution" in Europe

The highly specialized market of pool cleaning has been closely watched by investors.

In February this year, the underwater cleaning robot company Shenzhen Siaotuo Technology Co., Ltd. completed a Series A + financing of about 70 million yuan. The investors are local industrial companies and the listed company Jierong Co., Ltd. and others.

This technology company founded in Shenzhen in 2021 has become one of the top 5 brands in the field of pool cleaning robots in China in less than three years. Its success overseas is largely due to the accurate identification of the problems in pool cleaning and the effective integration of platform resources.

Pool cleaning is a common and costly maintenance event in European and American families. According to the market data of Siaotuo, there are more than 28 million private swimming pools worldwide, and nearly half of them still rely on manual cleaning. The cost of a single cleaning usually exceeds 100 US dollars. Machine - based cleaning is still in the initial stage with "cable operation, rigid travel path and low intelligence".

In view of this market gap, Siaotuo has chosen "technological cost - effectiveness" as the entry point into this special application area.

Allen, the person in charge of overseas market development at Siaotuo, told the newspaper "Tianxia Wangshang": "Firstly, in terms of quality: Our main product CrabPro has technologies such as brushless motors, wall - climbing function and interchangeable batteries, which enable pool cleaning in different scenarios. Secondly, in terms of price: Thanks to the subsidies of the 'Brand Market Entry Program' of AliExpress, the actual selling price can be kept below 300 US dollars. In comparison, international similar products generally cost more than 1,100 US dollars, and most of them still need to be operated with cables, which is quite complicated. This has helped us successfully penetrate the European market. Currently, more than 70% of our orders in Europe come from the AliExpress platform."

"Of course, we don't conduct a price comparison by simply stacking batteries or reducing costs, but we reconstruct the technology based on the first principle." Allen gave an example that the team increased the service life of the planetary gearbox from 500 hours to 2,000 hours through two years of research, adapted the USBL acoustic positioning system originally developed for exploration for civilian use and reduced the costs. The design of the interchangeable battery also extends the service life of the entire device, so that users don't have to replace the entire device because of the aging battery.

In his opinion, the self - developed technology not only supports the extremely favorable prices of the brand, but also enables the performance to exceed traditional products.

In terms of logistics and order fulfillment, the "Overseas Fulfillment" model of AliExpress also supports the company. Pool robots belong to high - value and large - sized goods and are very sensitive to logistics time and costs. By delivering goods to overseas warehouses in Europe in advance, Siaotuo not only shortens the delivery time to a few days, but also reduces the costs of order fulfillment, so that it can maintain its cost - effectiveness advantage.

The market data also confirms the potential of this business field. According to a report from "The Business Research Company", the global market for pool robots was 980 million US dollars in 2024 and is expected to rise to over 1.94 billion US dollars by 2029, corresponding to an average annual growth of 14.7%. Allen said that the company next plans to develop the Australian market through AliExpress and use the seasonal complementarity between the Southern Hemisphere and the markets in Europe and America to achieve stable global sales growth.

The success of Chinese pool robots represents a new model for the overseas expansion of Chinese large - scale intelligent household appliances - instead of relying on pure price competition, they achieve "performance superiority + price sensitivity" through technological reconstruction and cooperation with platforms in specific scenarios. While pool robots are changing from "optional consumer goods" to "necessary goods for middle - class families" in the European and American markets, Chinese brands have already taken the lead in this process through the rapid responsiveness of the supply chain and the advantages of e - commerce channels.

The "Three Big Items" of yard robots go overseas

What strong - growth opportunities are there still?

Although Siaotuo and Hanyang Technology enter different specialized markets, they together outline a typical path for the overseas expansion of Chinese intelligent hardware: Starting from the problems in specific scenarios, supported by self - developed technologies, using the cross - border e - commerce platform as a springboard and driven by the two engines of "cost - effectiveness + intelligence", they penetrate the market.

In view of the market situation, the demand for yard automation in Europe and America is on the verge of a breakthrough. On the one hand, the aging population and high labor costs in Europe and America inevitably drive the trend of "machines instead of humans". On the other hand, the maturity of intelligent hardware and the improvement of e - commerce channels provide Chinese brands with the shortest path directly to consumers. Platforms such as AliExpress and Amazon not only provide traffic and logistics support, but also help Chinese companies increase value from simple commodity sales to a brand through projects such as the "Brand Market Entry Program".

In terms of product form, yard robots are evolving from "functional devices" to "intelligent devices". The CrabPro of Siaotuo supports underwater mapping and communication, and the main unit of Hanyang Technology has the ability to adapt to different scenarios. These functions go beyond the basic cleaning functions and develop into "intelligent management nodes for households".

Kenny, an engineer who has worked in the application - oriented robot industry for many years, told the newspaper "Tianxia Wangshang"