The growth exceeds 300%, and the lawn mower robot of Ninebot sells extremely well in Europe and America | Hardcore Analysis
Author | Huang Nan
Editor | Yuan Silai
Mowing is an extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive task. In European and American countries, the refinement of the lawn in the courtyard represents the image of the family. Driven by the demands of automated operations and a high-quality life, more intelligent lawn mowing robots are gradually replacing traditional garden tools and becoming mainstream.
The sales of lawn mowing robots are closely related to seasonal changes. In the past six months, with the arrival of the lawn growth season, the sales of lawn mowing robots have shown a continuous growth trend, bringing good returns to many pioneers in China and injecting a boost into the market.
The Q3 performance data of Ninebot shows that the total revenue in the third quarter was 4.239 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 34.75%, and the net profit was 374 million yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 139.07%; among them, the revenue of the lawn mowing robot business was 145 million yuan. In the first three quarters of the year, the cumulative income of Ninebot's lawn mowing robots reached 595 million yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 379.28%.
Ninebot's Q3 financial report in 2024 (Source / Official website)
In fact, lawn mowing robots are still a newly emerging field with technical and product barriers, and the practical scene applications are finely dispersed; for example, the design and appearance of the solutions for European courtyards are not applicable to the lawns in North American countries. This has led to the situation where many domestic entrepreneurs previously believed that the lawn mowing robot track, which has technical advantages, precise products and development prospects, is not favored in the capital market.
It was not until the beginning of this year that the overseas sales of lawn mowing robots under brands such as Ninebot, Ecovacs, Songling, and Dreame have increased significantly, with order quantities reaching tens of thousands of units.
According to predictions from institutions such as MarketResearch, the global market size of lawn mowing robots may reach 1.5 billion US dollars in 2024, and by 2029, its market size is expected to grow to 3.9 billion US dollars. Correspondingly, domestic lawn mowing robot enterprises are accelerating the pace of entering overseas channels.
Lawn Mowing Robots Expected to Sell Over 100,000 Units Annually
Specific data shows that Ninebot's revenue in the first three quarters of this year was 10.905 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 44.90%, exceeding the total revenue of 10.222 billion yuan for the entire year of 2023. Among them, in the third quarter, the company achieved double growth in revenue and net profit, which is mainly due to the high growth rate of its intelligent electric two-wheeler business.
The financial report shows that the sales volume of Ninebot's electric two-wheelers in the third quarter was 937,600 units, with an income of 2.592 billion yuan, and the sales volume in the Chinese region accounted for 936,300 units; a total of 361,200 self-owned brand retail scooters were sold, with a business income of 693 million yuan; the sales volume of all-terrain vehicles was 5,874 units, and the sales income was 259 million yuan.
The revenue of the lawn mowing robot business was 145 million yuan. At the investor relations event, Ninebot stated that the performance of the lawn mowing robot in Q3 slightly exceeded the company's expectations. The main reasons are: The channel expansion work has achieved good results; through the improvement of popularity, it has attracted more consumers' attention; the market's acceptance of intelligent borderless lawn mowing robots has increased, and the product penetration rate has continued to rise.
According to Ninebot's prediction, the lawn mowing robot business in the fourth quarter is expected to perform better than that in the third quarter. At the same time, the team will also make full preparations for the sales of the next mowing season.
Previously, the common lawn mowing robots in the market can be roughly divided into two types: buried wire type and borderless type. The buried wire type lawn mowing robot needs to bury the magnetic induction wire in advance. During the operation process, the robot can determine the path direction by sensing the magnetic induction wire; this solution is complex to deploy, has a high cost, the robot needs to rotate and mow within a fixed frame, the mowing efficiency is not high, and there are problems such as high dimensional difficulty. In the past two years, it has gradually been replaced by the borderless intelligent lawn mowing robot.
Compared with the traditional lawn mower, the advantage of the borderless lawn mowing robot is that it can automatically complete the mowing task without human intervention or supervision.
For example, the Navimow lawn mowing robot i series launched by Ninebot's subsidiary "Weilan Continent" is priced at less than 999 euros, equivalent to about 7,700 yuan. It adopts the RTK + vision technical path, is equipped with a self-developed positioning system, AI-assisted mapping and partition mowing management functions, and can be adapted to various courtyard scenes. The mowing efficiency is more efficient and the use experience is better. Therefore, after the product was released, it quickly showed a small explosive trend in Europe, and the penetration rate increased significantly.
Navimow Lawn Mowing Robot i Series (Source / Navimow User Community)
Because the sales of lawn mowing robots are closely related to seasonal changes, the peak season is generally from April to October each year, that is, the lawn growth rate in spring and summer is accelerated, and people's demand for lawn cleaning and maintenance in the courtyard is more urgent. This is reflected in the performance of various online e-commerce platforms and offline channels, and it can be seen that the user's search and inquiry volume has increased significantly.
According to the public data of Amazon and other platforms, in the first quarter of 2024, the market share of Ninebot and Songling's lawn mowing robots was about 10% - 11%. After entering April and May, the market share of the intelligent lawn mowing robots of these two brands can reach 51%.
This means that enterprises must make production and stocking preparations in advance to avoid missing the optimal sales cycle due to out of stock during the peak season for mass shipments.
At present, intelligent lawn mowing robots still have a large growth space in the short term. Based on the public data of Ninebot, it is estimated that in the first quarter of 2024, its Navimow intelligent lawn mowing robot sold a total of 33,100 units with a sales volume of 180 million yuan; the sales volume in the second quarter was 270 million yuan, and the sales volume was not disclosed. According to the conservative calculation, it is more than 40,000 units; combined with the 145 million yuan income in the third quarter and the trend prediction in the fourth quarter, the annual sales of Ninebot's lawn mowing robots are expected to exceed 100,000 units.
Navimow Lawn Mowing Robot (Source / Navimow User Community)
Offline Channels Accelerate Expansion
Unlike some hardware products that focus on online sales platforms, most orders for this category of lawn mowing robots come from offline; the main reason is that the unit price of lawn mowing robots is relatively high, and the difference in the use experience is relatively large. Therefore, users are more inclined to try them in the store before purchasing, with a short transaction process and more guaranteed after-sales service.
This sales characteristic reflected in the specific market end also determines the importance of laying out the channel network.
"It can be seen that for the same category of lawn mowing robots, some brands are more smoothly and grow faster in the European region. The main reason is that the European channels are more open, but the competition is also greater." Zheng Jie, an investor focusing on the fields of intelligent hardware and robots, told Yingke, "Because there are many European countries, the offline channels are dispersed. Making good products with heart and better localization are the basis. At the same time, whoever can seize the high-quality service providers and distributors first will have an inherent advantage in the local area."
According to the public data of the General Administration of Customs and others, among the number of lawn mowers exported by China to the European market, Germany is the largest export market, followed by the United Kingdom, and the United States ranks third.
Among them, the popularity of this category in the region will directly affect the willingness of channel agents to undertake. "For example, lawn mowing robots are very popular in Northern Europe and Central and Western Europe. At this time, you only need to explain to the channel the advantages of your own products and where they are better than others. But in some relatively unpopular countries, where the channel itself does not pay much attention to the category, the agent will combine telemarketing for evaluation, and the enthusiasm for contact is not so strong."
Zheng Jie disclosed to Yingke that some manufacturers have increased the overseas market team since the second half of the year and specialized in running channels on the front line to accelerate the layout of the offline sales network.
Currently, in terms of localization, since Ninebot's lawn mowing robot business went overseas, it has specially formed a team, such as the production and sales coordination team, which can regularly communicate with the domestic production team according to the front-line needs and quickly adjust the output; respond to the needs of users in different countries in a timely manner for services, and establish a Livechat mechanism in the APP, which can directly communicate with users from various countries at the first time, and at the same time form a customer service team in the core user market, etc.
Navimow Lawn Mowing Robot at Work (Source / Navimow User Community)
Due to the large demand differences in product technology and form in different regions, for example, European users pay more attention to the design sense and light weight, and the United States requires a relatively large volume of the lawn mowing machine due to the thick lawn grass species and higher mowing height, and the front yard lawn in North America is open, while the lawn in Europe is mainly in the backyard, etc. Therefore, enterprises are also required to provide a richer product line selection and make personalized adjustments for specific scenarios. This also means that there is still a lot of room for exploration in the product end of lawn mowing robots.
Overall, the growth trend of Ninebot's lawn mowing robot business in the third quarter reflects the increased demand and recognition of European and American users for using automated tools to maintain lawns and intelligent services.
According to the data prediction of Statista, from 2022 to 2032, the European lawn mowing robot will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10.3%, and by 2030, the European lawn mowing robot market size is expected to reach 662 million US dollars.
With the growth of users' demand for intelligent tools and the improvement of market penetration rate, intelligent lawn mowing robots are expected to enter a golden period of rapid expansion in the next few years.