Hard Krypton Exclusive Interview | Dialogue with iRobot: The robotic vacuum cleaner industry has reached a moment of course correction

After years of absence, iRobot has once again stood on the stage of the International Consumer Electronics Show.

At the IFA exhibition in Berlin in early September, iRobot released its new flagship Roomba 875, and reserved a large number of exhibition areas for an unnamed dual-unit mother-child concept robot. This return to the world's top exhibition is officially defined as a signal of "bringing the brand back to the global stage": "This brand is back with better products and a better posture."

This round of return carries a clear meaning of self-correction. In the past few years, iRobot has not left a good impression on the outside world: it holds more than 3,000 patents but has not implemented them for a long time, uses a single platform for many years without iteration, and is labeled as "conservative". In the view of the interviewed person in charge, the industry has also reached a node that needs rectification - the global average penetration rate of sweeping robots is only just over 10%, but the industry is constantly competing for single parameters, leading consumers further and further away.

Some data have verified the value of this rectification. iRobot's market share in the Japanese market has risen from about 40% at the beginning of the year to 72% last month. At this IFA exhibition, dealers from a single European country have prepared an investment budget of 50 million euros for iRobot products.

Hard Krypton talked with Li Hao, Co-CEO of iRobot, at the IFA site for nearly an hour, covering development strategies, product concepts, business strategies, changes in Chinese consumers, channel competition and team collaboration, to discuss the new thinking of an old brand in the new era. The following is the edited and sorted interview transcript.

Return to International Exhibitions

Hard Krypton: What is the strategic significance of your participation in IFA this time for iRobot? What signals do you want to convey through this exhibition?

Li Hao: This exhibition has two main meanings for us. One is the product release itself, the new flagship 875 that was just launched yesterday, and the concept robot making its debut for the first time; the other is that this brand has not appeared in various international exhibitions for a long time, so participating in the exhibition itself is a signal to bring the brand back to the global stage - to tell everyone that we are back, this brand is now back with better products and a better posture.

In terms of product philosophy, whether it is the flagship 875 or the concept product, the core idea can be summed up in one sentence: do not compete for parameters, return to the product itself. For consumers, no matter how fancy the functions are described, in the end there are only two points: how is the cleaning power? With good cleaning power, is the coverage sufficient? We want to truly improve the cleaning ability and coverage ability, and give consumers an experience that returns to the product itself.

Hard Krypton: Coming back to face consumers with a brand new posture, what kind of story do you want to tell them?

Li Hao: The difference I want to talk about is built on an unchanging vision. I have always agreed with iRobot's vision from the very beginning: let robots do the things that humans should not do and do not want to do, liberate people, return time to consumers, and let them do the things they think are really important.

What needs to change? More than ten years ago, iRobot completed the first major revolution in this industry - from "no household robots" to letting the public know about household robots. Now what I want to do is the second revolution: there are household robots now, but consumers are not completely satisfied with them, and the penetration rate has not gone up. What I want to do is to make household robots become products that are as popular as large household appliances and truly rooted in the hearts of users.

This is why I repeatedly emphasize getting rid of gimmicks and returning to experience. Look at washing machines and TVs, consumers know exactly what they want when they buy them, but this is not the case for sweeping robots - the industry is competing for suction, marking 30KPa, 40KPa, 50KPa, which will mislead consumers into thinking that that is the cleaning power. In fact, people in the industry all know that is not the case. What consumers lack now is the cognition of "what represents cleaning power", and we hope to bring this cognition back.

Rely on Systematic Combination Instead of Single Parameter

Hard Krypton: Landing in the European market with a new brand image, what is the real difference between us and other competitors? What is reflected in the core competitiveness?

Li Hao: Back to two points that consumers can understand: one is stronger cleaning power, which is the core value of the product; the other is coverage - no matter how strong the cleaning power is, if it cannot reach certain places, it is equivalent to no cleaning.

Especially for Chinese consumers, the unit price they pay for sweeping robots is relatively high, which shows that people are willing to pay for this, so we must not disappoint consumers. If consumers find that the sweeping robot is not worth buying after they take it home, they will no longer be willing to buy it, and the penetration rate will never go up.

Hard Krypton: Let's talk about 875, as the flagship product you brought this time, what does it want to convey?

Li Hao: The 875 is developed based on the philosophy I just mentioned. It has all the intelligent performance and motion performance that a flagship should have, I will not go into details, and focus on the most valuable points for consumers.

First, dry cleaning. High suction is not completely useless, but it is a balance between airflow and suction. We don't care how many parameters are marked, but find the best balance point between airflow and suction, so that the sweeping robot has the best cleaning ability on the carpet. After finding the balance, there is another problem - the airflow will be lost, because the sweeping robot will not be completely attached to the ground. How to reduce airflow loss? Rely on the design of the entire active sealing device. The sealing system of 875 can greatly reduce airflow loss, and the carpet dust removal rate is basically comparable to leading vacuum cleaner brands, rather than comparing with other sweeping robots.

Previously, everyone thought this point was only important for Europe and the United States, but now China is also included - the current decoration trend in China is Italian style, and a very important element in Italian style decoration is the large carpet in the living room. Chinese consumers originally have a weak awareness of carpets, many people are struggling with "whether to buy a carpet" stuck at "how to clean it", we hope to let 875 handle this problem.

Second, wet cleaning. This is the most concerned point for Chinese and European consumers, especially oil stains are very common in Chinese families. The best way to clean oil stains is common sense: detergent plus high temperature. What we do is to use hot mist and cleaning solution to melt the oil stains, and then rely on a strong roller to complete the "cleaning ability as good as a scrubber". I will not deliberately emphasize "I give 300RPM", but the rotation speed is really critical - the sweeping robot only passes the ground for a limited time, high rotation speed means more wiping times; plus the largest roller contact area in the industry, the friction length per unit time is the longest, heavy stains can be truly wiped clean on the basis of being melted.

You will find that most of the time it is a combination. Like the three-stage cleaning that iRobot first created and all competitors are using now - the side brush gathers first, the middle brush sweeps up, and the fan sucks it in - dry cleaning is like this, and we also make wet cleaning into a multi-stage combination. We do not rely on a single parameter, but rely on a systematic combination to maximize the cleaning power.

Hard Krypton: From your product and technology background, what should a good sweeping robot look like?

Li Hao: Four points: cleaning power + coverage + intelligence + maintenance-free. Cleaning power and coverage solve the problem of "you have to get the work done"; intelligence solves the future direction, on the one hand, it assists the first two points, for example, using AI to do multiple re-mopping recognition, on the other hand, it evolves towards the direction of service robot and home manager, which is the strategic value of intelligence; the last is maintenance-free - in addition to wanting to try new things, consumers want to be worry-free, and want a mature and stable large household appliance.

Look at washing machines, TVs, refrigerators, very few of them need maintenance. When can the sweeping robot reach this level? When I look at any product plan or technical plan, I will ask: does this plan fall into the four points, does it solve the core problem in it? If not, then maybe what you are doing is a false proposition.

The Possibility of Sweeping Robots Replacing Scrubbers Emerges

Hard Krypton: A large area of the exhibition is dedicated to concept products this time, what does it mean in your product line?

Li Hao: Let's still talk from cleaning power and coverage. The 875 has made a lot of breakthroughs in wet cleaning, but there is still room for further improvement in cleaning power, and this space requires extra volume. Why can the handheld scrubber easily suck up noodles? Because it is long and can be equipped with a very strong fan, which was difficult for sweeping robots to achieve before. If we make the sweeping robot a little taller, will it have such ability? The main body of this concept robot's mother unit reserves space for further greatly improving the cleaning power - I will make the body taller to accommodate a more powerful fan.

 iRobot Concept Robot

There is a very key clever design here: the floor area of the mother unit is no different from the base station of the current sweeping robot. We have done research, for most space-sensitive families, what people lack is not vertical space, but the projection floor area. So it does not occupy your extra land, but opens up the possibility of greatly improving the cleaning power - it is equivalent to a mobile base station with stronger cleaning ability.

The second is the child unit, whose core function is to solve the coverage problem. There are two scenarios: one is split-level floors, which is currently unsolvable for all sweeping robots, our solution can bring the child unit to different floors; the other is the "table leg problem" you mentioned - when people do tests, the dining table is placed neatly, and the space looks very large, but in real life, the stools will be pushed back under the table after eating, the stool legs and table legs are crossed together, no algorithm can enumerate this possibility, at this time it depends on two things: the adaptability of the algorithm to different scenarios, and whether there is the best spatial adaptability at the physical level. What the child unit wants to provide is better trafficability than any single robot, to complete the "last mile" of coverage.

For example, for a family, if the global average coverage rate is assumed to be 80%, can we achieve 90% or 95% through smaller and thinner bodies, mother-child units, and higher-level obstacle crossing? On this basis, we can do more in-depth cleaning, which is the value of the mother unit. So Roomba Duo is not a product for edge scenarios, it is a product that pushes the system capability of "cleaning power + coverage" to a higher level.

Hard Krypton: The demonstration of sucking noodles in the exhibition hall is quite novel.

Li Hao: Sucking noodles itself is indeed an eye-catching display, few people will suck noodles in daily life, but its core is to highlight the heavy stain cleaning ability. Sucking noodles is a performance display commonly used by scrubbers, which was not available in the sweeping robot industry before, because the heavy stain cleaning ability of sweeping robots has not reached this level. Now we have made the sweeping robot have the same cleaning power as the scrubber, and the coverage can reach the corners that originally required manual cleaning - the possibility that the sweeping robot truly replaces the scrubber has emerged, consumers do not need to buy so many products, a worry-free machine can complete all the work.

The Core is to Achieve Localization in Each Region

Hard Krypton: From the perspective of overseas markets, as a mature international brand like iRobot, what experience do you have in brand operation?

Li Hao: The most critical point is that you have to understand consumers in each overseas region - this is consistent with my product idea, returning to the consumer perspective. The term "going global" you just used is actually relatively general, the world is not only China and foreign countries, there are many countries, the core is to achieve localization in each region.

Take Japan as an example, the market share in Japan was about 40% at the beginning of the year, and it has returned to 72% last month. How to achieve it? From products to marketing, we must understand what Japanese consumers really want. Japanese families have small spaces, and consumers care about small enough space occupation - this consumer perception is shared by everyone, but think one step further: what is the so-called smallness, is it thin or small in diameter? What Japanese consumers lack is projection space, so what you should care about is small diameter. So we have thoroughly promoted the concept of "mini" in Japan: the basic model with a diameter of 247mm is mini, and there is also a "large mini" with a diameter of 298mm. The same product in other countries, mini is not the focus of promotion at all, the selling point is cleaning performance; in Japan, small diameter has become the core pain point.

The same is true for Europe. There are many old houses and split-level structures in Europe, so the value point of Roomba Duo "placing the child unit on the split-level floor" makes sense. But if all the houses in China are large refined apartments in the future, when you tell Chinese consumers about split-level floors, people may not even know what split-level floors are. So localization must be the most critical point - we have strong local channels, local teams, and local understanding, which is a very valuable asset.

Hard Krypton: Why continue to use the iRobot brand? What advantages does this brand have?

Li Hao: iRobot itself is a very great brand with many future possibilities, there is no need to make changes. First of all, it has a very loyal user base and global brand awareness; secondly, to say something that may be counterintuitive - the recognition of the word "Roomba" among consumers is actually higher than that of iRobot, people in the United States will say "I use a Roomba" instead of "I use an iRobot".

Then why do we insist on the iRobot brand? You used to have iPhone, iPad, iWatch, but in the future, I think none of these "i" series products can surpass iRobot. We will not always focus only on the cleaning track, the name iRobot itself has great future possibilities, what we have to do is to consolidate and improve the value of this brand, and let consumers realize it.

As for the issue of "low-key", I don't think iRobot is that low-key, it just seemed low-key in the past years because of the operation mode. Now we need to let everyone recognize the brand's philosophy, values, and our truly user-centered part through better products and better information transmission.

Hard Krypton: What new changes have taken place among Chinese consumers in recent years?

Li Hao: There are two levels. First, consumer cognition is returning to rationality. China's sweeping robot market accounts for a very large proportion globally, but Chinese consumers' understanding of this category is relatively late and the penetration rate is also low. In the past few years, people were in a very tolerant and willing state to try new things, and paid a lot for their attempts. Now consumers have a more thorough understanding of "cleaning itself", and begin to