Behind the fierce competition of Xiaomi and Huawei: Mobile phone protective cases can sell 1 billion yuan annually

As the Chinese smartphone market becomes increasingly saturated, the competition among mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi, Huawei, and Apple in the Chinese market is becoming increasingly fierce. Small mobile phone manufacturers such as Da Coke mobile phones have been eliminated. The former newcomer Hammer mobile phone has also been revealed to have lost 460 million yuan in one year and are struggling to survive.

The smartphone market has become the target of mobile phone giants. However, behind the fierce competition for smartphones, the market sales in half a year have reached 250 million units. Therefore, a group of entrepreneurs have taken a different approach, started business around the mobile phone market and discovered opportunities.

Liu Liang, CEO of Shenzhen Kuangzi Internet Co., Ltd., is such an entrepreneur. His direction is to make mobile phone protective cases.

The reason why Liu Liang chose this field is that he found that when Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun and Huawei Terminal Chairman Yu Chengdong released their flagship phones, they must have talked about three points: "While the performance of the phone is improved, how much thinner we are and how much lighter we are." In order to protect mobile phones, users will choose mobile phone protective cases, and most mobile phone covers on the market are very thick, which deviates from the original design intention of mobile phone designers, making mobile phones give people an imperfect touch after using the protective case. Unfortunately, mobile phone tycoons do not pay much attention to this.

It is precisely because of the keen sense of "do not do good deeds but not doing things", Shenzhen Button Internet Company has created an extremely thin mobile phone case called Button Plaster Film Mobile Phone Cover (Button 002 Ultra Thin Super Mobile Phone Cover) with a thickness of only 0.23MM, which is close to the thickness of A4 paper, which is very good in mobile phone case sales.

According to sales data released by JD.com, in the sales of JD.com crowdfunding mobile phone case in April 2016, the button plastic wrap mobile phone case won the first place in the country in crowdfunding of JD.com mobile phone case, with monthly sales exceeding 340,000. At present, this mobile phone case has been included in the self-operated product by JD.com.

According to an insider of JD.com, a "YS" brand mobile phone accessories achieved sales of over 100 million yuan on JD.com in 2015. With the orders of some accessories companies, the annual turnover can reach more than 1 billion yuan.

Liu Liang believes that some mobile phone cases in the "button" brand start from the hard demand of product consumers. If multiple models are developed and are deployed in the mainland and overseas markets, it is conservatively estimated that there will be no problem with sales of 300 million in 2017.

I have done external design of mobile phones for the former CEO of Apple's new project

In fact, before making buttoned mobile phone covers, Liu Liang owned his own design company - Shenzhen Galiver Design Company. In June 2015, the OBI smartphone project led by former Apple CEO John Scully was designed by Liu Liang, the team of CEO of Button Internet Company.

At that time, John Sculley and Apple's former industrial design director planned to establish a new brand around the world, mainly in the global mid-range market, so they traveled thousands of miles to find partners.

After layer by layer, they finally selected Xike Dexin Communication Technology Equipment Co., Ltd. from China's most powerful mobile phone company to cooperate.

It is precisely because of Galiver Design's unremitting efforts in design that it has achieved market leadership in the field of mobile phone design, making it the core external design team of Xike. Therefore, thanks to this trust, Xike fully entrusts Galiver Design to complete the design of one of the 5-inch smartphones, which OBI has released the global release of two mobile phones.

In the process of designing this product, especially when designing the side A-shell structure, Galiver's team encountered difficulties. Both mold molding and full-inclusive shrinkage on the side require extremely high design standards. Through repeated consideration and research on the structure, they finally completed this extremely difficult 0bi smartphone design, and successfully cast the mold and successfully launched it.

Another BLU super popular star phone recognized by Shenzhen's entire industry, Liu Liang's design inspiration came from the lyrics "The Pearl of the Orient" in Luo Dayou's song "The Pearl of the East", which designed a mobile phone with the concept of small bridges and flowing water. Unexpectedly, this mobile phone was "learned" by the industry, with sales volume reaching 30 million units, while "Li Kui"'s shipment volume was actually only 3 million units.

In fact, while working as a good design company, Liu Liang has already begun to get involved in the field of mobile phone cases. Among the buttons, the plastic wrap mobile phone case (button 002 extremely thin super mobile phone case) has invested nearly 2 million yuan, spending 8 sets of molds, and developed a thickness of only 0.23mm, with the first batch of foreign orders of 150,000.

Seeing that the overseas market feedback was good, Liu Liang began to try the crowdfunding model. Just at this time, Liu Liang met Wang Xiaosong, then vice president of JD Group and general manager of 3c business department through a friend at Tencent, and invited Shenzhen to go to Beijing for an interview.

At JD.com's headquarters, Liu Liang met Fang Yi, the then head of JD.com's self-operated mobile phone protection, and JD.com's Bubble Zhang Wenwen. Through an interview with Fang Yi, I met Cao Jianfeng, one of the 3C winners of JD.com crowdfunding, and tried to do JD.com crowdfunding.

After passing some columns of preparation. The button plastic wrap mobile phone cover (button 002 extremely thin super mobile phone cover) officially launched JD national crowdfunding on March 20, 2016.

In the short crowdfunding on April 20, the buttoned mobile phone protective case achieved sales of 345,000 yuan, ranking first in the country in terms of JD mobile phone case, which is the highest record in JD crowdfunding history, and thus jumped to JD's self-operated qualification.

The buttoned mobile phone protective case was officially launched on June 18, 2016. In the eve of the launch of iPhone 7, the overall online and offline sales of the buttoned mobile phone case are also very good.

Liu Liang began to focus on developing new technology products, and planned to sell 100 million button series products in 2017, Tmall and Taobao sales targets for 100 million, offline stores and overseas sales targets for 200 million, and ultimately achieve the goal of sales exceeding 300 million.

Liu Liang once earned nearly one million in college

Perhaps influenced by his parents who do business, Liu Liang had a strong interest in business since he was a child and was well versed in business.

In July 2004, Liu Liang was admitted to Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts with the first-place art major in the city. After entering university, Liu Liang continued to work hard, specializing in promoting and recruiting students for art training classes and studios. Liu Liang made the plan and then organized his classmates to negotiate with the plan. In just 9 days, Liu Liang made 17,000 yuan.

On October 15, 2005, "Super Girl" swept across the country. Many college students saw the excitement, but Liu Liang saw a good business opportunity.

Seeing that Super Girl was about to tour in Chongqing, Liu Liang had an idea. In order to plan and prepare, he first went to the Olympic Sports Center to inspect the terrain, and then organized six students from the same school in the first, second and third year of the same school to start making Super Girl posters.

I bought the KT board back, and with my understanding of beauty and good artistic inspiration, and with the help of the photos of Super Girl downloaded online, I will show each Super Girl image vividly and realistically. At the same time, they also made a small number of Super Girl souvenirs and bought back the glow stick and the light cylinder.

After preparing these, Liu Liang considered that some "fans" would come to book tickets very early and could not buy posters. When they entered the market, there were too many people busy grabbing the position and they didn't have time to buy them. So, on October 15th, they arrived at the Olympic Sports Center early.

Many "fans" liked the posters of their idols made by Liu Liang very much. The price ranged from 15 yuan to 20 yuan per piece, but later it was not enough to sell, and some people bought it for 30 yuan. The concert began and their posters were sold out.

After returning to school, Liu Liang paid his classmates a salary, counted the money in his pocket, and made a profit of nearly 10,000 yuan.

After a little trial, Liu Liang formed a team to focus on assembling computer consultants, wrote configurations for new students who came to register for computers, and helped to select and collect a certain commission. This allowed Liu Liang to gain 20 times the rate of wealth from the second semester of junior year to senior year.

Liu Liang also purchased a large number of trucks of purple clay teapots, and carefully redesigned the packaging of purple clay teapots through his own design session, which also made the entire product in short supply. Supermarkets near the school and various districts in Chongqing involved sales in points and other places.

By the time he graduated from his senior year, Liu Liang's net income reached nearly 1 million yuan. Liu Liang did not lose his studies and graduated with the first-class scholarship in the department.

Not only do you need to make a mobile phone case, but also a button electric car

Many of Liu Liang's entrepreneurial ideas are not all about pushing high and starting from a large market, but doing business in surrounding areas. So, why did Liu Liang make a buttoned mobile phone cover?

Liu Liang introduced that it was mainly due to his understanding of the perfection of the product. Liu Liang received professional art training since childhood and was very interested in the disassembly and assembly of some small industrial products. His dream was to combine art with life, so the university also chose the industrial design major.

In September 2014, when the iPhone 6 was launched, a good friend gave Liu Liang a phone protective case. Liu Liang bought a mobile phone protective case in the store, but found that the protective case was difficult to use, thick, hard material, inconvenient to press, and poor feel. And it turned yellow after using it for a while.

As a geek in technology products, Liu Liang feels responsible for doing a series of perfect mobile phone protection. So Liu Liang invested nearly 2 million yuan and spent about one and a half years to make one of the plastic wrap mobile phone cover protective covers (buttoned 002 extremely thin super mobile phone cover).

In October 2015, when the button plastic wrap mobile phone case was just developed, Liu Liang met with Shi Lirong, then CEO of ZTE. Shi Lirong said that after the R&D personnel saw it, they hoped to have a chance to cooperate. Shi Lirong also collected a button plastic wrap mobile phone protective case.

However, Liu Liang also has his own big dream. The future focus of Kuang's subsidiary is on three aspects, namely, taking industrial products as the main line and radiating to three industries.

1. Shenzhen Galiver Design Company, a subsidiary of Kuangzi, continues to help serve customers to create hot products that lead the market.

2. The design platform being prepared to create a higher-end brand design platform for PC and mobile Internet, seamlessly connecting design suppliers (global design companies and design masters) with design demanders (design demand companies and design demand individuals).

3. The QUN Internet Co., Ltd., established in March 2015, continues to develop technological products, mainly involved in mobile phone accessories, smart homes, electric vehicles (environmental, healthy, portable departures).

Especially for mobile phone cases and electric vehicles, the buttons already have core technologies and patents, so they will increase investment in these two areas.

According to Liu Liang, Kuang Electric Vehicle has formed a 20-person R&D team, led by Liu Liang and his classmate Hai Qing. Lead the development of 1-2-person mini smart electric vehicles and 5-person smart electric cars (flying wing doors).

Liu Liang said that if time went back to the past, no one knew that Alibaba would become today's Alibaba, and no one would have expected that Xiaomi would grow into today's "huge" "Xiaomi".

When naming his company, Liu Liang had already given it the character of "do not do good deeds without doing anything", and as long as it is an "interesting" product, he was full of interest.

Liu Liang often jokes that Jobs' "Apple" is not a big one, but maintaining a curiosity about new things and a "craftsman spirit" of striving for excellence has made today's "big-mono"-like "Apple".

Liu Liang firmly believes that he will definitely run today's "small buttons" into a "big button", or a bunch of "buttons" that are very small but extremely interesting. He said that this day would not be too far away.