From the perspective of market share, only 19% of users choose pool robots, compared with various types of pool cleaning methods such as inhalation side cleaners and automatic pressure side cleaners, pool cleaning robots are on the eve of moving from niche to mass. Analogous to the sweeping robot track, once the product breaks through the bottleneck of intelligence and ease of use, the product penetration rate will rapidly increase.
It is reported that swimming pool robot company Xingmai Innovation(Chinese：星迈创新) has completed an angel round of financing jointly invested by Shunwei Capital(Chinese：顺为资本), Source Code Capital(Chinese：源码资本), Hill House Investment(Chinese：高瓴创投), Joomlass(Chinese：云沐资本) and Wuzhong Financial Holding(Chinese：吴中金控), with a financing amount of nearly RMB200 million, with Joomlass acting as the exclusive strategic financial advisor. Proceeds raised in this round will be mainly used for product development, supply chain system construction and brand building.
As an industry that has survived for nearly 40 years, the pool robot industry has a relatively small number of players and a high degree of market concentration; and because traditional brands are far from the centre of the supply chain and the industry lacks competition, the product innovation of head companies is severely lacking, resulting in no breakthrough innovation in product functionality over the course of more than 20 years of industry development.
According to public data, the global private pool cleaning robot shipments of the three companies at the top of the market in 2021 accounted for 48%, 25% and 14% of the market share.At present, the industry's mainstream head brands mainly sell wired products, the cleaning effect and intelligence level have more room for improvement. The existing pool robot products have poor perception ability, can not independently determine the degree of environmental cleaning, mainly the size of the pool to determine the cleaning time, there is a lack of coverage, and most products do not have the wall climbing function, can not clean the side walls of the pool robot.
With powerful intelligent path planning and navigation technology, the first generation of Xingmai's innovative products will have a significant improvement in cleaning efficiency and user experience.
In terms of cleaning capacity, Xingmai's products will have wall climbing function, which can realize three-dimensional cleaning, and also have the ability of full-dimensional arch cleaning and automatic corner turning; in terms of ease of use, the products will adopt wireless solution, eliminating the user's storage connection; in addition, Xingmai's products will also innovatively add the app map display function, which can present the robot walking trajectory and real-time status to users, enhancing the interactive experience.
To build the core technical barriers, the Star-Master team uses an independently developed brushless motor instead of a brush motor, which greatly improves the sensitivity and endurance of the pool robot; on this basis, it also adopts a new ultrasonic sensor, combined with a variety of environmental sensing means and self-developed motion algorithms, which can effectively achieve accurate navigation and path planning in the underwater environment.
Xingmai Innovation will focus on the North American market next, and the team has made many trips to the local market and channel research to understand the real needs of local users in detail, so as to continuously improve the products and marketing ideas.
Xingmai's competitors include Kiyea(Chinese：千叶), NayeeRob(Chinese：耐毅) and Pooltest(Chinese：科瑞德).