As a super seller among DTC brands, Anker is the world's number one digital charging brand. In the 2021 Amazon ban, many big-selling brands that used to be comparable to Anker have been banned, but Anker has not been affected in any way. In the first half of 2021, the revenue is about 5.37 billion yuan, and the net profit is about 408 million yuan.

Focus on building a brand independent station to get rid of "Amazon dependence"

Founded in 2011, Anker is a brand of Anker Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. Its main products cover smart digital peripherals such as mobile power supplies, chargers, data cables, and Bluetooth peripherals. multiple countries and regions.

Anker was previously a representative of platform players such as Amazon, and has been compared with SHEIN, an independent player. But in fact, long before the tide of Amazon's title, Anker has already deployed multiple channels to get rid of "Amazon dependence".

In addition to B2C online channels, Anker has also deployed offline channels, supplying offline physical hypermarkets such as Walmart, Best Buy, and Target in the form of B2B.

At present, Anker is still actively building an independent brand station, directly facing consumers, and at the same time attaching importance to social media marketing and building a private domain traffic pool. During last year's Black Friday, Anker held a big promotion on the brand's official website to directly guide consumers to make transactions on the site.

This is obviously different from the previous operation of diverting traffic to Amazon, and it also releases an important signal to the outside world that it is becoming more and more important to stand independently in Anker's sales channel system.

Recently, someone counted Anker's recruitment plan for 2022 and found that there are 111 jobs related to operations, 40% of which are related to independent stations, which also shows from the side that Anker is focusing on the layout of independent station business.

Some people have concluded that Anker's success in cross-border e-commerce is inseparable from the following points: a first-class founder team, accurate market demand positioning, strong product development capabilities, and innovative brand marketing methods.

Source Anker official website

Anker's founding team background

Anker's founding team has a strong Google background. The founder, Yang Meng, graduated from Peking University and was a senior software engineer at Google.

Zhao Dongping, one of Anker's board members, was the general manager of online sales and operations in Google (China) Greater China, and Zhang Shanfeng, vice president of sales operations, was also the head of Google's business customer solutions in Greater China and Korea.

In 2011, Yang Meng observed a market opportunity, so he invited several former Google colleagues to resign and start a business together, forming the founding team of Anker. Because of their rich experience in electronic product research and development and e-commerce business operations, they quickly Made the first pot of gold.

Taking the consumer demand as the guide to cut into the smartphone accessories track

Anker founder Yang Meng once shared his entrepreneurial experience with the media, saying that his idea of ​​starting a business started from an experience of repairing a computer. At the time, he needed to replace the battery for his laptop, and when he searched Amazon for the product, he found that there were roughly only two types of batteries on the market.

One is a battery of an internationally renowned brand that sells for around $150; the other is an unbranded battery that costs only $10-15. The blank mid-range price battery market gave Yang Meng an opportunity to start a business. He wanted to develop a branded and high-quality product to sell on Amazon, so he first registered the brand Anker in California, USA.

At the beginning of the business, Yangmeng first searched Amazon for products that were in high demand but did not have well-known brands, then went to Shenzhen to find suppliers, and finally found Panasonic and BTR to produce high-quality products and put the Anker label on Amazon. Sale.

Taking the laptop battery category as an example, Yangmeng quickly became popular on Amazon by making the quality of the products produced by the supplier close to the original factory, but the price was only 30-40 US dollars.

After harvesting the first pot of gold, in 2012, Yangmeng changed its product strategy from selling laptop battery accessories to selling smartphone accessories. At that time, it was the golden period of mobile Internet development, and Yangmeng also seized the times. Development dividends, and then earn the second and third pots of gold.

In order to meet the needs of consumers to the greatest extent, Anker attaches great importance to user feedback. When developing a new data line in 2014, I collected user comments on the e-commerce platform for analysis, and found that users care about the "durability" of the data line the most. This is the starting point for product production. After a year of research and development, the most durable The unique Anker PowerLine data cable product has been widely praised by users as soon as it is launched.

Zhang Shanfeng, vice president of sales operations at Anker, once said, "We have a lot of products, all of which are optimized, breakthrough and innovated based on the 'dissatisfaction' of consumers."

Source Anker official website

Focus on product R&D investment to develop diversified product series

Anker attaches great importance to R&D investment. From 2017 to 2019, the R&D expenses of Anker Innovation (Anker's parent company) were 201 million yuan, 287 million yuan and 394 million yuan respectively, accounting for 5.14%, 5.48% and 5.92% of operating income, respectively. The overall R&D expenses of the company are on the rise.

Anker has always adhered to the idea of ​​building a brand to retain users. Although products have advantages in price, it is the product quality that can ultimately retain users. Therefore, Anker has strictly controlled product quality and technology since its establishment. Formed a number of core technologies, with 519 domestic and foreign patents.

The high requirements for product quality have not only allowed Anker to be recognized by overseas consumers, and its revenue has grown steadily, but it has also won many international awards. For example, many Anker products have won the German Red Dot Design Award, iF Design Award, Japan Good Design Award, CES Innovation Award and other international design awards; many products have been listed on the Amazon platform and have long been ranked among Best Seller and Amazon. Choice (Amazon's Choice).

In addition to excellence in quality, Anker also insists on developing diversified product series to bring innovative products and rich shopping experience to consumers. At present, it has formed three major categories: charging, wireless audio, and smart innovation. Product Series.

Through influencer marketing and video marketing, Anker's overseas popularity has been significantly improved

In the early stage of development, Anker will look for KOL cooperation in vertical fields in many technology and electronic forums to accelerate the spread of the brand among overseas target customers.

With the rise of social media, Anker has also begun to comprehensively deploy social media channels, so that brand products can reach a wider overseas consumer group. According to SimilarWeb's query, Youtube, Facebook, and Reddit occupy the top three positions among social media traffic sources.

On Youtube, Anker pays special attention to the full display of product features and functions through video marketing. Among them, the famous "use Anker instead" series of brand advertisements intuitively conveys the convenience, lightness and portability of Anker chargers to consumers through in-depth insights into the scenarios in which mobile phones need to be charged in daily life.

In addition to scene-based product promotion advertisements, Anker has also explored different forms of advertising, such as high-tech video advertisements to display product feature descriptions, which are refreshing and impressive, thereby boosting Anker's brand awareness and market share stability increase.

|Shoptop Brand Insights

Anker was established during the booming period of cross-border e-commerce, but did not adopt the popular distribution model to sell products at that time, but insisted on direct-to-consumer through its own brand stores. The development strategy of the DTC model has gradually established Anker's brand image, and now Anker is focusing on building an independent brand station to further deepen its brand strategy.

Independent stations are more suitable for DTC brands or domestic brands to go overseas. For cross-border sellers who want to transform their brands, they can seize the opportunity of independent stations. While doing a good job in product research and development and overseas marketing, they can convert the traffic outside the station into brand reputation, and encourage consumers to continue to repurchase. So as to achieve the purpose of successfully going to sea.