对话洛克兄弟张新刚：从“配件商”到“骑行界迪卡侬”，靠什么打破跨境电商天花板？

Rock Brothers has carved out a niche in cross-border e-commerce with a unique strategy that avoids price wars.

1. Product micro-innovation solves user pain points: For example, the Bluetooth bike light lock combines tail light and cable lock functions, born from street-level observation of user needs, creating a 'we-have-what-others-don't' barrier.

2. Full-category SKU coverage meets long-tail demand: A single raincoat product has spawned 108 SKUs, catering to different body types and colors, allowing users to purchase everything in one go, similar to the Decathlon experience, thus defending against traffic competition.

3. Financial model reduces reliance on low costs: Product costs are mandated at 50% of the selling price, with marketing expenses controlled below 10%, promoting high-frequency repurchases and avoiding dependence on ad traffic.

4. Paying suppliers more to ensure quality: Proactively increasing factory prices (e.g., adding 0.5 RMB per product for trimming threads) and establishing a risk-sharing mechanism where factories bear quality risks and the brand bears inventory risks, creating a symbiotic relationship.

5. Small offline stores enhance loyalty: Opening 100 sqm mom-and-pop shops where the owner also serves as a repair technician, providing maintenance services to build trust and reduce labor costs, with annual rent controlled under 200,000 RMB, surviving like a community staple.

Future plans focus on smart services: Aiming to expand into AR technology and smart hardware, accumulating cycling data assets, maintaining control over survival, avoiding capital gambles, and solidifying their moat through diligent effort.

Rock Brothers' brand strategy is driven by user needs to achieve differentiation.

1. Brand marketing based on real-world observation: Product designs like the Bluetooth bike light lock stem from street-level insights into user pain points, creating non-standard product barriers to avoid price competition.

2. Brand channel development emphasizes offline presence: Rejecting large flagship stores in favor of 100 sqm mom-and-pop shops where owners double as repair technicians, reducing labor costs and enhancing service stickiness, serving as living advertisements rooted in communities.

3. Brand pricing logic emphasizes quality: Product costs account for 50% of the selling price, with marketing expenses kept below 10%, ensuring product strength, promoting repurchases, and building user trust (e.g., paying extra for thread trimming).

4. Product R&D focuses on scenario innovation: Leveraging the 'semi-finished' nature of bicycles to develop multifunctional accessories (e.g., light locks) and expand into services (e.g., parent-child cycling programs), cultivating the next generation of users.

5. Consumption trend shifts toward servitization: Evolving from mere accessory sales to lifestyle services, such as future operations of cycling parks, catering to users' frequent maintenance needs and fostering independent spirit.

User behavior observation drives strategy: Guiding factory production through front-end data sharing, achieving integrated R&D, production, and sales to lock in long-term growth.

Rock Brothers' business model offers new growth opportunities and risk management insights for cross-border e-commerce sellers.

1. Growth market lies in long-tail demand mining: A full-category SKU strategy (e.g., 108 variants of raincoats) covers fragmented needs, creating a 'whole package' experience that boosts repurchase rates and avoids low-price competition.

2. Learnable points include financial control: Product costs at 50% of selling price and marketing expenses capped at 10% ensure efficient capital allocation into products, reducing traffic dependence and ensuring sustainability.

3. Opportunity lies in supply chain innovation: Implementing price premiums for factories and risk-sharing mechanisms (brand bears inventory risk, factory bears quality risk) builds symbiotic relationships to counter price squeezes from fully-managed models.

4. Risk warning involves inventory pressure: Extensive SKU systems tie up capital, but data-driven production (real-time sales trend sharing with factories) reduces blind risks, allowing small-batch trial production.

5. Latest business model evolution emphasizes services: Opening offline mom-and-pop shops offering repair services to enhance loyalty, with plans to expand into smart hardware (e.g., AR technology) to accumulate data assets.

Positive impacts include survival control: Rejecting capital gambles, acquiring assets (factories, warehouses) to ensure operational certainty, and avoiding platform policy fluctuations.

Rock Brothers' supply chain strategy provides production cooperation opportunities and digitalization insights for factories.

1. Production demands emphasize quality first: The brand proactively pays premium prices (e.g., +0.5 RMB per product for thread trimming), incentivizing factories to add processes and ensure high-quality output while avoiding corner-cutting.

2. Business opportunity lies in data-driven production: The brand shares real-time sales data (Amazon and independent site hot trends), enabling factories to adjust production scales (e.g., 5,000 units for popular products, 50-unit trial runs for uncertain items), reducing blind production risks.

3. Digitalization insights come from responsibility mechanisms: Implementing risk-sharing where factories bear quality risks (e.g., full compensation for overseas issues) drives management upgrades, while brand prepayments and fair pricing reduce financial pressure.

4. E-commerce revelation involves symbiotic relationship building: Partnering with 7 core factories achieves nearly 60% self-production and self-sales, transforming factories from contractors to partners with enhanced bargaining power.

Additional opportunities include non-standard production: With 108 SKUs for raincoats alone, factories can secure stable income through customized orders.

Rock Brothers' practices reveal industry trends and solution frameworks.

1. Industry trend shifts toward servitization: The cycling industry evolves from accessory sales to service provision (e.g., repair shops, parent-child cycling programs), making offline stores new growth avenues that circumvent pure-online after-sales pain points.

2. New technology applications focus on smart hardware: Plans to venture into AR technology and materials science, leveraging factory control for rapid iteration of smart terminals (e.g., E-bike platforms) to accumulate cycling data assets.

3. Client pain point solutions address inventory pressure: Extensive SKU systems optimize production scale through data-driven real-time sales sharing, with small-batch trials reducing overstock risks and the 50% cost financial model ensuring cash flow.

4. Solutions counter supply chain competition: Premium factory payments and risk-sharing mechanisms resolve quality-cost conflicts, building symbiotic ecosystems against zero-sum games in fully-managed models.

Trends also highlight physical touchpoint value: Offline stores providing repair services build user trust, becoming moats in the algorithm era.

Rock Brothers' strategy offers insights for platform demands and operational management.

1. Commercial demand from platforms centers on control: The brand avoids platform dependence by building owned assets (factories, warehouses, stores) to circumvent traffic price fluctuations and policy changes, emphasizing operational certainty.

2. Latest platform practice involves offline integration: Establishing 100 sqm mom-and-pop shops with low labor costs (annual rent under 200,000 RMB) providing repair services enhances loyalty, serving as global after-sales nodes replacing online advertising.

3. Platform merchant recruitment insights emphasize value orientation: Prioritizing product quality (50% cost investment) over low prices attracts user repurchases, a model platforms could adopt to attract high-quality sellers.

4. Operational management focuses on risk avoidance: Risk-sharing mechanisms (brand inventory risk, factory quality risk) and data-driven production optimization prevent blind expansion.

5. Strategy avoids pitfalls through asset approach: Acquiring fixed assets (e.g., German stores) ensures survival, rejecting capital gambles to maintain flexible pacing against industry uncertainties.

Demand issues also involve service deepening: Platforms need to support transitions from sales to services, such as cycling data accumulation.

The Rock Brothers case demonstrates new industry movements and business model innovations.

1. Industry trend shows integrated R&D-production-sales: The brand combines R&D (product micro-innovations like light locks), production (7 self-built factories), and sales (data sharing), leading among出海 enterprises with 60% self-production and self-sales.

2. New challenges include countering cross-border e-commerce competition: Establishing non-price barriers through full-category SKUs and financial models (50% costs) provides sustainable growth examples against price wars in fully-managed models.

3. Policy implications involve responsibility mechanisms: Risk-sharing (brand-factory risk allocation) could become industry standards promoting quality assurance, with policies encouraging data transparency to reduce blind production.

4. Business model evolution toward service ecosystems: Transitioning from accessory supplier to cycling lifestyle services (e.g., offline repair shops, parent-child cycling), with future expansion into smart terminal operations to accumulate data assets.

Research also addresses physical world value: In the AI era, offline touchpoints (e.g., repair services) become moats, suggesting policy support for physical innovation.