50余位企业家走进西昊 求解“内卷”时代的破局之道

This article shares the breakthrough experience of ergonomic chair brand Sihoo amid an industry-wide price war, distilling key takeaways and actionable insights for general readers:

1. The core strategy is "anti-consensus minimalism": when facing industry-wide price war内卷, companies should proactively cut off revenue-heavy yet unprofitable businesses that drain massive resources. Instead of lingering in a losing battle with wishful thinking, strategic contraction can open up new growth space.

2. In practice, companies should redirect resources to slow-changing factors that users can directly perceive, rather than blindly chasing traffic trends. Innovation should center on real user needs. Sihoo’s blockbuster bestseller, which has sold more than 3 million units, was developed through continuous iteration based on user feedback, serving as a prime example.

3. Decision-makers need to adopt the right mindset: pursuing "hard but right" goals requires preparing for the worst-case scenario upfront, and staying committed to the correct direction even if it delivers no short-term returns. Time will ultimately reward long-term persistence.

This article outlines Sihoo’s complete experience transitioning from commodity manufacturing to brand building amid cutthroat price competition, offering multi-dimensional insights for brand owners:

1. Breakthrough strategy for brand transformation: When the industry is trapped in price war内卷, brands must dare to cut "pseudo-scale" low-end businesses that generate large revenue but almost no profit while consuming 80% of back-end resources. Sihoo eliminated its low-end product line, which contributed 70% of its total revenue, and this move became the key turning point for its shift from commodity trading to brand building.

2. R&D and pricing strategy: Innovation must be rooted in user needs, not innovation for innovation’s sake. Sihoo maintains R&D investment at 13%-16% of sales, far exceeding the industry average, and has accumulated more than 270 patents. For global expansion, it positioned its products in the pricing gap between local premium brands and low-cost offerings, avoiding direct price competition.

3. Consumer trend insight: As sedentary lifestyles become the norm, seating is evolving from a basic functional product to a health management product. Products with integrated health monitoring and automatic posture adjustment will be the core R&D direction going forward.

This article summarizes actionable breakthrough insights for sellers operating in an increasingly competitive market, outlining risk warnings and growth opportunities:

1. Risk warning: When an industry enters homogeneous price competition, blindly pursuing low prices and large scale will eventually erode all industry profits. Sellers are either forced to cut costs by sacrificing quality, gradually losing user trust, or crowded out entirely by competitors. High-volume low-end businesses are often resource-draining traps, and sellers should not be fooled by high top-line revenue.

2. Growth opportunities: In the domestic market, sellers can focus on differentiated R&D centered on real user needs to build reputable products. For cross-border expansion, sellers can abandon traditional low-margin OEM manufacturing, pivot to direct-to-consumer (D2C) online private labeling, and target the untapped mid-price segment in overseas markets. After its transformation, Sihoo grew its overseas annual sales from RMB 8 million to RMB 360 million, with overseas revenue accounting for nearly 40% of total revenue, delivering standout performance.

3. Key takeaway: When facing a crisis, sellers must dare to proactively cut low-value businesses, concentrate resources on differentiation, commit to long-term investment rather than chasing short-term traffic trends, and sticking to "hard but right" choices will eventually pay off.

As a successful transformation case for a manufacturing business, Sihoo offers multi-faceted insights for factories, as summarized below:

1. Product design and manufacturing takeaway: Manufacturing should center user-centric refined innovation. Sihoo disassembled a single chair into 137 adjustable components, borrowed material technologies from the automotive and aerospace industries, and optimized its lumbar support design based on user comments, eventually developing a blockbuster product that has sold more than 3 million units globally. This approach of focusing on fine user-centric innovation is well worth learning.

2. New business opportunities: As consumer health awareness rises and the sedentary population grows, ergonomic chairs are evolving from basic seating to health management products. Products with real-time health monitoring and automatic posture adjustment represent a new growth direction, and factories can start prepping related R&D now.

3. Insights on digital and e-commerce transformation: To escape low-price内卷, factories can cut inefficient low-end orders, free up resources to build their own brands, and enter the online D2C cross-border track targeting the untapped mid-price segment to capture higher profit margins and greater growth space.

This article outlines current development trends in the physical industry and the core pain points of enterprise clients, offering valuable insights for service providers:

1. Industry development trends: A large number of physical industries are now trapped in price war内卷, and a growing number of companies are embracing long-termism. They are willing to give up short-term pseudo-scale growth to invest in long-term R&D and brand building. Meanwhile, user demand is shifting from meeting basic functional needs to upgrading for healthier, more personalized experiences, driving the whole industry toward higher quality.

2. Core pain points of enterprise clients: Most companies trapped in内卷 have more than 80% of their back-end resources tied up by inefficient low-end businesses, leaving no extra capital for R&D and brand upgrading. They do not know how to break out of price competition, and struggle to sustain long-term investment amid widespread traffic anxiety, requiring external support to help them make strategic trade-offs and complete transformation.

3. New business directions for service providers: Service providers can expand transformation consulting services for manufacturing firms, helping them sort through their business portfolios to identify inefficient pseudo-scale businesses, connect with R&D and cross-border operation resources, and support their transformation to meet enterprises’ demand for escaping内卷.

Sihoo’s transformation case reveals what enterprises need from platforms and offers actionable insights for platform operation and merchant recruitment, as summarized below:

1. Enterprise demand from platforms: Traditional B2B foreign trade channels cannot help manufacturers build their own brands. Enterprises need platforms that can directly reach end consumers, enabling brands to connect directly with overseas shoppers and collect authentic user feedback to improve products. Cross-border D2C platforms such as Amazon perfectly meet the needs of branded manufacturers looking to expand globally.

2. Priorities for merchant recruitment: Platforms should prioritize recruiting high-quality manufacturing enterprises like Sihoo that are willing to invest in R&D and commit to long-term brand building. These players can fill the gap in mid-priced quality products on platforms, meet user demand for high-quality, cost-effective products, and deliver stable growth for platforms, making them ideal acquisition targets.

3. Platform operation and risk mitigation: To guide sellers away from destructive low-price competition, platforms can introduce policies to support long-term-oriented merchants that focus on product quality and brand building, optimize platform ecosystem, avoid industry-wide decline driven by across-the-board low pricing, and maintain healthy platform development.

This article presents a vivid case study of physical manufacturing enterprises breaking out of内卷, and distills key insights for industrial research:

1. New industry trends: China’s manufacturing sector is undergoing a business model shift, moving from the early low-price, volume-focused growth model to a brand-driven, long-termism-oriented development model. Cross-border expansion has also shifted from traditional OEM manufacturing to D2C private brand expansion, with players targeting differentiated price segments in global markets to capture higher brand margins.

2. Key current industry problems: Most general manufacturing sectors are trapped in the内卷 trap of homogeneous price competition. Many enterprises are fooled by pseudo-scale, misclassifying low-margin, high-revenue businesses as high-quality assets. Widespread traffic anxiety pushes firms to prioritize short-term returns, and very few can sustain long-term R&D investment, which is a common pain point for current industrial development.

3. A new replicable business model for research: This article outlines a breakthrough business model of "anti-consensus minimalism + focusing on slow variable R&D + differentiated positioning". By proactively cutting inefficient businesses to free up resources, focusing on real user needs for long-term investment, and opening up differentiated growth space, this model provides a replicable framework for enterprises in内卷 industries to break out, making it worthy of in-depth research.