Chinese Pet Care Brand Pidan (彼诞) Taps Into Growing Pet Economy
According to a 2019 pet industry report (2019宠物行业白皮书), the pet market in China reached 20.24 billion RMB. There were 99.15 million pets, which means one in every 14 people in China raised a pet.
According to Tmall, the majority of pet owners are young millennials and Gen Z females. Based on a report published by CBNData (2020中国互联网消费生态大数据报告), people’s pet-related consumption in 2020 was 1.5 times the scale of 2019.
Many domestic pet care brands are benefiting from people’s growing enthusiasm for raising pets such as Pidan (彼诞) which, founded in 2015, has already become a leader in the pet industry.
Hero Product
The product that brought it success was its Igloo cat litter box which won the RedDot Design Award in 2016, only a year after the company was founded. But the prize wasn’t the only thing that made it successful, it was also the product’s price.
The average price of a cat litter box in China ranges from 30-200 RMB. At that time, the founder of Pidan, Ma Wenfei (马文飞), decided to sell the Igloo cat litter box at 365 RMB, which is way higher than the industry price.
It turned out that Ma made a smart decision. The high price earned the brand lots of attention and combined with the fact that the product had won a well-known international award, consumers believed that the product deserved the price.
Headstrong CEO Willing to Take Risks
There are only 55 people in the team, and as the CEO Ma has a one-vote veto. He often gets into debates with his sales department when it comes to pricing. For example, the cat litter box, which proved to be a correct decision.
In terms of cat litter, Ma also applied the premium price strategy. He set the cat litter at 8 RMB per kilogram (the average price is 1-2 RMB per kilogram) and at the beginning, his colleagues thought he was putting the company at risk.
And it turned out that Ma made the right decision again. The high price and the high quality quickly earned the product lots of attention as well. By focusing on providing pets with the best product, Pidan achieved 220 million RMB in annual sales 5 years after it was founded.
Marketing Tactics
Pidan caters different marketing strategies based on different social media platforms.
Xiaohongshu
From Xiaohongshu, you can see Pidan’s consumers are loyal to the brand. There are a few negative posts saying Pidan’s products are not convenient to use, and in the comment area, its consumers are saying “the situation doesn’t happen to me” and they are suggesting the right way to use its products.
On its Xiaohongshu account, Pidan doesn’t sell any product. The majority of the posts are images of cute pets and there is a post inviting XHS users to create stickers based on its cozy duck Igloo box.
Similar to its XHS content, Pidan posts images of cute pets, most of them are kittens.
On its Weibo account, Pidan also holds lucky draw activities to create more connections with its followers.
Douyin
The majority of Pidan’s content on Douyin is about users’ trying its products, which shows features of its products and its comparison with other similar brands.
Pet Brands Should Focus on Gen Z Consumers
According to the pet report (2019中国宠物行业白皮书), in 2019 23% of households in China have a pet. Compared with Japan, which reached 38% in 2018, China still has room to grow in the industry.
What makes China’s pet industry different from either Japan or America is that the majority of pet owners in China are post-90s, among which, post-95s take up 35.6%. For pet brands, the most effective way to reach target consumers is social media promotion on channels where Gen Z are most active such as Douyin, Bilibili, Tmall and Xiaohongshu.
Read more: “它经济”这一年太火！有商家营收两亿，有品牌融资两亿
