ONYX Founder Peng Jinzhou on the Shift From Huawei Executive to CEO

Peng Jinzhou has an in-depth understanding of the hardware digital and consumer electronics industries. He has rich experience in manufacturing, sales management, and brand marketing. He has led the launch of many digital hot products such as Glory mobile phones and Nutty mobile phones. He is known as the leader in the domestic hardware manufacturing field.
 
In 1993, Peng Jinzhou joined Huawei after graduating from college and witnessed the growth of this legendary China company. When he left in 2015, he served as vice president of sales and service systems in Huawei's Glory mobile phone division, and participated in creating a miraculous jump in Glory's mobile phone sales from 100 million dollars to billions of dollars in three years. In his resignation letter, he wrote: The world is so big, at most, I will make some mistakes. I, want to try it.& rdquo;
In 2015, Peng Jinzhou served as CEO of FIIL Headsets. FIIL headphones are a headphone brand founded by the famous China rock musician Wang Feng in Beijing in 2015. FIIL is a coined English word, a homophonic combination of FILL and feel. Three years later, FIIL headphones had not improved much, and Peng Jinzhou decisively resigned.

In 2017, Peng Jinzhou joined Hammer Technology as president. In 2019, he left his job and started a business to make e-cigarettes. Information inquired from Sky Eye shows that Peng Jinzhou's e-cigarette project is named Xiaoye in Chinese and VVILD in English, and the operating company is Shenzhen Yiling Technology Co., Ltd. The company was registered on March 1. Peng Jinzhou holds 67% of the shares and is the majority shareholder of the company. The other shareholder is Jiang Mei.

Back in 2017, Peng Jinzhou accepted an exclusive interview with Knowledge Wharton and talked about the challenges and experiences he faced in various fields such as product positioning, sales channels, and hardware research and development during the entrepreneurial process. The following dialogue is: Q: Knowledge Online on Wharton A: Peng Jinzhou Looking for

——The following content comes from Knowledge Wharton——

Clear brand positioning

Q: What is the entrepreneurial history of FIIL Company? What are the results so far?

A: FIIL was established in March 2015, and I officially joined it in July. About half a year after the first generation of product development, the first series of three products were released in October 2015. In August and October this year, two products, FIIL Diva and FIIL Carat, were released one after another. After the shared platform developed in the future is ready, it is expected that two to three series will be launched a year.

Our first-generation products have won the German iF Product Design Award, Red Dot Design Award, and Japan Audio Association HI-Res certification. They have a favorable rating of 97% on e-commerce platforms; they have sold more than 100,000 units, ranking first among domestic high-end headphones. After an angel investment of 30 million yuan, the company also successfully achieved a US$20 million Series A financing at the end of last year.

We originally had higher expectations and hoped to sell more than 100,000 units in half a year, because we were very confident in the performance of the product itself and had a price advantage of more than 30% compared with foreign brands with the same specifications. However, we underestimated the difficulty of communication and failed to effectively convey the product features. Many people mistakenly thought that Wang Feng's headphones were just a joke. At present, our consumer group is concentrated on music enthusiasts and Wang Feng's fans.

What are the specific difficulties in brand communication?

A: FIIL is positioned as mid-to-high-end brands. The mainstream products are around 1,000 yuan. It requires the target group to have purchasing power and pursue high sound quality. There may be only 5 target customers out of 100 people. We have not found a good way to accurately reach the target group.

Compared with the existing mid-to-high-end headphone brands, we are still looking to form a distinct brand positioning. There are generally two camps for high-end brands in the headphone market: Sennheiser, Iron Triangle, Magic Sound (Sennheiser, Audio-Technica, Monster), etc., which have decades or even hundreds of years of history, emphasize the sense of history and have a good reputation among music enthusiasts;Beats and others have carried out a large number of cross-border cooperation with sports and entertainment circles, emphasizing the trendy nature, and are very influential among young people.

To occupy the high-end market, we must occupy an absolute leading position. Our first-generation products have a strong overall performance in terms of sound quality, ID design, wearing comfort, Bluetooth technology, etc., but in total, there is no clear functional positioning and image features. The mobile phone industry's OPPO charges for five minutes and talks for two hours. The herbal tea industry is afraid of getting angry and drinking Wang Laoji. We lack this kind of refining.# p#pagination title #e#

Smart and wireless are FIIL's main directions

Q: What is the development direction of your products?

A: I think the future direction of headphones is wireless, intelligent and scene-based.& ldquo; Intelligence and wireless will be the main direction of FIIL.

In the past, a good headset had to be wired. Now Bluetooth 4.1 can support high-definition lossless sound quality, and the FIIL team has strong capabilities in the Bluetooth wireless field. The current CTO Wu Ning is from Plantronics, which is famous for its wireless communications. We have achieved high-definition lossless wireless playback within 100 meters, with very low power consumption, and standby playback for more than 30 hours. Moreover, wireless headsets have been commercially verified. The first FIIL Wireless was priced at 1599 yuan, nearly 50% more expensive than wired products, and was launched one month later. As a result, FIIL Wireless's sales were far better than the latter.

The convenience brought by wireless compared to wired is self-evident. Many application scenarios naturally emerge, such as resting at home or doing housework, and walking around with headphones on, and wired products will be gradually eliminated from our product portfolio.

In addition, since the invention of headphones for more than a hundred years, their main functions as a playback device have not changed much. Under the current technical conditions, they can be given more intelligent and interactive functions to make it easier to obtain audio. For example, when listening to music while wearing headphones and someone comes over to say hello, can the music automatically stop and then automatically cut back to make it more humane? If we adhere to the two directions of smart and wireless, FIIL will be completely different from other brands.

Latecomer advantages based on R & D

Q: How much of your vision has been realized? Is there a timetable for implementation?

A: We have already realized the automatic switching function. We have had many ideas, but we have not realized it in the end. It is often limited by the current technology itself or by the comprehensive user experience. The setting of some functions may weaken other performances. For example, if we imagine that headphones can be separated from the mobile phone and exist independently, we need to implant a 4G or Wifi communication module. This involves other problems: first, radiation will be generated, second, power consumption will be increased, and third, the weight will be increased, which will affect comfort.

Research and development nowadays is quite interesting. When everyone collides together, they will come up with some ideas. Among them, R & D teams are often conservative because they have to balance various needs from the perspective of engineering realization.

Q: Some headphone manufacturers have a history of hundreds of years. Why can a new company catch up?

A: In terms of technology, there was not much substantial progress in the headphone industry in the past, and a new team has the advantage of being late. Our product development team members are all from high-end headphone brands, such as Plantronics, Harman, JBL and other leading companies in the audio field. Most of them have more than 8 years of experience and have rich experience in core aspects such as slightly design, communication, and noise reduction.

We have also invested a lot of resources in research and development. The FIIL team has about 70 people in total. Now the hardware research and development team has about 40 people, and there are more than a dozen people involved in Internet experience research. Our R & D system accounts for more than 70%. In the Suzhou laboratory, the annual R & D cost is about 30 million yuan, which is unique among domestic headphone brands.

Foreign high-end brands are basically concentrated in OEM production in the Pearl River Delta. After decades of manufacturing in China, a group of golden ears and old masters have been accumulated in craftsmanship, quality control and other aspects. The links focusing on manufacturing are completed by these partners. When we finished the design, they knew how to engineer high sound quality. With hard equipment, mature technology and experienced team, coupled with the processing capabilities accumulated in the Pearl River Delta, even young brands can make high-quality headphone products.

The effect of rock stars

Q: What is the role of rock star Wang Feng in the team?

A: Some people question how Wang Feng can make a good headset. In fact, he has no experience in product design, and it is all done by the back-office team. Wang Feng's job is to define the product and decide what the function should be. He is a musician. He used so many headphones in the past and could give suggestions from the perspective of consumers. Wang Feng also has a group of senior DJs around him. After the prototype of the product is out, he can find a large number of people in the work circle who understand music to review it and then fine-tune it. Many times, the judgment of sound varies, and Wang Feng has the ability to find the greatest common denominator.

As far as equipment is concerned, he is more concerned about Industrial Design (Industrial Design). He will participate in the seminar on the ID of every generation of products. His partner, Design Affairs, Germany, specially appointed a German consultant for him and communicated with him frequently. Every time when we were reviewing the ID, everyone collided with ideas, and he was involved a lot in the ID.# p#pagination title #e#

In addition, Wang Feng has many avant-garde thoughts and creations, such as how can headphones access a huge amount of music libraries and audio? He is building a new Internet music content platform, iwini, and he is also considering how to combine it.

Q: How do you view the effect a rock star brings to the company?

A: I have never wanted the outside world to regard FIIL as a company with a star aura. I would like everyone to see it as a technology company that pays attention to our technicians, R & D investment, patents, and product characteristics. For example, we have made many attempts on new materials and new processes, introducing ceramic materials into headphones. This process is very challenging and rare in the industry.

Many external people pay attention to FIIL from the perspective of celebrity gossip, and I also have a headache. Of course, we also had problems with insufficient communication in the past. I believe that the ultimate victory lies in the product and reputation.

Brands must have a light and luxurious tone

Q: How big is the market for headphones in China? How to view the market prospects of mid-to-high-end headphones?

A: This industry currently has a market size with annual sales of more than 10 billion yuan, and the vast majority are products below 300 yuan. The market we focus on with more than 1,000 yuan is mainly foreign brands, with a market size of about 4 - 6 billion yuan, and annual sales should be more than 2 million pairs of headphones.

Among the consumers of mid-to-high-end headphones, there are one group of enthusiasts who really like music. They are keen on good equipment and the headphones they buy may cost tens of thousands of yuan; the other group is the newly rich people who pursue sound quality, have certain financial strength, like music and have certain requirements for sound quality. We have conducted research and found that more than 60% of FIIL's consumers use Apple phones, and the mainstream age group is in their 20s to 30s.

The perception of hearing is not as obvious as that of vision. Especially in China, the overall music literacy is not enough. Most people listen to sound without realizing the importance of sound quality. However, China people's understanding of music and sound is deepening, and they are beginning to form payment habits. The number of paying music users in China is increasing rapidly. I believe that there will be a large number of young people pursuing exquisite sound quality in the future, but it is not yet the time to explode. We can now make enough preparations, including products and brands.

Q: The market and consumers are changing rapidly. How do you summarize the style of your brand?

A: Simply put, it is light luxury. Nowadays, a large number of young people are upgrading their consumption, not towards luxury goods, but towards the concept of light luxury. Compared with the past attitude of making do, today's young people are more pursuing quality, design, and taste. Therefore, the brand must be tonality and consistent with its character and lifestyle.

Communication methodology under discussion

Q: What is your current sales pipeline layout? Is it mainly online?

A: Online channels include the official website mall, Jingdong and Tmall flagship stores. There are more than 200 offline channels. In addition to chain channels, they also include audio professional stores and trendy stores. We also have displays in some cafes.

Now, offline sales account for about 20%, but the proportion is increasing. Offline channels should be mainstream in the future, because consumers can experience the effect of listening offline, especially our products are not cheap. In the future, we hope to reach at least 70% offline.

Q: I used to work for Huawei, from working for a large company to starting my own business. What was the biggest change?

A: First of all, the pressure is much greater. The sales scale managed by Huawei Glory is billions of dollars. Although there are only hundreds of millions of yuan here, after all, we have to be responsible to the entire company, and the pressure is very different. Secondly, knowledge updates are required quickly. Huawei mainly manages sales, mainly the marketing supply chain; now he is the CEO of FIIL. Regarding product definitions, market trends, and industry judgments, Huawei only discovered that there are so many areas that he does not understand after coming out. He has to learn quickly and is getting old., this process is very painful.

The advantage is that it is more freedom. As long as it feels feasible, decision-making and execution are much faster.

I feel lucky that the product development team is very good and don't have to worry too much about engineering implementation. They have a complete methodology to avoid many of the pitfalls of start-up teams. However, there is no ready-made methodology for consumer-oriented communication. Sometimes we often have red-faced internal debates, and many friends in the industry have different opinions on their suggestions. Because I have the final say, I have to take responsibility for this matter, and the pressure is particularly great.