Why is the Okolin electric toothbrush not worth buying?

Recently, there have been more and more publicity about the Okolin electric toothbrush on the Internet. For this new electric toothbrush brand that was established not long ago and has crossed over, some people even labeled it as "0 shortcomings", which makes "Yu Jian Column" a little confused.

It is true that the domestic electric toothbrush market is an emerging blue ocean field with huge potential for future development. However, for each player, everyone is still in the exploratory stage. There are no particularly strong brands in the industry at present. At this time, it seems a bit of a "flattery" to say that a new brand of electric toothbrush products has "0 shortcomings".

Of course, with the help of capital, some leading brands such as Pixel and Usmile have begun to stand out in the electric toothbrush market. So for a brand like Okolin, does it have the opportunity to achieve satisfactory results in this blue ocean market?

With the continuous improvement of domestic living standards and people's consumption capacity, the oral care industry has become a hot industry. As a branch of the oral care industry, electric toothbrush products have become a must-have item for many people's consumption upgrades in recent years.

But it is worth noting that even though electric toothbrush products are now very popular among young people, their market penetration rate in China is still very low. According to relevant industry data, as early as 2018, the penetration rate of electric toothbrushes in the Japanese market had exceeded 50%, while it was only 5% in China at that time. Obviously, there is still a lot of room for development in the Chinese electric toothbrush market.

It is in this context that a large number of electric toothbrush brands such as Okolin began to emerge, and many technology and Internet giants are also participating in this track. Everyone wants to get a piece of the electric toothbrush market with great potential.

In addition, the low entry threshold of the industry itself is also driving more and more manufacturers to join in. At present, electric toothbrush products do not have any particularly high technical content, and there are no major barriers to related product composition and technology. In addition, some manufacturers have reduced manufacturing costs and launched some low-priced electric toothbrush products in order to attract users, which makes the Chinese electric toothbrush market seem a bit mixed.

This is why we can see some extremely expensive electric toothbrushes in the market, as well as some electric toothbrush products as low as 9.9 yuan. As an industry field with not so strong technical content, relevant manufacturers can fully control profit margins and manufacturing costs according to actual needs.

It is under such an industry situation that Okolin has achieved rapid development. In just five years since its establishment in 2016, Okolin has achieved good results and accumulated a lot of relevant product technology patents.

However, unlike other domestic electric toothbrush brands, Okolin has taken a "focusing on foreign markets first" development route and competed with a number of big brands in overseas markets. This has brought both benefits and pressures to Okolin's brand development.

On the one hand, the foreign electric toothbrush market is relatively mature compared to the domestic market. Okolin's expansion overseas can help it improve itself quickly and accumulate experience in product quality and consumer service, which is a good thing for the long-term development of the brand.

On the other hand, as a young brand that started from scratch, Ouklin will be under great pressure. Choosing a more difficult path from the very beginning and competing with international brands for the market may make Ouklin appear a little too confident. If the foreign market does not develop smoothly and it misses the opportunity of rapid development in the domestic market, Ouklin may fall into an even more difficult situation.

In any case, the overall prospects of the electric toothbrush market are promising, but for the brand of Okolin, there are still a large number of domestic and foreign competitors waiting for it. Whether it is product quality or market share and user mind occupation, it still has a long way to go. Now is not the time for it to afford the evaluation of "0 shortcomings".

Objectively speaking, "Yu Jian Column" did not find any special advantages of Okolin compared to its competitors.

From the perspective of the team, Okolin is a clear cross-border player. According to relevant introductions, most of Okolin's founding team members are from the electronics industry, the founder is from the electronic hardware product industry, and the CTO is from the Internet education industry.

Fortunately, as we said before, the technical barriers in this industry are not that great. After overcoming the technical problems, Okolin's expertise in hardware and Internet experience may push the brand to develop in a faster direction.

In terms of product features, Okolin's electric toothbrush products focus on features such as quietness, fast charging, and appearance, and it has also achieved some results in these selling points.

With a price range of several hundred yuan, Oclean's noise performance is better than that of Philips, Oral-B and other thousand-yuan brands. It also has features such as fast wireless charging that fully charges in 3.5 hours and a battery life of 35 days. But to be honest, these selling points do not constitute a unique attraction for electric toothbrush products. The functional experience of related competing products is not much different from that of Oclean. This may be the reason why Oclean's sales in China are average.

On Tmall, we can see that the leading brands in this industry have good sales performance, such as usmile with monthly sales of more than 100,000, and Xiaomi Sushi Shuke with monthly sales of more than 1,000. However, the sales of Ouklin are somewhat pitiful in comparison.

Perhaps, the strategy of always focusing on overseas markets has made Ouklin not as well-known in the domestic market as its competitors. However, the issue of popularity alone is obviously not enough to summarize all the reasons why Ouklin products have not been favored by domestic consumers. It still needs to work hard on product selling points and features to have a chance to overtake others in market performance.

In addition, compared with the leading domestic electric toothbrush companies, Okolin still has a gap with its competitors in terms of product technology accumulation, number of SKUs and other dimensions, which indicates that the brand still has a lot of work to do.

It should be pointed out that Ouklin is also a Xiaomi ecological chain enterprise. As a subsidiary of Huami Technology, Ouklin’s product positioning is also somewhat confusing.

Generally speaking, Xiaomi's ecological chain companies all give people a sense of high cost-effectiveness, but Ouklin's electric toothbrush products do not seem to be cost-effective. Compared with other electric toothbrush products in the Xiaomi ecological chain, it is more expensive.

Although it is more expensive, the user experience of Ouklin electric toothbrush products is not much different from that of Xiaomi electric toothbrush products. Consumers do not think that your Ouklin products are smarter or better than those of other companies.

In the future, if Okolin really wants to gain influence in the electric toothbrush market, it still needs to find a way to build the core advantages of its brand or product. Given the existence of a large number of internal and external brands, Okolin’s current advantages are not obvious.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.