SOOCAS Electric Toothbrush Two-Day Sells 10,000 Units in a Craze

Chinese personal care brand SOOCAS has officially announced singer and actor Tan Jianci(JC-T) as the spokesperson for its electric toothbrush. SOOCAS was established in June 2015, and the electric toothbrush is the brand's star product. The first generation of SOOCAS Sonic Electric Toothbrush attracted consumers' attention with its super high-cost performance, and the stock of 10,000 units was sold out within 48 hours. SOOCAS's three-blade electric shaver was sold over 100,000 units in six months at its Tmall flagship store with sales reaching 57.33 million yuan ($8.53 million), equivalent to monthly sales of nearly 10 million yuan (about $1.49 million).

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While official cooperation with Tan Jianci(JC-T) as the spokesman for the electric toothbrush at the same time, SOOCAS also promoted the same model endorsed by Tan Jianci(JC-T)--- Vacuum Packing Electric Toothbrush which is priced at about $53. Tan Jianci(JC-T) has over 1.1 million followers on the Chinese social platform Weibo. At present, the official announcement of SOOCAS's post has exceeded 220,000 retweets, more than 160,000 comments, and 380,000 likes.

Public information was shown that SOOCAS was established in June 2015 and is a new generation of comprehensive personal care brands. The main business is the design, development, and sales of small personal care appliances, and the product concept is "one more step of fine care".

The products are divided into three categories: oral care product line including intelligent sonic electric toothbrush, water flosser for teeth, high-end toothpaste, and other products. The grooming product line includes a rotary electric razor, nose hair trimmer, and other products. The hair care product line contains products that are negative ion hair dryers.

In 2016, SOOCAS received investment from Xiaomi, a Chinese mobile internet company, and became a Xiaomi ecological chain company.

In the beginning, SOOCAS chose to enter the field of small electric appliances with electric toothbrushes aiming at the mass market and mainly for the younger generation of consumers. Its product price is relatively low to medium, which is very tempting for consumers who want to try an intelligent sonic toothbrush. In this case, it quickly occupied the market.

In 2016, the first generation of SOOCAS sonic electric toothbrushes on Xiaomi's online platform launched crowdfunding with a low price of about $6s to attract the attention of consumers. Its inventory of 10,000 units was sold out within 48 hours. So far, SOOCAS has made a name for itself in the electric toothbrush market.

In addition, according to statistics from MKTINKEX, in the first half of 2021, the sales of SOOCAS's three-head electric shaver reached 57.33 million yuan ($8.53 million) on the Taobao platform alone in its flagship store with sales of over 100,000 units.

In terms of its selling channels, SOOCAS products are available mainly in the online channel through Tmall, Jingdong, Xiaomi Mall, PICCOC, TikTok, Xiaohongshu, Pinduoduo, Suning, Vipshop, and other e-commerce platforms for sales. SOOCAS products are frequently shown in the live streaming of Li Jiaqi(Chinese top live streamer) and other e-commerce live streamers. With the brand effect of its large customers Xiaomi and the large traffic support from top live streaming, SOOCAS repeatedly topped the sales of the 100-yuan electric toothbrush category.

In addition, SOOCAS is also loved by the capital market. In 2017 and 2018, SOOCAS respectively received tens of millions of dollars in Series A and nearly one hundred of million dollars in Series B financing. In 2019, SOOCAS received about $29.76 million Series C investment led by Vision Knight Capital, followed by Kinzon Capital, Cathay Fund, Yunmu Capital, Orchid Asia, and Greenwoods Investment. The round of investment set a record in the personal care appliance industry at the time, which was the largest single funding amount. In 2020, SOOCAS again won $26.04 million in Pre-IPO rounds.

From the perspective of marketing, SOOCAS has been questioned as "too much marketing while less research and development". The prospectus shows that from 2018 to the first half of 2021, the advertising and marketing expenses of SOOCAS were about $2.23 million, about $9.85 million, about $27.68 million, and about $19.79 million, respectively. The marketing expenses spent in 2020 were more than the money raised in the Pre-IPO round ($26.04 million).

The huge capital investment coupled with the marketing strategy has also given SOOCAS some good-looking performance.

In August 2021, SOOCAS joined hands with Tmall Hey Box for the first time to launch an exclusive new marble razor. SOOCAS further increased its momentum through the traffic from endorsement with LELUSH(a Russian singer) by launching a short video on the Qixi Festival (Chinese Valentine's Day), which triggered the marketing of the new product. According to the official data, the number of followers of SOOCAS flagship store during the promotional event of the Qixi Festival grew by 1937% month-on-month. The total view of the topics on the Chinese social platform Weibo exceeded 270 million, and the sales during the debut of the new products broke the record.

In 2022, SOOCAS' parent company SOOCAS Technology stepped on the road to IPO. SOOCAS was expected to become the "first stock of electric toothbrushes" but the current IPO review of SOOCAS Technology has been suspended.

The IPO prospectus was published which showed that SOOCAS Technology and SOOCAS brand were questioned to suffer from "Heavy Dependence on Xiaomi". The high account on Xiaomi and the related transactions with Xiaomi also became the focus of IPO audit inquiries.

The prospectus stated that Xiaomi is the first major customer of SOOCAS Technology. From 2018 to 2020 and the first half of 2021, SOOCAS Technology's related sales to Xiaomi Group accounted for 73.52%, 61.31%, 60.60%, and 56.40% of the current revenue, respectively.

And even if Xiaomi contributed most of the revenue of SOOCAS, the net profit of SOOCAS is still not very optimistic. From 2018 to 2021 in the first half, the net profit margin of SOOCAS is 8.7%, 3.6%, 5.1%, and 10.2%, and the net profit in 2019 has also declined.

SOOCAS has multiple obvious advantages such as support by many capitals, mass positioning of its products, and focusing on marketing. But most of its revenue from Xiaomi is indeed the problem that the brand must pay attention to. If the brand wants to have long-term development, SOOCAS also needs to slowly discard the "crutch"---Xiaomi, and learn to develop on its own.