At the end of 2020, it is not calm for Elvis Radio.
An article titled “We Can’t Let Elvis Radio Die Like This” published by the media “Three Forms of Longmen” was screened in the circle of friends.
The article angrily pointed out: “When Elvis became popular, we should have been proud of Chinese design, but another kind of cottage-style wisdom has washed it away. That is counterfeiting, copying, plagiarism, and shoddy…”
At this time, the Elvis Radio is being attacked by knockoffs.
In fact, before the advent of Elvis, the radio was almost an antique that has been eliminated by the times. Today, not only has it quickly become popular, with annual sales exceeding 1 million, it has also become a target for copycats to imitate and plagiarize.
Millions of young people pay the bill for this “old” radio, and it is an old man in his sixties who has made waves of young people willing to pay for it.
“But young people are changing too fast. Elvis Radio, which was once sought after by young people, may also be abandoned by younger people.” After becoming popular, founder Zeng Dejun also felt the crisis and had to gradually slow down the pace of development.
This is contrary to some of his habits. The 64-year-old Zeng Dejun walked fast. When he was having dinner with the team, he strode ahead, and young people had to take a few steps to keep up.
He used to start a business at a fast speed. In April 1992, he was sent by the army to Shenzhen to research and develop audio as a unit for welfare. He ended his first business in October of that year, and then started his second business in November. Elvis Radio is his sixth venture.
Now, Zeng Dejun must learn to slow down and make up for some of the homework that was left because of walking too fast.
Seemingly outdated entrepreneurship
For ordinary people, radio has long been eliminated by the times, and the post-95s and post-00s have never even seen it. Before the appearance of Elvis Radio, ordinary radios could only evoke feelings and memories of middle-aged and elderly people. Taking the radio as an entrepreneurial product seems to be “out of date”. But Zeng Dejun has always been obsessed with the connection between sound content and people. The timeline is drawn back to the 1960s. The “pirate radio”, which was not accepted by the government and the mainstream, became popular in the UK, broadcasting the avant-garde rock music at the time on the high seas. The most famous one is Radio Carolin, which attracted millions of listeners and was later adapted into the movie “Pirate Radio”.
That was the golden age of radio, and it was also the golden age of radio.
At about the same time, 7-year-old Zeng Dejun saw a radio for the first time in the mountainous area of Yuanling County in northwestern Hunan, China, and was immediately conquered by this magical small square box.
Before Elvis Radio, Zeng Dejun’s five ventures were all related to audio or radio-he himself was the earliest expert in the research of tube amplifiers in China and an opinion leader in the audio industry.
However, the radio has always been a deep dream of Zeng Dejun. In order to make up for the regret of missing the golden age of radios, after he was demobilized from the army in 2004, he bought a large number of radios produced in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s.
These radios have a retro appearance, good design and craftsmanship, but after decades of wind and frost, the performance is much worse than before. “I bought one at the time and I was disappointed after listening to it, but I was still disappointed when I bought another one. At this time, I thought, I am also an audio expert anyway, so I should do it myself.”
Zeng Dejun quickly DIYed out his first radio, and posted the production process and experience on the Internet forum, which attracted the attention of many radio enthusiasts. He tried to sell more than 100 hand-made radios in the form of “group buying” on the forum.
For the next 10 years, Zeng Dejun made and sold radios in the form of a similar hand-crafted workshop, and sold less than 300 sets a year. Although hand-made products have exquisite craftsmanship and exquisite appearance, they have poor reproducibility and are destined to be a niche business.
In the past 10 years, China’s Internet industry has been developing rapidly, and the audio industry is also moving towards a digital and shared intelligence era. As an industry expert, Zeng Dejun’s understanding of the combination of audio and the Internet is constantly iterating. In the prototype of the first Elvis Presley, he added the function of smart radio.
If he only made a ticket product, Zeng Dejun had already satisfied his longing and yearning for the golden age of radio. However, when he was 57 in 2014 saw the impact of Internet thinking, he began to imagine that he might be able to make more popular, more technological, and more contemporary products.
At that time, the smart hardware track ushered in an investment boom, and Elvis also received investment through smart speakers. However, the good times did not last long. The circuit suddenly cooled in 2015, and investment came to an abrupt end.
Smart speakers are very expensive. A large speaker only costs five or six million yuan in mold costs. In addition to design fees, Elvis has raised more than 10 million yuan for the first time, most of which are invested in the research and development of smart speakers. However, after the external environment has changed, after no financing, how can we continue to go on?
At this time, Zeng Dejun made an unpredictable decision: go back to his old profession, continue to make a radio, and feed himself first.
In fact, Elvis Radio is “in the name of the radio” and is a smart audio product. The development process of the audio industry is the process of changes in the audio signal carrier. The carrier goes from the earliest vinyl to tape to CD, DVD, and then to mp3 and cloud recording. Every signal source transition and recording method change will bring the industry reshuffle. And new opportunities.
“As an entrepreneur, we must see the business logic, opportunities and motivation behind this. Elvis actually hopes to make audio products that are in line with the intelligent age, rather than traditional radios or medium-wave and short-wave FM radios.”
In Zeng Dejun’s view, the essence of radio is a tool for connecting people and sound content. Although the carrier of “radio” is out of date, the demand for connecting people and sound content is always there.
“We redefine the radio and define it as a fashion trend for young people through retro design. It is not only connected to the past, but also to the future.”
People are curious about new things, and “retro” is exactly “new trend” for young people. At this time, Elvis Radio, in addition to practicality, is more important to show the user’s identity and style, and increase its symbolic consumption attributes.
57-year-old man starts his own business and counterattacks: build an explosive radio! Millions of young people are paying crazy
The confusion of the 60-year-old man: young people, what do they love?
Elvis Radio, once sought after by young people, may also be abandoned by younger people. After Elvis’s many products broke the circle and became popular, the growth curve of sales began to slow down. “Elvis went too smoothly in the first two years. Next, I have to make up some of the previous homework.” The head of sales of Elvis Presley told VentureBang. After 2018, the outside world also began to have some doubts: a classic Elvis Little Prince has been sold for several years, no new hot models have been released, and the market is not as hot as before…
The core users of Elvis Presley are young people. Once the post-80s and post-90s were young people, now the post-95s and even post-00s are more concerned by consumer brands.
“A generation will eventually get old, but there will always be someone who is young.”
Elvis started to replay, what went wrong? From product development to team management, to self-awareness. Finally, Zeng Dejun focused the problem on the perception of himself and the core team.
“People are accustomed to relying on past experience, which is the so-called path dependence or induction. This requires the team to have the ability to continuously iterate on itself and to constantly build new methodologies and cognitive systems instead of relying on inertial cognition.”
Compared with many entrepreneurial teams, the average age of the Elvis team is not low. The post-80s and post-90s are the majority, but they don’t know what the post-95s like. This made Elvis alert.
Get rid of past cognition, “young” and “continuous learning” have become keywords.
How to define youth? The simplest measure is age. An employee responsible for product definition told Entrepreneurship that their team’s current recruitment requirement is 22-26 years old, with one or two years of experience, and the ability to continue learning, so they can directly start the project. .
A bigger change happened to Zeng Dejun. In communities where young users such as Station B and Dewu dominate, he often browses or shop now. The above-mentioned employees said that Zeng Dejun told her when he first used the Dewu app, “Mr. Zeng bought a pair of coconuts and a functional vest that stands on the front line of the trend.”
Studying what young people love has become Zeng Dejun’s daily homework. “Versailles”, “Molly”, and “Ghost in the Shell”, these internet buzzwords and the second element are all at his fingertips.
Before Elvis introduced new products, Zeng Dejun selected from the product library based on his years of experience in the industry, not necessarily verified by the market. Beginning in 2020, Elvis has established a separate product innovation center to study the current popular products on the market and the consumption preferences of mainstream people, and provide theoretical support for product development, shape design, color matching, etc. through reports.
In addition, in terms of organizational structure, Elvis has divided the team into a team for current products and a team for future exploration. There is a team responsible for the products that will be launched this year, and a team is responsible for planning and researching the future next year or beyond.
The core users of Elvis products are getting younger. After an Elvis Rico co-branded wireless Bluetooth headset was launched on Xiaohongshu in 2020, Elvis was surprised to find that the post-95 consumers who had been looking for accounted for more than 90% of this headset users.
Behind the “value economy”, how to break through the life cycle
Young people’s cognition of Elvis Presley is more of a high-value appearance, but the hidden worry of Elvis is that as an audio product, people’s perception of sound quality is subjective and personal. Some people like high notes and some people like bass. , It is difficult to have an objective judgment. After an accompanying story, Elvis changed his mind.
Elvis once received a radio that was sent back for warranty. The staff saw that the wooden casing had been played with a bright patina, so they replaced it with a new one without authorization. Unexpectedly, the user was very disappointed after receiving the renewed radio, and found the customer service to strongly demand to replace the previous shell.
The “Little Prince” has always been the most well-known product of Elvis Radio. The story of the little prince is also a story about companionship.
The atomization of society has aggravated the weight of loneliness. From the perspective of Maslow’s level of needs, what young people need most is companionship.
At this time, for consumers, the Elvis Radio is no longer only practical, but a toy that meets their spiritual needs, from a functional consumer product to a symbolic consumer product.
As for how to make this kind of company more humane, in Zeng Dejun’s view, the next audio era is to find people from content to content. What Elvis wants to solve is the personalized connection between people and sound content.
“Although we are talking about smart speakers now, it has only changed from manual search to voice search. And we hope to achieve true smart listening by accurately pushing audio content according to the needs of users.”
In addition, Elvis is also developing a smart watch with audio function, in order to increase the use of smart speakers, and at the same time can push appropriate audio content by sensing the user’s psychological situation.
In the audio industry, technical barriers are difficult to construct. Even for well-known international brands such as BOSS, there are many copycats. And Elvis’ retro-style shell design is easy to be imitated. Elvis has a number of patents that have won the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Innovation Award, but how to apply them to products so that users can truly perceive them is the bottleneck that Elvis is going to break through.
There are many innovative products that can break through the life cycle, and there are few classic products that have grown from “net celebrities” to time-traveling. It is not easy for Elvis to follow this path.
In Zeng Dejun’s view, his first 5 entrepreneurial ventures all fell into the same pit, then got up and continued to do it. But the new world will never be found with the old map.
Therefore, when he started his business for the 6th time, he made up his mind to take a new map and find a new continent. Whether the sixth entrepreneurship with a strong Internet color can become a transcendence remains to be verified by time.
In this regard, Zeng Dejun is still full of confidence and vision. In his opinion, new and more valuable categories and new species can emerge on the road of audio entrepreneurship.