Behind The Investment Of 65 Million US Dollars By Sequoia, Tencent And Others In Fire

Under the new crown epidemic situation, the family fitness industry has brought explosive growth.

"In 2018, China has surpassed the United States as the world's largest fitness market, with a market size of about $46.6 billion. At the same time, the industry pain point is obvious. The penetration rate of gyms in China is very low. The user penetration rate of major economies in the world is about 15% - 18%, while that in China is less than 5%. Therefore, there is great room for growth in relevant markets. We can see that the market scale of domestic gymnasium seems to be very large, but the use efficiency is very low. Therefore, family fitness is more able to meet the needs of users in terms of convenience and time efficiency in limited space and time. " Recently, Zhang Yuansheng, co-founder and President of fire, said in an interview with 21st century economic reporter that the personalized and intelligent fitness application has become a trend.

Coincidentally, in the new track of family fitness, American home fitness brand peloton has grown into a real giant. As of November 1, the company's market value has exceeded 32 billion US dollars, and equinox and soulcycle, two other fitness brands, have also launched family product lines.

In the past September, fire obtained $65 million of round a financing from leading investors such as Tencent capital, while Sequoia Capital, which had invested $6 million in Angel round, continued to invest. Immediately after that, as the world's first "hardware + content + service + AI" integrated intelligent fitness product, fit magic mirror was officially released recently.

Zhang Yuansheng said that the goal of fire is to serve all people who want to exercise, including different scenes in life.

"Soft hard" combination

According to the "white paper on the development trend of China's sports and fitness industry in 2019" released by iResearch, sports and fitness users generally have higher education background, more white-collar workers and stable family income, but the demand of users is differentiation. Subdivision type users have different sports fitness demands and consumption levels, which puts forward higher requirements for sports fitness products and services at this stage.

It is worth noting that in the field of fitness, the most prominent demand is in the application of intelligent technology. Users expect intelligent service upgrade, especially the application and feedback of sports data. According to the introduction, fire magic mirror uses AI technology to recognize human posture and movement, and adds strong interactive links, while providing customization. Its choice is the combination of hardware and software mode, the price is less than 10000 yuan, divided into personal version and home version members.

"The experience we bring to users is a combination of hardware, software, content, services and algorithms. But the traditional fitness app is on the mobile phone to follow the interactive fitness video exercise Zhang Yuansheng revealed that fire magic mirror provides highly customized services to users through professional algorithms. Users train with the real coaches in the 1.8-meter-high "dressing mirror" to provide immersive experience with high customization.

In his opinion, the positioning of fire is neither a hardware company nor a fitness platform, but an enterprise that "provides rich content and services for family science and technology fitness, so as to improve the overall fitness experience". At present, the platform also provides a large number of self-made professional fitness content and courses.

"In terms of profit model, we first sell hardware products, and at the same time, there will be monthly subscription service fees. We have live content every day, and a lot of courses are constantly updated. In the past, the Internet provided some free products, even subsidies, for users to use. However, did the users who obtained them really like this product? It's actually a big challenge. " Zhang Yuansheng said frankly that the biggest challenge at the current stage of entrepreneurship is to make products with a sense of value. Therefore, in the future, we will continue to increase investment in technology and R & D to make the fitness process more interesting and interactive.

According to the above-mentioned factors, the proportion of smart devices and other factors affecting the user experience is still 42.0% in the general user experience, such as the use of smart devices and other factors. In this subdivision area, the improvement of product performance and product experience is expected to increase the user penetration rate.

Differentiated competition

Fitness market has been hot for a long time, and the sudden epidemic situation has further promoted the development of the industry. On October 10, the general office of the State Council issued the opinions on strengthening the construction of national fitness venues and facilities and developing mass sports, proposing to promote "Internet + fitness". Many people in the industry believe that the policy encouragement is not only the affirmation of the Internet + fitness industry at the national level, but also the rigid demand of the industry after years of development and maturity.

According to questmobile's sports fashion consumer insight report, in 2019, more than 60 million users use app for exercise and fitness every month. The new fitness brand has already become the favorite of capital, which is not the first time Sequoia Capital has invested in fitness field. In 2017, the sports fitness brand super orangutan completed hundreds of millions of yuan in round C financing, led by the sports fund jointly sponsored by Sequoia Capital and Chinese culture. Keep, another fitness platform, has obtained six rounds of financing since November 2014.

However, online fitness brands have not yet explored a mature profit model, and emerging fitness will still be subject to time and space scenarios. In Zhang Yuansheng's opinion, the pain point of C-end users is the instability of work and life, and it is difficult to effectively use the fragmented time. At the same time, we hope to meet the needs of more people and families. In addition, for some B-side scenarios, more optimized management is needed.

"At present, the user groups are mainly in the first and second tier cities. We have also established deep cooperation with some high-end hotels, and some joint office spaces are also cooperating. For example, in some fragmented scenarios such as travel and meetings, we also hope to be able to cover users. " Zhang further explained that the goal of fire is not to subvert the gym model, but to serve as an extension and supplement to meet the more diversified needs of users.