Under the leadership of product project manager Fang Qihao, the traditional furniture company XiHao entered into a symbolic transformation. The company’s leadership put forth a grand and bold vision: to create a top-level smart ergonomic chair, which is not only a self-rejuvenation for this domestic enterprise leading in ergonomic chair field but also a deep exploration of the future.
The development journey of XiHao is already filled with rich experience. The enterprise proclaims itself “Chair King,” a title that has been established at least 4 years ago. Since its products entered Amazon Europe in 2018, sales have skyrocketed from 8 million yuan to 150 million yuan. The domestic market performance is equally impressive, ranking first in sales on JD.com and Tmall platforms for three consecutive years.
In this moment filled with competition and opportunity, the smart ergonomic chair project was born timely. The market demand for smart products is increasingly vigorous, especially on the eve of the “Metaverse’s first year,” where people are seeking opportunities in the future of the internet, and this raised a question: What potential does a chair truly have? Chairman Luo Huiping had an epiphany, believing that chairs, as an indispensable part of human daily life, will play an even more important role in the era of the metaverse. He proposed the concept of “Life Support Pod”—a cutting-edge design that ensures human comfort while integrating into the virtual world.
Reviewing the development of XiHao, since fully investing in independent research and development in 2015, the traditional furniture technology of ergonomic chairs has been developed to the extreme. The company’s strategic team realized that to maintain the lead, they must research and meet customers’ new needs. Fundamentally, XiHao’s success is based on its focus on health protection. Data from the World Health Organization show that the number of lumbar spine disease sufferers is increasing sharply, and people are paying more and more attention to the comfort provided by chairs.
Therefore, Luo Huiping proposed a brand-new perspective: combining chairs with smart technology to enhance user experience and provide a more diversified service through the internet. The creation of smart chairs began with the introduction of new materials and electricity combining modern technology, opening the doors to future development and imagination.
In an inspiring internal meeting, participants widely imagined the future functions of smart chairs. They discussed potential integrated features such as neck and shoulder massage, voice interactive control, health monitoring, and Bluetooth sound systems. Luo Huiping was particularly focused on creating a smart chair that would make users feel comfortable and relaxed, “Humans have various senses like sight, smell, touch, and hearing. Can we provide a better experience in these areas for our users?” Despite numerous new ideas like electric armrests and seat cushion massages, the company’s leadership team realized their current human resources could not support such an ambitious project yet.
Therefore, they chose to first advance the development of the purely mechanical model S300, to explore and determine the core selling point of “comfort,” and then further develop the smart product line. The formal start of the smart ergonomic chair T6 project coincided with the near completion of the purely mechanical model S300’s development when the company’s headquarters also moved from Foshan to Shenzhen, where technology talents gather. With the start of the new office building project code-named “A+,” project manager Fang Qihao and his team underwent a six-month preliminary research work—a very difficult journey of innovation. They found that the market lacked chair models for reference, leading to the necessity of establishing and developing many standards and solutions on their own.
“We can say we are engaged in ‘innovating from zero to one’,” Fang Haoqi said, “The initial idea was too simple, thinking that electrifying traditional chairs and adding massage and sound systems would be enough. However, when we actually operated, we realized that it required a complete reshaping of the R&D logic.” Traditional office chair manufacturers lacked knowledge about the electrification of chairs, and the team had to embark on cross-industry collaboration, bringing in professionals such as software and hardware engineers and app developers, to build an entirely new product team. Within three years, the team expanded rapidly to about 100 people.
GTM Manager Deng Tao stated that there is a strong demand for talent in the R&D department and there is an urgent need to replenish new blood. However, the size of the smart team has already reached 58%, possessing a diversity across industries, including professionals from different backgrounds such as body fat scales, IoT, ovens, and more. The team has an average age of 30, with many members born after 1995, holding advanced degrees in fields such as sports medicine and automation, some of whom have worked for well-known companies like Huawei and Xiaomi. Luo Huiping felt moved when he saw the team’s in-depth discussion on complex human body data measurements and formula calculations at a technical exchange meeting. He said, “In the early days of our industry, the average level was mostly junior college or below. But now, if we want to change, we must gather a better team.” Adhering to this philosophy, Xi Hao focuses on technological innovation, which not only saved itself but also led the development trend of the traditional furniture industry.
The brutal competition in the e-commerce industry often tests the survival capabilities of companies. In the early days of the rise of e-commerce in 2014, the company that had just been established for three years stocked a large amount of goods for the Double Eleven festival but faced severe challenges from market homogenization competition, resulting in no one inquiring about their products, leading to severe overstocking. The company even reached the point where it could not pay the suppliers’ balance, and entrepreneur Luo Huiping felt unprecedented pressure, worrying that the company could not continue.
Facing the situation where creditors blocked the doors, Luo Huiping had to make a choice at the brink of desperation. He resolutely invested nearly all of the company’s profits that year—1 million Chinese yuan into the R&D of the new product M18. The core technology of the product—the lumbar support technology—underwent bold innovations.
This gamble-like investment saw considerable returns. After the launch of M18, the market responded enthusiastically, and in 2015, a total of 300,000 units were sold, helping the company out of the predicament and reversing the unfavorable situation. Through this battle, Luo Huiping deeply realized that price wars are by no means a long-term plan; product innovation and achieving differentiation from other market products are of utmost importance.
This led to a guideline of the company: Even in the environment of cost-cutting and efficiency improvement, marketing expenses could be cut, but R&D investment must not be weakened. Luo Huiping firmly believes that a quality product can sell itself and become the best advertisement. According to company policy, up to 50% of the net profit each year will be invested in product R&D for the following year.
During the days of developing the new product T6, Luo Huiping was extremely excited. He felt as if he was being tantalized by the creativity and technology of the team members. Team members continuously overcame technical challenges and integrated new features into the product. A young engineer even developed a GPS navigation technology for the chair to autonomously locate itself and return to the charging base; although advanced for T6, this innovative spirit and courage to experiment are what Luo Huiping values.
For Xi Hao, “the certainty of success” is the guiding principle for its product development. From the early stages of T6 development, the ultimate goal was set: to enable users to fully relax their bodies and minds. With this goal in mind, the team optimized product planning, eliminated the superfluous parts, and focused on several core functions: firstly, a high-quality massage feature; secondly, an excellent music playback experience. Both aimed at satisfying the need for relaxation of users’ bodies and minds.
When it comes to choosing partners, Luo Huiping holds very high standards, believing that only through collaboration with top talents in the industry and strict control of product quality can costs be gradually reduced later, without sacrificing the technological starting point. The development cycle of T6 was originally only six months, but integrating high-end technology and pursuing detail perfection ultimately took four years.
In the quest for partners, many renowned overseas audio companies were not enthusiastic about this smart chair product. Unexpectedly, it was the sales vice president of Harman Kardon who actively sought cooperation, showing great interest in the product. Harman Kardon is a well-known high-end audio manufacturer with very limited overseas co-branding each year, so this proactive partnership was undoubtedly a significant victory for Xi Hao.
Xi Hao’s collaboration attempt with Harman Kardon was a very confident journey for Luo Huiping. He foresaw that high-end smart chairs might have great potential in foreign markets. The team, after the joy of co-branding, soon faced a tremendous challenge — Harman Kardon designed the product’s intricate structural cavities and speaker layouts, and all electronic device development had to be completed independently by the team. Faced with the industry giant’s stringent product quality requirements, structural manager Cao Xulin felt unprecedented pressure.
Harman Kardon has very high demands for sound quality, including but not limited to: treble must be clear and not harsh, mids steady, and bass deep and powerful. There was also an indispensable hard requirement: the sound distortion rate must stay below 1%. To achieve this ambitious goal, the product had to be equipped with a robust triple-series-parallel battery to instantly reach 100 watts of power. However, Xi Hao’s battery technology at that time could only support up to 50 watts. From the design of volume amplifiers, upgrades in battery technology, to solving power dissipation issues, the team had to reconsider and redesign deeply.
It had to not only have excellent design but also perfectly integrate with the structure of the chair, ensuring that the sound quality would not suffer any discontinuity from sitting to lying down. The design of the massage function was also quite complex, and the team iterated multiple times to achieve the best. Everyone agreed that addressing users’ shoulder and back fatigue was a priority. Unlike traditional bulky massage chairs, T6 considered the comfort of users sitting for prolonged periods and ultimately decided to use electric actuators and rotating heads for shoulder massages.
While designing the waist massage function, many were concerned that its intensity might be too low. After a series of analyses, the choice of vibration mode was also based on a deep understanding of user needs. Deng Tao explained that their choice was based on “60% human body detection data, 30% laboratory testing evaluations, and 10% user observation data”. The solution was endorsed by CTOs of several internet companies during testing, who initially felt the strength was insufficient, but after one week, they believed that such a design was moderate and sufficient for daily relaxation.
As the R&D cycle extends, funding also increases rapidly. Even so, Luo Huiping did not intervene much; he provided ample human, material resources, and trust support. Fang Qihao mentioned that Luo Huiping never expected the R&D investment for T6 to reach the hundred million yuan level, whereas previous products developed by Xihao, even the high-end S300 line priced at 3000 yuan, were only at the ten million yuan level. “If we had known from the beginning that it would involve an investment of one hundred million yuan, this project might have been stillborn,” Luo Huiping said in an interview.
As R&D advances, traditional manufacturing thinking needs to be completely changed, which also means greater lagged expenses. The first task facing Fang Qihao was to change the mold factory and begin all production processes.
In today’s background of constantly evolving processes and technology, the traditional modes of furniture production can no longer meet market demand for smart products. To undergo such a transformation, the old assembly line equipment must be thoroughly upgraded to a mold factory capable of producing electronic products, and the cost of this overhaul is at least three times that of traditional production methods.
In the face of this change, the procurement process has also changed; unlike the traditional furniture industry’s long-term payment methods, in the 3C electronics field, obtaining orders often requires upfront full payment. In the new industrial environment, negotiation and supplier capabilities become particularly important, reflecting various barriers encountered on the path to implementing smart transformation.
The matching process with partners is full of challenges. Seeking a suitable production factory became a difficult task. Initially, the team was deeply entrenched in traditional manufacturing thinking and even looked at traditional furniture assembly factories for inspection, only to find these factories helpless with complex electronic products. When turning to electrical appliance factories, they faced an issue of low adaptability of the modular assembly line to new projects.
After multiple screenings and in-depth inspections of dozens of factories, the company finally found a patch and small smart product manufacturer that embraced the smart dream and bravely took on the transformation challenge. After in-depth communication, the two parties quickly reached a cooperation agreement.
The process of establishing the production line is also tedious and expensive, from soundproof rooms to high-frequency equipment, to forklift supports, coding machines, etc.; all equipment needed to be updated. These are the significant investments made by the manufacturer for the success of the project.
Compared to traditional chair production, the complexity of the smart chair has been greatly increased. From less than 100 parts increasing to 253 parts, from each person being able to complete multiple products per day to struggling to complete one. Production staff were required to use a full set of anti-static equipment, and these details significantly increased production costs.
During the prototype phase, production process training became a daily key focus to ensure precision execution in every step. Subsequently, the cost of product testing phase cannot be underestimated, as previous random testing was replaced by comprehensive testing at three stages for every product.
In addition, the R&D protection for the smart chair is also a considerable investment. The company has applied for many patents both domestically and internationally, each requiring an investment of a million-level fund. And for the product to smoothly enter international markets, international certification has become indispensable. Cases where products were delisted due to lack of necessary certification have served as a warning to us. After multiple rounds of communication with international testing organizations such as the American Furniture Association BIFMA and SGS, it was decided to perform various functional certifications according to the standards of modular smart home appliances.
Xihao has strict internal product self-inspection standards.Consequently, their T6 product has undergone multiple iterations,
Deng Tao experienced the convenience and comfort of the T6 smart ergonomic chair. He often reclines the chair after work and sets the massage function to 50%. After casually listening to a couple of songs, he found himself entering a new state, achieving an unprecedented level of relaxation in both mind and body.
