Whether or not, Turman technology will be in the history of Chinese science and technology, leaving a case worthy of reflection.
From September 2013 to the Black Horse posture, in just one day, to become a micro-trust friend Circle Marketing the most classic case; by February 2014 was well-known since the media people vomit trough pain, into the embarrassing situation, the story of the past six months, the people of the transition, let a lot of emotion.
Now, the story of Turman is still going on, but the events of yesterday have come to a time when it can be resumed. In this connection, March 2, 2014, I had a detailed chat with the founder of Dichain.
In my opinion, Dichain and Turman have their respectable and admirable place, but they also have many deplorable mistakes:
Even in very difficult circumstances, the Cayman still chose to adhere to product quality, which in the current impetuous wearable market environment, indeed commendable.
But from the very beginning, Turman made a huge mistake: in the case of only design drawings, not yet clear the process feasibility and cost control of the product, in order to grasp the micro-ring outbreak spread of the time window, rashly began to book, and months in advance of the payment, resulting in the follow-up design, production all fall into the passive rhythm of the rush.
Companies can not only do a good job on the end, from the design, production, sales, customer experience and services, is an integral and complete system.
And Turman did not establish their own payment platform, relying only on Amoy Bora to collect, leading to the conflict with Taobao rules, so that the user's trust damage. At the same time, the production of both lack of control, and did not do a good job after the problem of the backup plan, resulting in continuous "jump ticket."
In addition, Turman also has no own customer service system, for professional users and ordinary users also did not subdivide (its mode should first understand the user situation, and then to the quality of tolerance, good cooperation with the promotion of product quality of professional users to ship, but in fact the situation is random distribution, and these users are all placed in the same discussion group) , causing confusion in customer relationships.
All of these can be for other interested in Internet entrepreneurship, especially the combination of software and hardware for the company.
In the case of the Cayman, it may not be a bad thing to suffer the above setbacks at the beginning of development. For the time being, at least, the early setbacks have only hurt Turman, not a complete fall, and if you can learn from it, it may be beneficial for future development.
After all, with a very dazzling admission ceremony, in the limelight to win the sale of the opening, for a company even products have not yet, the frivolous mentality, will be extremely fatal.
And look, and leave time to examine.
To facilitate the understanding of the story, but also to facilitate the disk, and with time as the line, current affairs and dialogue summary mixed record as follows (science and technology Note: The said may not be true and comprehensive, only for dichain opinion, for the avoidance of advertising suspicion, although there are many bright place, but on the Turman product performance evaluation, not mentioned in the text)
September 5, 2013. 5 minutes to write a presale aisle.
"No ads, no soft text, no media account push." No feature description, no configuration parameters, only 3 design drawings. 10 micro-letters, nearly 100 micro-group discussions, more than 3,000 forwarding, 11-hour booking sold 18,698 T-watch Smart watch, the order amount of 9,330,302 yuan. In September 2013, there was a marketing description of the Turman smart Watch's circle of friends.
September 4, Samsung smart watch Galaxygear released. The next 9 o'clock in the morning 9 points, Blue Harbor online CEO Wang Feng in the circle of friends, said gear "not cool", and then the t-watch of the sun Unearthed Mann design, the same day 14:41 P.M., released the booking information pre-sale address, the final 14 hours "pre-sale 18,698".
Dichain: September, we actually have nothing, just have pure concept map, before long, Wang Feng found me said, old Wang design a beautiful watch it, I said, give me two weeks time, I will take the picture.
Later, the figure took out, we look, very stunning, just at this time to catch up with gear release, so we agreed to say, you can not leak two pictures.
Did not think that the micro-circle of influence is very large, turn is very scary, many people in the comments asked to book, so the provisional decision to start a reservation, spent 5 minutes, wrote a small booking channel.
Finally, that day my mobile phone brush exploded two batteries, booked nearly 19,000 people, plus some channels to call, this said to set 20,000, that said to set 20,000, add up to almost set out 7, 80,000 block.
September 18, 2013. Start the collection.
September 18, the Cayman Public announced Taobao and the bank two detailed payment methods, and said that the project will be released on November 11, 2011, "You are expected to be the latest in the first generation of T-watch limited edition products before December 24." ”
Soon, Turman in Taobao shop closed, some people began to worry about, if the income to the money, whether the regular supply.
Dichain: We didn't collect the money when we booked the September 5. Two weeks later, the partner and I agreed to say, Lao Wang, let's collect the money.
At that time, we do not have a collection channel, so the temporary Taobao opened a collection, the result of a few days to collect 6,000 of the money, Taobao also because the volume suddenly burst up was turned off. (Science and Technology Note: there is a voice said, because the pre-sale time is too early, the watch has not yet shipped, the system has to automatically confirm receipt, which violates the rules of Taobao trading, so closed).
November 8. Cooperation Fuji Kang
Wang Feng and dichain in the circle of friends, said the man's watch has been Taiwan's Foxconn workers, November 11, Turman announced December 22 first orders to start shipping.
Dichain: After 11, I started to really design my watch.
The shape of our hearts is very different from the pictures we released at that time, the original idea is to put the battery to do the strap inside, I have a friend in Taiwan to do flexible batteries, ceramic substrate, printing the way to the polymer lithium slurry printed to the above, has already been identified with the Turman cooperation, and then the study found a big problem.
For example, the paper is soft, how to fold will not break, but brush on glue, 10 percent immediately after the break, this is because of stress. For the same reason, we found that the flexible battery is not put into the strap, there is a 30% of the adverse rate, will make the battery contact is bad, and finally temporarily changed to put the battery at the bottom of the watch, so that the less curvature, wear comfort will be slightly worse.
This is only a small problem, when the top two technical problems are really difficult to solve.
One is curved glass, how to achieve it, one is hot bend, only Corning has this technology, one is grinding, but 2D can also, 3D is almost impossible, I covered, finally, Foxconn technology, do glass injection molding, the equivalent of Two-color injection molding, the first plexiglass injection, the surface of the glass, so as to ensure that the bending degree, The surface hardness is also very strong, very wear-resistant, transmittance also has glass 93%.
December 6. Dichain "Error"
In his circle of friends, December 6, Dichain 4 "mistakes" in his own design of watches, for example: 1, if you do color early delivery, flexible bending ink is to cool but the cost increased 7 times times, 2, plus 2DTouch is for customer control habits, other home is the key, but the processing becomes a big problem ...
Dichain: The first design of the control mode is the key, not touch screen, but the third party software are touch-screen logic, to turn the key to the logic of the system is too large, so changed to touch screen, but the traditional conductive glass has no way to bend, a curved line will be broken, would have found a good factory with me said no problem, I have begun to do the circuit, Results two weeks later told me that this thing is too poor rate, basically no way to do. Finally, we try our best to solve it with the technology of carbon nanotubes.
But in production, or encountered problems, the beginning of the fitting is done by hand, the test is very good, but to the mass production, the bad rate is particularly high, the first Paste 2000, only 4 is good, we take this 4 test, looking for a variety of reasons, and then changed the process, the last is first with flat glass paste out, Bend the glass again, and now about 80% of the yield.
After the technology was finished, it was already up to the end of November, and our circuit design was similar. We Foxconn people work together, December 1 cast Mold, December 20 The first mold out, the first watch, all the flow of all the green light, Foxconn spent 20 days to do it out.
December 22, 2012, the Earth man watches the ship
The first watches only sent 500 units. Turman officials say the first 500 units will be used as test machines, its users can replace the official version of the product at any time, but despite this, frequent errors continue to make Turman's fan group into a "spit group", and in the previous 3 days, Dichain in the circle of friends, "the Turkish customer service team just set up."
Dichain: In the past, we are the simulator on the burning software, using mobile phone analog watch, but to the software into the after, a big surprise, ink screen can not be scratched, zoned two times died.
At that time, the partners and engineers were shaken and doubted whether ink could achieve our ideas. I did one thing, wrote a letter to ink in the United States, and I said, if you don't help me solve this problem, you will lose the world's largest wearable market. Americans attach great importance to this matter, originally is not open core technology, but they carefully understand our ideas and design, the Americans made an exception with only a normal 1/4 time, according to our system, in 15 days to the new driver to do out, software upgrades, the screen stroke smooth.
There are also minor problems, such as a strap, at that time, we think that the dual-color strap, which is soft, outside hard, feel will be very good, selected the top material suppliers, but the combination of two materials found that the strap hardened, after the demolition of the body design because the bite increased stress.
February 5, 2013, the user blamed the coming
Zong Ning, a well-known media man, published an article in micro-blogging and micro-letters, "I bought a pit experience last year, said has been paid but has not received a watch, in the group to see a large number of quality slot, send mail and message in the group to ask for a refund, then found that they have been Turman kicked out of the group, but neither back to the mail, nor received a refund.
The article caused great repercussions, and many people later told the media that they had experienced the same experience.
Dichain: This month 5th, we will give the scheduled customer Hair 2000, the front has issued 4,000, but still owe a lot, April late should be able to bulk supply.
In the past, it is really an engineer's way of thinking, I think as long as the product is done, all the problems can be solved, even until now, I still adhere to the product for the king, to do a good job of the product. When we first started to do this product, only 20 people, now 60 people, is to make the product to increase to this number.
The internet really differs from my previous 2B business, tens of thousands of consumers, everyone's views are different, after sale, customer service, system operation, including a series of market movements, to use the Internet to do, so far only slowly have a little feeling, including fans club are doing, the front does not really deal with the ideal.
There is an important reason is that many times are suppliers to our delivery, we add a buffer time announced, but the time, the supplier is not delivered, resulting in the supply of time is always changing, have to violate the promise of "jump ticket."
Q: You didn't do plan B in advance?
Dichain: No, I always thought that when someone promised me time, as long as sent out, negative things will not, but things are not like that. Of course, we will not make these mistakes again, rather longer time, it must be the product we think can be issued to the time, and then published.
Q: Do you still have confidence now?
Dichain: I was worried for a while, but now see a lot of similar products, the more look more confident, many companies are to do a program, and then throw to the factory to do, to the end nothing left, although we hard, although there are many setbacks, but the product quality is very high, and has been accumulating. Now other things do not grasp, supply chain and production has someone to grasp, I focus on user experience, I have more than 10 watches in the bag, I try every day, keep looking at all the details, the future of the software will be significantly improved.
Startups like us are all entrepreneurs who decide the fate of the company. In the product level of adherence and philosophy, I am more confident that I insist on such things, most people will not go on, I have been doing for three years, the first two years are their own money, is a few people partnership, burned eight months to find no money, no one dares to invest money, I take 10 million or 20 million of the money, I feel must bet.
Q: In your opinion, what is the core killer application of smart watches?
Dichain: My definition is the notice center on the wrist, is the message, because the mobile phone can not always wear, always catch, notice center, someone on the message has a sense of insecurity, worry about missing information, solve this problem has great value, this information is a pan of information, such as stock information, flight information, health information, All the information that needs to be alerted to you instantly will be valuable.