378In recent years, as the young Generation Z gradually becomes the dominant force in consumption, the global smart home market has also experienced rapid growth. People's need to free their hands has driven the upgrade and replacement of cleaning home appliances.
Moreover, according to data from lemonade, by 2022, the proportion of pet-owning households in the United States had reached about 90.5 million, accounting for around 70%. The issue of dealing with pet hair has directly led to the increasing sales of robot vacuum cleaners.
Image source: lemonade
Against this backdrop, a smart home brand from Shenzhen called Lefant has set its sights on overseas markets, specializing in the niche field of home cleaning robots. Starting from users' real needs, they have launched robot vacuum products that satisfy users, gradually gaining a reputation in the market.
Now, Lefant sells over 2 million units annually, and their business has expanded to more than thirty countries. Especially their AI smart robot vacuum products have performed very well in the US TikTok market, and in the Amazon platform's robot vacuum category in Europe and America, they have ranked among the top five.
Image source: Lefant
From Smart Home Explorer to Robot Vacuum Expert
The Lefant brand originates from Shenzhen Lehang Technology Co., Ltd., established in 2011. They initially focused on smart hardware development, and although smart homes were not yet popular globally at that time, their team had already recognized the great potential in smart product development.
In 2018, Lehang Technology launched the Lefant brand, initially selling various smart home products such as smart speakers and lighting. However, during market competition, the team found that this "comprehensive" product strategy lacked distinctive features in the competitive landscape.
So the team began research and discovered two important phenomena: first, more and more European and American households needed automated cleaning devices; second, pet owners were highly dependent on robot vacuums. Therefore, the Lefant brand decided to change its strategic direction and focus on the robot vacuum category.
In 2021, Lefant partnered with OPPO Smart Life, joining their IoT ecosystem, which helped the brand expand sales channels and enhanced product competitiveness through smart connectivity features.
In 2023, leveraging the mature supply chain conditions in Shenzhen, the brand began a major push into overseas markets. By accurately addressing the pain points of European and American users, they quickly established themselves abroad, becoming a new force in the global robot vacuum product category.
Image source: Lefant
Social Media Marketing: Winning Consumers with "Real-Life Scenarios"
Lefant's success in overseas markets is inseparable from precise marketing outreach.
On the TikTok short video platform, Lefant's account content is highly vertical, mainly focusing on the niche track of 'pet family cleaning.' Their video content showcases how the robot vacuum cleans cat litter and dog hair, and even deliberately sets up extreme scenarios, such as hair entanglement, to highlight the product's powerful suction and obstacle avoidance capabilities. Such video content attracts a large number of pet owners to watch and plays a great role in promoting the brand and products.
Image source: TikTok
The brand also invited some home influencers to shoot experience videos, such as TikTok influencer @lifetipsfromus, who has 821,900 followers, as one example.
Image source: TikTok
She used Lefant's smart robot vacuum to clean the floor and filmed videos of how she uses it in daily life. Many viewers were attracted after watching and left comments in the comment section, asking:
"Is it only effective on carpets?? Or is it only suitable for hard floors??"
"Will it collect dog hair?" The influencer replied: "Yes, it does a good job."
Someone else commented, "I'm looking for this kind of product."
Image source: TikTok
On YouTube, Lefant prefers to collaborate with tech influencers to produce professional review videos.
Tech influencer TechMishka, who has 170,000 subscribers, is one of the brand's partners. He filmed an in-depth unboxing and real test video for Lefant's M1 robot vacuum. So far, the video has received 37,000 views.
Image source: YouTube
During actual testing, TechMishka demonstrated the decibel level of noise and the ability to cross obstacles. This open and transparent review approach eliminates user doubts, and there are many genuine buyer comments below the video:
"My wife bought one, I set it up and charged it, tried it last weekend, and the cleaning efficiency is indeed much higher. It shortened the cleaning time by about 15 minutes, and it seems to work well. So far, I'm quite satisfied with its performance."
"This is one of the best products I've ever bought, and the price is quite low on Amazon right now. It really exceeded my expectations and works better than other vacuum brands I've bought before."
"Awesome. I bought one recently, and it works great."
Through influencer recommendations, Lefant has gained the reputation of being cost-effective and technologically reliable.
Image source: YouTube
Independent Website: Building a Long-Term Brand Base
While Lefant promotes itself on social media platforms, they also understand the importance of converting traffic into real sales, so they have built their own independent website. Through personalized design pages and thoughtful user experience, they make consumers remember the brand and become more loyal, thus accumulating long-term brand value.
Additionally, having an independent website allows Lefant to avoid being constrained by third-party platform rules. The brand can control its own operating rhythm, without worrying about sudden platform rule changes affecting orders, giving them more confidence when expanding into overseas markets.
Image source: Lefant
Conclusion
The success story of Lefant fully demonstrates that as long as you find the right direction, even a niche category can achieve great results. There are huge business opportunities hidden in segmented fields—the key is whether the brand dares to go out.
Now, Chinese manufacturing is in a crucial period of transformation and upgrading to Chinese brands. In the specific field of robot vacuums, Chinese companies, thanks to their strong supply chain foundation and outstanding innovation capabilities, are fully capable of creating brands with global competitiveness.
