Behind the dark horse category is the wonderful old life of the grandfathers and aunts.

Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “world network operators” (ID: txws_txws) , Author: Ding Jie, editor: Xu Yiting.

In the last two days, a piece of “square dance” news appeared on Weibo Popular list: from Pingdingshan, Henan Old people in a certain place built an “outdoor dancing” stage with wooden boards and springs. Everyone swayed hard to follow the rhythm, and there was a strange and joyful atmosphere on the scene.

The square dance of grandpa and aunts creates not only hot news, but also a consumer boom.

Alibaba released the “Elderly Digital Life Report” on the occasion of the Double Ninth Festival. Have more free time and retirement funds, enjoy the nightYears of life. Among them, the square dance market with the elderly as the main audience hides countless business opportunities, such as audio products.

An audio player said that their online audio sales last year reached 3.4 billion, of which the square dance audio accounted for 30%, and the transaction exceeded 100 million.

Behind the hustle and bustle created by the square dance sound, countless businesses have participated in this “sound war”. This year, Tmall Double 11 is also a key battlefield for businesses. They are hoping to “make surprises” for the elderly. After all, it is not so easy to serve the silver-haired people.

Dancing is not a sound, otherwise there is no sense of ceremony

Fengying, 56, lives in a small county in Zhejiang.

365 days a year, except for rain and snow, every night at 6:30, she will drag the loudspeaker to the square to report on time. Those who participated in the square dance after dinner were all sisters from surrounding communities.

Unfamiliar aunts can mingle with just one dance.

Fengying is the lead dancer, standing in the front. Her confidence comes from the accumulation of practice. Earlier, she asked her eldest son who works in Hangzhou to buy two square dancing speakers online, one portable portable speaker for practice at home, and the other big one, dedicated to use with the sisters in square dancing.

“Can’t I put it on my phone?” One day his son asked her.

She firmly refused: “The sound of the phone is too small and there is no sense of ceremony.”

For Fengying, who lives in a small county and does not have many social opportunities, dancing square dance is the most “standard” social activity. Every time she goes out, she will dress up carefully, with a silk scarf and a hair Clips can be the “finishing touch” that can arouse social topics.

Although the aunts of square dance stand at the end of fashion, they are entertaining their peersLebian is of great concern, and the team is discussing it recently Wearing a Bluetooth headset to dance the square dance. A netizen once described the scene vividly: a group of aunts, unusually silent, smiling and dancing.

Fengying feels curious. Although the picture may be too “beautiful” to watch, she also wants to try it.

Fengying son’s purchase record

Fengying doesn’t know how to shop online, but she downloaded Taobao, will “select money” online, and then remotely hand over the task of purchasing to her son. Fengying’s son’s Taobao order included dancing clothes, speakers, and shoes. He not only helped his mother buy them, but also brought other aunts from the square dance team.

The square after dinner is extremely noisy. For People who love to dance square dance, music can trigger their last psychological defense. In the square, the stereo was playing loudly, a song “Burning My Calories” and a song “Fire Love”, and the aunts unconsciously stepped their legs.

“Which is the loudest in your house?”

Consumers like Fengying have formed a huge square dance audio market. There are a large number of low-key and muffled businesses that make a lot of money. Many people have been in the audio industry for more than ten years.

Mark has been in the audio industry for more than 20 years and is now the head of an audio store on Tmall.

He told Tianxia.com, sales of audio products launched by its own flagship stores and specialty stores in 2019 The total amount is three to four billion, of which square dance speakers account for 30%, which means that the annual sales of single square dance speakers exceeds 100 million. It is reported that the most popular square dance speaker in the store sells nearly 10,000 items a month, and it has also been selected as the first outdoor speaker on Tmall.

What are your requirements for buying a stereo?

Mark introduced that before placing an order, Grandpa and Aunt were more cautious and preferred to ask questions. They often “bombed” customer service with a bunch of questions, such as the quality of the audio roller and the sound source. There are also many aunts who will specifically request merchants to provide drama libraries such as Yue Opera and Henan Opera. Besides bargaining, they hope that merchants can give away a few more popular songs.

But these are not the key points. The most frequently asked question is “Is your voice loud enough”.

A customer once asked online: “Does your house have 150 or 200 decibels?”

The customer service immediately stated that a volume of 190 decibels will cause death, 140 decibels is the highest threshold defined by the European Union to cause complete hearing loss, 105 decibels can permanently damage the hearing, so there is no “large scale” in the store that users hope.

The customer immediately added: “Then which is the maximum volume (sound)?”

As for the grandparents who are obsessed with big decibel sound, Mark believes that this is determined by the environment and nature of square dancing. Specifically, in a huge square, the sinking and soft sound will be submerged in the human voice, so a more penetrating sound is needed, and the dark horse of square dance sound came into being.

What are the needs of silver-haired people?

As an “old audio man”, Mark will habitually study the needs of the crowd, which is the key to entering the market.

It is also the square dance sound, inIn the user portrait, he found a more subdivided group classification:

  • The first category is the retired Kochi people. They like to buy portable high-value stereos, and they like to invite a couple of friends to dance at home, and don’t like to show their faces;

  • The second type, the square dance captain, will buy large outdoor speakers with a slightly higher price, and will charge a certain monthly fee to the participants in the team;

  • The third category, some government workers, collective purchases are distributed to the villages for the construction of new rural culture;

  • The fourth category, group individual guests, have a certain consumption power, composed of 8-10 people in a dancing team, one per person, and they are played in rotation every day.

After dancing, bring the speaker home

Mark said that the first category of users is not sensitive to price and feels that quality can show their taste. Even if the price is 2,000 yuan audio, there is a market.

Other types of users are more price-sensitive. At present, the mainstream consumer price of square dance audio is around RMB 150-500.

At the same time, he also found that during the period 2012-2013, most of the buyers were young people who helped parents to purchase goods. In recent years, buyers and users began to overlap, and the elderly began to learn to shop online. .

The elderly are becoming one of the protagonists of digital life, and they are also eager to enjoy the convenience brought by the Internet and digital technology. Hangzhou 80-year-old grandmother Yang Hana told Tianxia.com that she had four or five express delivery every day, from the nail polish on her hands to the small decorations at home, which she bought online. The “Elderly Digital Life Report” released by Alibaba shows that since the epidemic, China’s silver-haired groups over 60 have accelerated their embrace of digital life. In the third quarter of this year, the year-on-year growth rate of the elderly’s monthly activity in mobile shopping far exceeded other age groups. 29.7 percentage points higher than the overall.

This year, on Tmall Double 11, more and more elderly people will do things by themselves and fill their shopping carts. Mark and many of his peer shops are also participating in the double 11 pre-sales, competing for the silver-haired generation.

Secret Market

The success of square dance sound began around 2010. At that time, square dance gradually became popular in China.

After 2012, there was a small upsurge in square dance in China, and the purchase of audio equipment by counties and cities across the country increased.

According to our understanding, there are two types of businesses that invest in the production of square dance audio equipment. The first type of businesses were born in Guangdong, Fujian and other places, and they were in the early stage of reform and opening up. They were previously engaged in the business of small home appliances; the second type of businesses were originally Specializing in the production of audio equipment, such as Shinco, Xianke, Pioneer, SOAIY and other brands.

Xianke gained fame because of its DVD player, and was named one of the top 100 electronics companies in the country by the Ministry of Information Industry in the 1990s. However, with the decline of VCD and DVD profits, Xianke gradually declined and later specialized in audio. At present, in the field of audio equipment, its commercial form is similar to that of Antarctica, mainly focusing on trademark authorization and earning brand fees.

Mark has a factory in Guangdong. Previously, they worked as OEMs for brands such as Shinco, Senko, Pioneer, and gradually became brand agents. In 2012, they invested in the e-commerce field and opened up to more than 100 specialty stores in the Tao Department. There are currently more than a dozen companies.

The competition in the category of square dance audio is extremely fierce. From the block diagram on the Taobao search page, you can see that almost everyone is striving to cater to the taste of the audience, highlighting benefits, large characters, and colorful pictures.

For example, one of Sony Ericsson’s essays is “There is it! The whole street can be heard”; Xianke’s one is more bluntly written “Very loud.”

WhenThe number of users has gradually increased, the market has become larger and larger, and the square dance audio has also begun to enter multiple rounds of iteration.

Liu Weiqiang, the person in charge of “square dance sound” manufacturer Temeisheng, once said in an interview with Nandu Weekly that the earliest wireless rod speakers can only be used with a USB flash drive, and the circuit structure is complicated and maintenance difficult. This directly leads to the bulky, heavy and high cost of wireless trolley speakers. In order to make the speakers more portable, the analog power amplifier was gradually replaced with a digital power amplifier, which has high sound efficiency and low maintenance cost. The speakers are also smaller and lighter.

A new trend is that this type of audio must not only meet the dancing playback function, but also the singing function. Many aunts and grandpas learn to dance through video, and they have to shout when they are hi. Therefore, the square dance audio has added a video screen, DVD, microphone module, and even a KTV song order system.

In the next stage, Mark wants to try to make a square dance speaker that can interact with voice, making it more convenient for the elderly.

A square dance sound system is behind the aunts’ determination to stand in the C position when dancing. It is a must for the uncles to open their voices in a quiet place every morning, and it is also the companion of their wonderful life in their later years.

(In the text, Mark and Fengying are pseudonyms)