Written and interviewed by Xiaoyan Zhang, associated editor of Global Chinese Entrepreneur Magazine.

Xiaoyan Zhang has been an Associate Editor for Global Chinese Entrepreneur Magazine since 2009. She has consulted for some of the industry's top industrial robotic service organizations, in which she brought never-seen-before industrial robotic service to the big screen. 

The traditional Industrial floor cleaning machines, as well as other industrial devices like lawn movers, are designed by mechanical-orientated that have cold-blooded appearance, heavy weights, unfriendly for operation, ad error-prone with high maintenance cost. In this interview, Sealand Tech Co-Founder and CEO Yu Sun describes how innovative design and service in Sealand’s new CHEETAH robotics floor cleaning solution solve these problems and how CHEETAH delivers real value.

Yu Sun is an Electrical Engineer from the University of California, where he also completed the MSc/PhD. He founded Sealand Tech in 2017, and has developed brand new version of Industrial robotic cleaning devices with upgraded design and functionalities. The first version of cleaning machine - CHEETAH was released in Jan 2018, tagged with light-weighted, more fashioned product design, and much less cost of maintenance. In June 2018 Sealand got 1st round of angle investment, and listed as "top 5 high-tech empowered industrial cleaning device providers" in his hometown province. From March 2019, Sealand became one of the 6 committee members of "Cleaning And Property Service Association" in Zhejiang province, that authorized Sealand the pass ticket to participate as the rule-maker in the cleaning service industry.

Xiaoyan - Sealand released its 1st version of high-tech empowered cleaning device - CHEETAH , right after 6 months of establishment of Sealand, and got 1st of sale contract in April 2018, then received angle round of investment in June 2018 - only 1 year after establishment. From my experiences of interview with thousands of founders/entrepreneurs, your progress is among the fastest group. What’s the internal and external causes of these amazing progress?

Yu Sun  - In my experiences, our progress you mentioned was naturally happened and we did not accelerate it intentionally to cater the capital market. Actually we did establishment, hiring, R&D, marketing, and sale in a pace that we think is technically reasonable. In 2016 before establishment of Sealand, we already collect enough information of market and adequately know customers needs. In July 2016, we visited 20+ cleaning service providers, and clearly knew that the current cleaning devices are close to retiring, and the maintenance cost is extremely high, up to their decision that it’s more cost effective to buy new ones. Nevertheless, the cleaning service providers were eager to consider the use of high-technology in consumption of new cleaning devices, due to trends to improve their service quality, reduce the maintenance cost, and then upgrade their company with technology. After a thorough market survey, we already attracted well enough interests from many potential customers, including the national top 3 cleaning service provider (over 30k of employees), and signed a sale contract with them. After that we recruited a talented technological group that is winning the 1st award on national robotic competition. As a result, we had everything ready before establishment of Sealand. Due to our strong product development capacity, we delivered the first version of our cleaning device - CHEETAH, in March 2018, with first sale volume of ~680k USD achieved in April 2018. Customers do not lie and waste any dollars, that verified us as a solid technical and sale group. Based on above accumulated achievements we gained an angle round of investment in 2018.

Xiaoyan – You mentioned "high-technology" many times. But actually in my experiences, cleaning services belongs to traditional industrial area, we called it "Rust Belt", with devices designed with iron-appearance and old-fashioned. One reason is that traditional industrial devices have no motivation and profit for technological upgrade. What happened on your products with high-technology integrated and win so many sales volumes? 

Yu Sun - As far as I know, the traditional industrial area of cleaning device is approaching its life cycle and the market prefer the high technology upgrading, otherwise they cannot survive in this high-tech era.  High-tech is no-longer equals to higher cost, in contrary it reduce the customer’s cost meanwhile improve the product quality. Let me tell a factor, our cleaning device is integrated with a patent protected block, called "a CVE-based water purification and circulation system", leading to a reduction of water consumption by 80% - up to only 2 gallon of water consumption per cleaning of an entire workshop. This invention also save 2 hours of labor on water replacement per day. Our another invention, called "compact design of PID system", reduced our device size by 40%, and reduced device weight by 30%, leading to a light-weight production. 

Xiaoyan - I'm trying to analogy your cleaning products to the "iPhone series" in the cleaning service industry, that you introduced several times to me. What have been done in specific on your product design, to enable your confidence to compare your products with the "iPhone" series?

Yu Sun  -  Our motivation lies in upgrade of the industrial cleaning machine from the traditional cold-blood appearance, heavy weight, and huge maintenance cost, to the new version of fashionable appearance, light-weight, environmental friendly materials, longer battery life, and well ensemble with cost of maintenance significantly reduced, with these new properties just like the "iPhone" series compared to the traditional phones. We achieved this by innovative product design. In the first glance of our CHEETAH cleaning device, the appearance looks warm-toned with light-weight environmental friendly shell, instead of heavy metal materials. Nevertheless, we replace the inner mechanical blocks with lighter version of electric machinery and control system that are already commonly used in other high-tech products. We also added a user-interactive touch screen to deliver advertisement, human-machine interactions, and even with video player. By doing this, our device is more like a high-tech upgrade of industrial device closer to the design concepts of iPhone. Feedback from customer that our products significantly improved the cleaning efficiency, meanwhile helped customers to make their corps with more high-technological ingredients. Our cleaning devices are highlighted in their official website as a fascinating demo that is used to attract more potential users. Their users always like to take pictures with our fashionable appeared cleaning devices.

Xiaoyan – Your introduction of motivation and advantages of products make sense to me now. Based on these highlights, how is the sales volumes achieved so far? And what are main customers you have collaborated with? What’s the motivations they accept or prefer your products more than other competitors?

Yu Sun - Our first contract was signed with one of national top 3 cleaning service providers. They bought 15 of our CHEETAH cleaning devices due to the reason that their previous devices are retired, and they meanwhile were eager to upgrade their service with more high technology ingredients. Also attracted by our advantages of lighter-weight, lower cost for maintenance, they bought our devices and now we have been serving our customer for more than 1 year with zero-repair so far. In recent 1 year, we delivered more devices to local residential communities, which are designed with high-technological more fashionable equipment, that are best fit to our devices. Up to now, the sales volume is accumulated to 1.1millions USD within less than 1.5 years. Currently we also signed contract with other industrial areas like factories, metro stations, and schools. We are delivering the 2nd version of cleaning devices with even lighter weights and lower costs.      


Contact info
Yu Sun, CEO & Co-Founder, Sealand Technology Co., Hangzhou, China
Email: sunyu@sealandrobotechl.com
Website: http://www.sealandrobotech.com