Leading the industry Hongsong grasps the key to consumer innovation in the silver-haired economy
In recent years, the silver economy has attracted more and more public attention, and this year’s government work report also proposed “vigorously developing the silver economy.” As for how to develop the silver economy, in fact, the top-level design has already given out programmatic documents. In January this year, the General Office of the State Council issued the “Opinions on Developing the Silver Economy to Improve the Well-Being of the Elderly” (hereinafter referred to as the “Opinions”), which proposed that the silver economy The economy is the sum of a series of economic activities such as providing products or services to the elderly and preparing for the aging stage. It involves a wide range of areas, a long industrial chain, diverse business formats, and huge potential.
To put it into practice, the silver-haired economy needs innovation to provide new consumption channels, platforms and related guarantees for the silver-haired group. In fact, effective forces in the market have already begun to take action. Hongsong, founded in 2020, integrates and develops multiple business formats such as online interest learning, interest social networking, e-commerce and offline learning, and is committed to innovating silver consumption innovation.
“In the early days of its founding, Hongsong took ‘reshaping the value of time for retired people’ as its mission and focused on serving retired people. We hope to combine online and offline scenarios and use high-quality interest content, rich social interactions, and diversified services to solve problems such as loneliness and lack of sense of value among middle-aged and elderly people, making retirement life richer and better.” Fang Minghui, vice president of Hongsong Group, said that Hongsong has maintained its original intention during its four-year growth period.
The rhythm of adapting to aging is the key to consumer innovation for the elderly
Hu Zuquan, director and researcher of the Population Development Research Office of the Economic Forecast Department of the National Information Center, publicly stated that my country’s silver economy is currently in an accelerated development stage, with a scale of about 7 trillion yuan, accounting for about 6% of GDP in the same period. It is estimated that by 2035, the scale of my country’s silver economy will reach about 30 trillion yuan, accounting for about 10% of GDP in the same period.
How to seize this potentially huge market? Fang Minghui believes that the pace of aging is a very critical factor in developing a silver economy.
“As for Hongsong, age-appropriateness has been considered from the early stages of product design.” Fang Minghui introduced that content-centered products such as Hongsong live broadcasts and courses and some Internet products, including small programs and APPs, are fully Appropriate aging was considered.
He explained that the pace of the course content should not be too fast. The eyesight and hearing of the elderly have deteriorated, and their ability to operate smartphones is not as good as that of young people. Therefore, it is particularly important to grasp the pace of the Korean pine output course.
“In the process of product design, we consider the people and methods of supporting services to help the elderly use our products smoothly. For example, the words in the course PPT are designed to be large enough and the spacing is wide enough so that the elderly can see it. ” Fang Minghui said that from the beginning to the present, the products launched by Korean pine require suitable aging treatment, and are constantly evolving and iterating.
It is understood that as of February 2024, Hongsong has set up R&D centers in Beijing, Chongqing, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Wuhan and other places, and completed a 100 million yuan B+ round of financing. It has more than 4,000 lecturers and a total of more than 1,000 users. million, and the cumulative clicks of the Korean Pine course exceeded 200 million.
Being able to achieve such results, Fang Minghui said, comes from the fact that Korean Pine has been learning and exploring.
“Everyone knows that the elderly are relatively slow to accept and learn new things, but how slow is it? For example, how many days does it take to learn an electronic keyboard? Does it take 7 or 8 days to be able to use both hands to simply play continuously, or does it take longer, something like this? We have been exploring and summarizing these rules so that the elderly can better use our products.” He said.
In addition, when Hongsong created new consumption channels for the silver-haired group, it also overcame some quantitative difficulties in mobile phone operations.
“We thought it would be a very simple thing to long-press a picture to save it in the APP, but it actually took us a while to find out that the elderly are not very good at it. When they want to share, they only share links, not pictures.” Fang Minghui believes , if you want to make a difference in the silver economy, you must consider the issue of aging.
Multiple business formats help Hongsong gain a foothold in the silver market
Of course, if you want to innovate the consumption of the silver-haired economy, it is not enough to just grasp the age-appropriateness. You must also enrich the business formats to meet the different needs of silver-haired consumers and thus gain a foothold in the silver-haired market.
In the fields of interest learning and interest social networking, Hongsong designed the course format from the perspective of demand by investigating what the elderly people want to learn, and established corresponding social networking in the learning process.
“Currently, our more mature interest-based learning courses are not only related to musical instruments, how to make them beautiful and maintain them, but also calligraphy and painting, which are relatively good.” Fang Minghui introduced.
He said that in order to ensure the quality of learning, Hongsong also set up “three teachers to accompany students”. The main teaching and research team hired very professional teachers to teach each class, and personal assistant teachers were at any time to answer any questions students had about the learning process to ensure that students Understand the classroom knowledge, and the teacher will give professional comments on the students’ homework every week.
In fact, in the process of business development, Hongsong found that it was necessary to incorporate e-commerce into its business form.
In this regard, Fang Minghui said: “Consumer products for young people are very mature, but there is no dedicated platform for the elderly in terms of price competitiveness or product quality. However, during the teaching process, we found that many people have this need, so E-commerce has become one of the important product lines of Hongsong.”
It is understood that Korean Pine has also carried out quality control from four aspects. First, products entering the supply chain must pass the qualifications; second, Korean Pine has set up a product selection meeting and will randomly select samples for trial; third, feedback, Circuit breaker mechanism: If the selected product does not meet the demand or there are quality problems, we will work with the supplier to provide after-sales service. If the supplier continues to have problems, we will choose to break the circuit and no longer cooperate; fourth, a deposit will also be set in supply chain cooperation. Some standards ensure smooth cooperation.
“Currently, Hongsong is also self-operated, hoping to control all links in the supply chain to ensure that the most reliable and assured products are delivered to consumers,” said Fang Minghui.
The tourism field in the silver economy market is also a very potential branch. Hongsong judged that apart from material consumption, spiritual satisfaction is also an urgent need for the silver-haired people. Therefore, in terms of online and downstream studies, Hongsong created silver tourism based on the characteristics of the elderly.
According to Fang Minghui, Hongsong Silver Travel first of all eliminated consumer concerns and proposed zero shopping groups. Secondly, if any help is needed during the tour, Hongsong will have people accompanying the group to provide help. Finally, in terms of safety, Hongsong It provides three times the insurance in the industry to protect the elderly travel.
The development of multiple business formats has promoted the scale, standardization, clustering and branding development of Hongsong in the silver economy. It is believed that in the future, through the continuous enrichment of high-precision products and high-quality service models, it will surely lead the new consumption trend of silver.