From "Borrowing a ship to go to sea" to "Building a ship to go to sea"—Xinbao Co., Ltd. gains a competitive edge in development through steady innovation

In Lecong Subdistrict, Leliu Street, Shunde District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province, a busy scene unfolds within the Guangdong Xinbao Electrical Appliances Co., Ltd. industrial park: transport vehicles constantly crisscross, and processes such as injection molding, hardware, electronic control, and final assembly connect with high efficiency. Centered on the headquarters, Xinbao Co., Ltd.’s “half-hour supply chain ecosystem” is running at full speed; enormous volumes of home appliance products are shipped from here to markets around the world. Inside the product exhibition hall, categories such as kitchen appliances, household appliances, and personal care appliances are on display in abundance.

At the 138th China Import and Export Fair (Canton Fair) held last year, Xinbao Co., Ltd. unveiled new products such as commercial coffee machines and commercial beverage unmanned workstations. Backed by hard-core technology, these offerings became a focal point of the fair, attracting large numbers of overseas procurement buyers to stop by and negotiate. From the Shunde factories to international exhibitions, and from domestic markets to the global stage, Xinbao Co., Ltd.’s path to overseas expansion continues to extend, with impressive results attesting to its development strength. In 2025, the company’s revenue is nearly RMB 16.2 billion (about 16.2 billion yuan), maintaining steady growth in emerging markets such as Africa and Latin America.

Today, the global home appliance industry is undergoing deep adjustments, and uncertainty in external markets has intensified—this set of results is especially hard-won. “The more complex the environment is, the more we must drill the fundamentals. Steady overseas expansion has never been about a single breakthrough; it relies on capabilities across the entire system for support.” Xinbao Co., Ltd.’s president, Wang Wei, lays out the core logic behind the company’s development. With three major advantages—supply chain, brand, and technology—the company is completing the critical transformation from “going overseas by borrowing ships” to “going overseas by building ships.”

Building the overseas “foundation platform”

Among the home appliance industrial clusters in the Pearl River Delta, Xinbao Co., Ltd. does not win by sheer single-unit scale. Instead, by virtue of outstanding supply-chain coordination capabilities, it has built a foundational base for core competitiveness.

Walking into the company’s headquarters industrial park, the highly concentrated characteristics of core manufacturing processes are strikingly clear: molds, injection molding, hardware, electronic control, and assembly are all laid out in a concentrated manner. Upstream and downstream supporting enterprises take root nearby, forming an efficient industrial clustering effect. “Most of the company’s key component suppliers are no more than a half-hour drive from headquarters,” Liu Shuguang, Deputy Director of Xinbao’s Project Management, introduces.

This “half-hour supply chain ecosystem” is the result of the company’s years of precise planning. Around R&D and production needs, the enterprise firmly controls key supporting capabilities through ways such as building in-house, taking equity stakes, and deep binding. “Supply chain efficiency directly determines productivity. Home appliance products iterate fast and have high levels of customization demand—if our response is delayed, we’ll miss the market. What we build is a systems engineering approach, not just simple contract manufacturing,” Wang Wei says. The cluster-and-chain way of thinking has also been extended from the domestic market to broader dimensions.

In Shunde, Xinbao Co., Ltd. leverages multiple manufacturing industry clusters to achieve “half-hour rapid response.” In the Pearl River Delta, it builds an “one-hour supply chain ecosystem.” In overseas expansion, it also insists on cluster-based and system-based supply chain construction, refusing to transfer single-capacity production only. The Indonesia plant is a key part of the company’s overseas layout. The overall project plan covers 900 mu of land; Phase I is already operational. Its main products are electric, electric heating, and refrigeration-related categories. In the future, it will bring in core suppliers to build a complete overseas industrial chain. So far, multiple Chinese-funded enterprises and local home appliance companies have already clustered around the plant area, and the early shape of an overseas industrial cluster has begun to take form.

“Simply transferring production capacity is far from enough. Copying and exporting mature supply chain organization capabilities is the key to resisting risks and strengthening the inner core,” Wang Wei says. This global layout model enables the company to have stronger flexibility and resilience when dealing with fluctuations in international trade and changes in tariff policies. With domestic cross-regional collaboration and overseas supply chain coordination driving each other, it becomes a solid support for Xinbao’s steady overseas expansion.

Product capability driven

At the beginning of 2025, the Home Goods Exhibition in Chicago, the United States sent a strong signal that the competition logic in the small home appliance industry is changing. Previously, the main exhibitors were American importers and wholesalers. Now, the number of Chinese companies’ exhibition booths has increased significantly. The pace of product updates, the pricing system, and channel structure have all undergone fundamental changes. Traditional contract-manufacturing models are facing unprecedented pressure, which has also pushed Xinbao Co., Ltd. onto a path of transformation.

In 2013, Xinbao Co., Ltd. began laying out its brand business. But in the early stages of the transition, there were heavy obstacles. Some long-time partner customers had concerns about the company’s dual model of “contract manufacturing + brand,” and even reduced orders. Internally, the company also faced considerable pressure. “But we’re very clear that if we stick to a single role as a contract manufacturer, the development space will only get narrower and narrower,” Wang Wei admits.

After careful consideration, the company firmly implemented a “multi-model parallel” strategy. On one hand, it stabilizes the contract-manufacturing base and continuously improves R&D, delivery, and service capabilities. On the other hand, it steadily cultivates its own brands, building an end-to-end capability system closer to terminal market needs. Today, the company has formed a mature pattern of collaborative development between original equipment production, original design manufacturing, and its own brands. The share of original design manufacturing has risen sharply from 15% to 50%, and the company’s independent R&D and design capabilities have been recognized by global customers. According to its plan, over the next five years, the revenue share of its own brands will increase significantly, becoming a new growth engine.

Dongling, as the core carrier of Xinbao Co., Ltd.’s own brand, carries the重任 of a brand leap. Founded in 2003, Dongling started from small kitchen home appliances. It established brand recognition in the field of cooking and has, in recent years, tightly followed the concept of “modernization of Chinese life,” deeply focusing on user needs, expanding product boundaries, and launching scenario-based products such as fabric cleaning machines, steam cleaning machines, and multi-functional electric steam pots. These products precisely address pain points such as household cleaning and healthy cooking, helping the enterprise shift from “manufacturing capability overflow” to “product capability driven” transformation.

“Dongling is not simply doing private labeling. It digs deep into user pain points, relying on its supply chain and technology advantages to produce high-quality products, enabling an upgrade from word-of-mouth to brand effects,” Wang Wei tells reporters.

Being a “trade industry tailor”

Xinbao Co., Ltd. has always upheld an idea internally: “Doing standard models well is the basic skill; doing the ‘trade industry tailor’ is the key to breaking the deadlock.” This positioning accurately matches today’s needs in the small home appliance market—scenario-based, smart, and personalized—and also imposes very high requirements on the company’s R&D and manufacturing capabilities.

“Some online new products, from concept to mass production, take only a few months,” Chen Guanghua, Deputy Director of the Technology Management Office of Xinbao Co., Ltd., says. Relying on the advantages of full industrial chain coordination, Xinbao Co., Ltd. can complete the entire process from project initiation to delivery for complex new products within two to three months. In the first half of 2025, a leading brand commissioned the company to develop a flagship commercial product, and the team delivered a prototype in only 45 days.

To achieve this speed, the project team takes multiple measures: core personnel are stationed on suppliers’ sites, compressing the sampling cycle from 10 days to 3 days; when requirements are not clearly defined, the team conducts pre-research for multiple方案 and verifies them to avoid repeated adjustments; it establishes an ultra-fast response mechanism, replying to technical questions within 3 minutes and delivering feasibility analyses within 2 days.

Behind efficient delivery are continuous technology investments and technical accumulation. In 2024, the company’s R&D investment reached RMB 660 million, accounting for 4% of sales. It has nearly 2,900 R&D personnel and more than 5,600 patents (including more than 300 invention patents). It also has multi-level R&D platforms such as a national-level enterprise technology center and an industrial design center.

Xinbao Electrical Appliances Research Institute, newly established at the end of 2024, has set up research bases in Shunde, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. Focusing on core directions such as intelligence and refrigeration/heating, it has already produced multiple self-developed results, including an in-house IoT platform and high-speed duct fan technology, providing source support for innovation.

On the R&D frontline, engineers always maintain a mindset of “continuous improvement.” Senior engineers continue to drill into their work with a “clean slate” mentality. Even within a single category like electric kettles for heating water, they subdivide into seven or eight functional combinations. Around key technologies such as ion wind and precise temperature control, Xinbao Co., Ltd. deepens industry-academia-research cooperation with well-known universities. At the same time, it introduces AI tools to analyze data from platforms such as Amazon, precisely capturing consumption trends and shortening the decision-making chain.

“The combination of ‘technology + mechanisms’ allows Xinbao Co., Ltd. to maintain flexible response and high-quality delivery capability in global markets. Looking ahead, the company is moving from a ‘leading manufacturer of small home appliances’ toward a ‘comprehensive electrical appliance enterprise,’ expanding into new tracks such as commercial coffee machines and robotic lawn mowers. By focusing intensely on what it does best in its core fields, it aims to make every single thing reach the extreme.”

Driven by both globalization and consumption upgrades, leveraging its three major advantages—supply chain coordination, brand innovation, and technology R&D—Xinbao Co., Ltd. is accelerating the completion of its transformation from a “contract-manufacturing big factory” to an “innovative intelligent manufacturer,” writing a new chapter for Chinese home appliance companies to go overseas with steady steps. (Economic Daily Reporter Yu Jian)