How does this business model work?

I was wondering how the business model of 5 company’s/brands in one company works.

1 Like

Can you expand a bit on this? There are several sub-brands under Anker and a few where it’s more an affiliation rather than sub-brand…kinda like Apple having several product lines but they keep it under the ‘Apple’ logo…

1 Like

The best way to describe it is the Business Unit model. Anker Innovations is the holding company, and each brand under it’s umbrella is a BU:

  • The “Cables and batteries BU” - Anker
  • The “Audio products BU” - Soundcore
  • The “Home solutions BU” - Eufy
  • The “Projectors BU” - Nevula
  • The “Car solutions” - Roav

They share knowledge, and most likely some parts of the team, and production facilities. Anker started as a single company making a diverse range of products - the reason why you can still buy an Anker branded speaker - but as the company grew, so did its business model. This model makes it easy to manage different markets and products, and allow for a more streamlined company growth. I believe their goal is to end production of products with brands outside its BU - meaning that, one day, there will only be Soundcore speakers, no more Anker speakers. Right now, they are still in between stages.

Virtually every large corporation works this way, even if it uses the same brand. Samsung sells smartphones, TVs and refrigerators - to name a few - and every segment is, internally, its own business unit. Honda makes cars, motorcycles, airplane motors and lawnmowers. Alphabet has Google (the search engine), Google Drive and its associated services, Nest products, Chromecast, smartphones and so forth.

5 Likes

Thanks for the info, but wouldn’t that make it bad for brand recognition if they have so many different brands?

1 Like

It’s a smart move, if done correctly. I’ll give you an example: when the Samsung Note 7 started exploding, the company tried to first deny the real reach, then minimize the damage by offering replacements and repairing, then ending the product completely. They took too long to act and then acted the wrong way. The Note 7 hurt Samsung’s whole business - all its divisions showed decreased sales. The reason being that Samsung keeps all its various products under the same brand. Someone looking for a refrigerator saw the Samsung brand, remembered reading something about “Samsung explodes” and went on to buy another brand, regardless of the fact that Samsung refrigerators are probably OK. Samsung is on the new much more because of its smartphones than its refrigerators. This is all very good when the smartphones are doing OK. When they explode, everything else falls with it.

The everyperson doesn’t really take notice of muitiple divisions in a company and how they can bring very different products. They see a brand name on the media, and act on it. Now, we might know that Soundcore, Roav, Nebula and Eufy are Anker brands but, believe me, most people don’t, even those who know Anker. There’s a “by Anker” in the packages, but even with it, people distinguish the brands as their own companies. So, for one, having multiple brands protects each brand from image damage from a sister brand. It’s also a smart move to have specialized brands. The consumer of Anker products might not be the same of the Soundcore - again, think about the everyperson. Having specialized brands makes it a little easier to market for every different public.

Ultimately it’s a choice, no one model being surely better than the other.

3 Likes

Great explanation, thanks!

1 Like

That’s a good explanation of the benefits, but what company of comparable size to Samsung or Apple has a company structure like this? It makes it harder to recommend this brand to people when there is x different names. I find it hard to believe that a company, such as Anker, that specializes in accessories for popular electronics can benefit from going under different names for every category of product they have. If someone loved their Samsung T.V. they might decide to also buy every other product they need from Samsung with the assumption they would have equal quality. The brand recognition must be more beneficial than this otherwise everyone would be using strategy. Shopping online you can already see a plethora of knock off or made in china head phones. At a glance I did not know “Zolo” was made by Anker or just a one off from a company I had never heard or nor trusted. Lastly if this branding is targeted at English-speaking companies I believe they could do better with their brand names, something more relate-able to the products each subsection of the company makes.

Couldn’t have said it any better myself