Blue Ocean, and the law of category

This is a robot vacuum sold in 649 Yuan from T-mall. It is worth 110,000 won in Korean currency. This company specializes in a robot vacuum. 

Even though the robot vacuum market is just in the entry step, TaoBao and T-mall introduce this product much. It is pretty expensive in Korea. The cheapest one is 300,000 ~ 400,000 won. 

This might be because there is a difference between the Korean geographical feature and the Chinese one. In my opinion, South Korea is one step behind in this market at a functional, structural, and price aspects. 

I couldn’t definitely compare those two products in South Korea and China because I have never used them. I tried to look up the Korean robot vacuum because it’s pretty hard for me to clean as a single-person household and realized that performance was a little bit different.

So, I decided to purchase the functionally excellent vacuum. This was on sale at half price of the Korean product. I would write comments of it on this blog. 

A book, ‘Blue Ocean,’ has been famous since a few years ago, and I read it carefully. Then, I realized that this book was similar with the law of category from another book, ‘The Immutable Laws of Marketing,’ written by Al Ries. A few days ago, I read an article of BaiDu and realized that ‘Blue Ocean’ has recently been the talk of the town, so I just thought about Blue Ocean and the law of category. I had lots of doubts. 

I don’t know Blue Ocean means a new market or an empty market. Those two markets are different, aren’t they? From a point of the developmental view, these can be similar. However, if Blue Ocean is simply a niche market, a new category would be different according to the law of category. 

The more I dig deep into this, the more I feel a lack of knowledge. I didn’t start this business by keeping this blue ocean in mind. We have just thought how long our shopping bags can be sold? The recession of a paper bag will be coming soon like a plastic bag, won’t it? Is a shopping bag used for only brands and businesses? 

We actually prepare something different because we need to find a new one in a new way at a starting point. We don’t try to challenge IT industry. We just see IoT and O2O as different. 

It’s such a difficult thing because my body can’t catch up my idea as I am getting older and older. It doesn’t mean that Blue Ocean is good, whereas Red Ocean is bad. However, in my opinion, I believe that we can succeed when we find Blue Ocean, but we actually start from Red Ocean. We just try to create a new category through a new competition within the great Red Ocean. 

We are still in the Red Ocean competing with lots of shopping bag factories. If not, we wouldn’t have had this technique and moved into Shan-dong. Blue Ocean is great, but surviving in the fiercely competitive Red Ocean is just above all. It is right to construct my own category there. 

We don’t want ‘Only One,’ we just try to find the best answer. Blue Ocean and the law of category have something in common. 

However, I think that Blue Ocean is just a concept of markets, whereas the law of category means something about products. 

Anyway, both of them are highly valuable.