首页即时动态许柏鸣：超级生态中的垂直王者壁垒

许柏鸣：超级生态中的垂直王者壁垒

来源：家居百科时间：2025年11月14日 10:49

Vertical Kings: Strategies for Success in the Age of Platforms Vertical Kings: Strategies for Success in the Age of Platforms

【Case Reference Notice】：

This article refers to domestic and international brand cases, including but not limited to Mores, Bedsure, Outer, Cleobella, Häti Home, Admiral, etc. These cases are intended to provide concrete cross-industry references and factual support for the core theory of "Vertical Kings" from the perspective of academic research and strategic analysis. All cases are objective materials for explaining viewpoints and do not represent the author or the institution's endorsement or guarantee of any brand's commercial capabilities, investment value, or product and service quality.

The complexity of business practice is variable, and the success of cases has specific time and space backgrounds and resource conditions. Readers should not take them as universally applicable success models. The author encourages colleagues in the industry to draw inspiration from strategic thinking rather than simple model copying.

Hereby stated.

Editor's Note:

After depicting the grand war map of "platform giants" and the complex context of "competition and cooperation puzzles," the focus of our series of articles naturally falls on the largest, most diverse, and most fundamental group in the entire ecosystem - professional brands and manufacturers.

Facing the pressure of platform dominance and the uncertainty of competition and cooperation, many "vertical kings" in vertical fields are陷入 strategic confusion. This article aims to clear the fog and hit the core. The essence of vertical kings is not the magnitude of scale or the breadth of categories, but the "value barriers" and "meaning recognition" built in a specific field, which is difficult to surpass. Their survival and development rules are fundamentally different from those of platform enterprises.

For this reason, we have introduced a series of brand cases across borders and industries, which provide us with vivid annotations through excellent practice: only by returning to the essence can we achieve stability and long-term development.

Introduction: How Can Vertical Brands Stand on Their Own in the Shadow of Platforms?

As the tentacles of platforms extend infinitely, and as the flood of traffic sweeps the world, a sharp question is put forward for all professional brands and manufacturers: in the super ecosystem, what is your unique value? Are you reduced to a standardized module that can be easily compared and replaced in the platform ecosystem, or do you become a "value pole" with pricing power, user stickiness, and brand charm?

"The Myth of Vertical Kings" explores the paradox of expansion and adherence, while this article needs to penetrate the phenomenon and reach the essence. The core reason why vertical kings are kings is not the "vertical" form itself, but the "depth of dominion" achieved in the vertical field. This dominion constructs a solid value barrier, allowing it to maintain an independent orbit and strong gravity even in the gravitational field of the platform.

1. Essential Difference: From "Product Merchant" to "Meaning Creator"

The survival logic of vertical brands is experiencing a fundamental paradigm shift.

1. Old Paradigm: Supplier of Product Functions

——Logic: The core selling points are "high aesthetics," "cost-performance," "comprehensive functions," and "reliable quality."

——Dilemma: These elements have become a ticket to enter the market, but not a moat. Under the comparison system of platforms, it is easy to occur "involution," leading to homogenization competition and profit exhaustion.

2. New Paradigm: Representative of Lifestyle and Values

——Logic: Products are just carriers, and the core is the lifestyle, aesthetic system, and value recognition that they advocate.

——Essence: Vertical brands must shift from "selling things" to "managing a meaning." Users buy not just a sofa, a set of cabinets, but an identity recognition and emotional belonging to "smart kitchen life," "lazy living room culture," or "minimalist aesthetics." The essence of a brand is a "symbol" of a specific life meaning.

2. Core Foundation: Three Dimensions of Building Value Barriers

The value barrier of vertical kings is composed of three inter-supporting dimensions, which are indispensable.

1. Cognitive Dimension: Occupying a "Mental High Ground"

——Strategic positioning: It must be synonymous with a clear, valuable word in the consumer's mind. For example, "environmentally friendly" with flooring brands, "humanized design" with office furniture, "Eastern aesthetics" with new Chinese-style furniture.

——Action path: All strategic adjoints (product research and development, visual system, channel presentation, content communication) must continuously strengthen this core cognition. This requires extreme strategic determination, resisting all diversification temptations that dilute the core brand cognition.

——Cross-industry启示: The export path of China's sleep brand Mores is an example of "cognitive occupation." It did not stop at the general word "comfort," but connected the brand with "AI sleep technology" and "global design aesthetics" through the joint establishment of an artificial intelligence sleep laboratory with MIT and a design research center with Politecnico di Milano. It even sent its products to the South Pole research station to verify its technical reliability in extreme environments, thereby establishing an authoritative image of "technology-protected healthy sleep" in the consumer's mind. This has enabled it to leap from a furniture manufacturer to a "technology definitor of health sleep solutions."

3. Relationship Dimension: Operating a "Highly Trustworthy Community"

——From traffic to "retention": Abandon the pursuit of general traffic and focus on building your own private user pool through high-quality content and in-depth services.

——From transactions to "interactions": Establish a deep connection with users beyond buying and selling, and transform users into the "devotees" and "brand ambassadors" of the brand through user co-creation, offline salons, membership systems, and other ways, forming a highly sticky, high repurchase, and high recommendation rate brand community.

——Cross-industry启示: The success of American DTC outdoor home brand Outer is partly due to its innovative "neighbor experience program." It encourages users who have purchased products to open their own courtyards for potential customers to experience and rewards hosts accordingly. This not only solves the pain point of "online difficulty in perception" of high-priced outdoor furniture but also builds a highly trustworthy user community based on geography and interests. The relationship between the brand and users has warmed up from cold online transactions to a "neighborhood community" based on real experience and word-of-mouth recommendations, greatly enhancing brand loyalty.

Conclusion: Squatting for a Higher Leap

The logic of platform enterprises is "broad," pursuing the breadth of connection and network effects; while the logic of vertical kings is "deep," pursuing the depth of value and the recognition of meaning.

In the grand ecological leap of the home industry, vertical brands should not be self-abased or blindly follow suit. Their strongest strategy is to return to the essence: to build a solid value barrier in a carefully chosen field through ultimate professionalism, profound value creation, and sincere user relationships. This barrier will be their foundation for survival in the super-ecological era and the only way to achieve sustainable high-quality development.

Squatting is to accumulate strength, to achieve a higher-dimensional value leap of vertical kings themselves.