This is a story of intelligent transformation of a traditional European lighting brand. The journey is bumpy, but in the end it has harvested sweet fruits.
Europe is catching up. According to a research report by global market analyst Berg Insight: By the end of 2022, there are expected to be 84 million households in Europe with IoT devices, a market penetration rate of 35%, and 13.3 billion euros in revenue.
With the large-scale use of smart home equipment, as an important basic functional device in a smart home system, home intelligent lighting applications are accelerating to land. This is especially true in Europe, where the smart lighting market is ushering in a period of rapid rise.
"In Europe, the number of light bulbs in households is increasing significantly. On average there are 40 lights per household, and in the Netherlands that number is even more than 50." said Will Smits, Calex Commercial Director. Calex was founded in 1970, is a high-end lighting brand in the Netherlands, and has the reputation of "the king of filament lamps" in Europe. Its decorative lighting style is mature and elegant, which deeply understands the aesthetics of consumers in different markets in Europe.

Will Smits, Calex Commercial Director
The inherent quantitative advantages of traditional lighting make the trend of European lighting intelligent. The latest data also supports this. According to the global statistics database Statista report, the smart bulb penetration rate in Europe in 2019 is 3.8%, and it is expected that by 2024, its penetration rate will reach 10.7%.
In fact, it is already the industry consensus to seize the European home intelligent lighting market. In recent years, domestic and foreign lighting giants have begun to deploy in Europe and begin to transform. Traditional lighting equipment manufacturers such as Philips Lighting and Op Lighting are transforming into smart lighting overall solution providers. Calex is no exception. Its smart lighting products launched this year cover 1500 stores in Europe and shipped more than 2 million units in just one year. Calex expects that the next year's shipments will have the opportunity to double again, with outstanding results.
The Road to Transformation of "The King of Filament Lamps"
In the past, Calex was a company specializing in decorative lighting. Its group company, Electro Cirkel B.V., was founded in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, the largest port in Europe in the nautical era. It has been established for nearly 60 years since the 1960s.
However, the acceleration of the development of smart homes in recent years has made the role of smart lighting more and more important. Statista's report shows that Europe has three of the five countries with the highest penetration of smart lighting: Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Iceland ranked first with a penetration rate of 20.2%.
The so-called intelligent lighting system refers to a system that intelligently controls and manages lighting to achieve the functions of energy saving, environmental protection, comfort and convenience of intelligent lighting. Implementation methods include, for example, dimming lights, one-click scenes, one-to-one remote control, and zone lights on and off. The main control methods are wireless remote control, timing control, centralized control, remote control, etc.
As the carrier of intelligent lighting, smart light bulbs are gradually replacing the traditional light bulbs. Calex has also noticed this and regards it as the direction of key layout in recent years. As early as four years ago, Calex once launched the smart light bulb product, a Bluetooth smart light bulb that can be controlled by an app, and the price is 25 euros.
"This product is too expensive and does not meet market requirements." Will Smits said. Due to the relatively high price and the product experience to be improved, the market response was modest. It is better to find a partner to overcome difficulties alone. At that time, Calex realized that he needed to seek cooperation in order to take less detours in the transformation of smart lighting.
In cooperation with the global AIoT platform Tuya Smart, Calex has launched this year's explosive product: a smart bulb that costs only 10 euros.
Collaboration with Tuya didn't happen overnight. In the past two years, Calex has researched many European and Chinese companies. "One of the basic reasons for choosing Tuya is Tuya's platform, which supports WiFi, Bluetooth Mesh networks, and Zigbee (a wireless network with low speed and short distance transmission). Agreement), and even support new developments, these are strong proof of future development. "Will Smits explained. After careful comparison and observation, as well as the consistency of the vision of both parties, smart lighting will soon become the mainstream of the lighting field. In 2018, Calex and Graffiti officially reached a cooperation.

Tuo Smart Co-founder and COO Yang Yan (left) and General Manager of Electro Cirkel B.V. China Zhang Ling (right)
Tutu Smart was established in 2014. It is a global AIoT platform that empowers enterprises to be intelligent from three aspects: App, cloud and smart modules. The products enabled by Tuya technology are collectively called Powered by Tuya (abbreviated as PBT). At present, there are more than 90,000 such products in the world. In 220 countries and regions. These products can be interconnected across categories and brands, and all PBT products can be controlled with the same App.
With the help of graffiti, Calex has finally developed a low cost, efficient and cost-effective smart light bulb for users. With the help of Tuya's Plug and Play (plug and play) solution, it can quickly make an own-brand app in 5 minutes, complete the smart product demo in 8 hours, and achieve mass production in 15 days, greatly reducing the cost of intelligence.
In terms of price, its co-developed smart light bulb costs about 10 euros, and the price has dropped by 60% compared to the original product. "This price is far lower than the average European market price, and even 3 times cheaper than similar products on the market." Will Smits said. Based on the WiFi technical support provided by Tuya, smart light bulbs are no longer expensive, and the price of ordinary light bulbs is almost the same.
Scenarioization is the only way to test that smart light bulbs can play greater value. Will Smits said, "In Calex's smart light bulb application, users can create a series of scenarios, such as using a voice control system to turn the light bulb on or off, and connect the light bulb to an alarm clock. It can also be used with electrical equipment and other appliances. , Such as refrigerator lighting, washing machine lighting, etc. "
When a European brand of traditional lamps and lanterns meets an Internet gene platform company, the two parties are inevitable in the early stage of cooperation.
Calex also had concerns about graffiti. Will Smits, commercial director of Calex, said frankly: "We both spent some time running together. At first we also discussed that with so many lighting brands working with Tuya, would it pose a threat to Calex in smart lighting?" But he later found that Tuya It is a relatively neutral platform. The resources given to the platform are quite rich and fair, and not particularly generous.
It took Calex just a few months for the smart light bulb products of the two parties to cover the mainstream sales channels in six Western European countries. In less than a year, Calex has sold more than 2 million products and connected more than 1 million homes through these 2 million products, and these are its valuable smart home seed users. User feedback is also a key indicator of the success of the product. Compared to the smart bulbs sold before, Will Smits said, "At present, 95% of smart bulb product evaluations on the Internet about Calex and Tuya cooperation are positive."

Behind these achievements, Tuya completed the upgrade and transformation of Calex in a short period of time, such as: from the product's native prototype, iterative definition, product interaction system and App system, and then quickly shortened the GTM (Global Traffic Management) Time to help design and formulate sales plans and channel penetration plans, specific to pricing strategies, marketing strategies, showcase display strategies, and consumer experience.
Will Smits said, "WiFi-connected smart bulbs are entry-level products for smart bulbs, opening the door to Calex's entry into smart lighting."
In the future, both parties will carry out in-depth cooperation in more business lines. "About 2 million Calex products will enter the market, and our turnover is expected to grow to 100 million Euros in the next two years." Will Smits said. With deep roots in the field of smart lighting, Calex will further expand the smart home category in the future, launching more brands and smart home appliances, such as coffee machines and rice cookers.
By cooperating with Tuya, Calex has broadened its own boundaries. In addition to lamps, it has introduced PBT product categories it has never tried before, with lamps as the core and leveraging larger smart home business opportunities.
Globalization "response" for graffiti
It is curious that the intelligent transformation promoter behind Calex has any skill?
As a B-side platform company, openness has always been the core concept of Tuya. Shortly after its establishment, in addition to deeply cultivating the domestic market, Tuya regards internationalization as its core strategy based on its own development speed and scale.
The European market has become an important cut for graffiti to become international, and the reason is not difficult to understand. The first is the relatively high level of acceptance and consumption of new products by European users. Secondly, technically, the product ecosystem supporting the Internet of Things in the European market is relatively complete. In addition, in the retail format, because offline chain channels are the mainstay, the dealer agency system is not complicated, and there is a more controllable resource utilization rate.
According to Tuya, in 2019, its platform customers doubled, from 93,000 to 180,000, more than 50% from Europe, America and Africa. In the cooperation with Calex, winning the trust of the other party also proved that Tuya's platform model is suitable for enterprises at home and abroad.
These are all thanks to the unique internationalization strategy of graffiti-global localization. "Global localization has four core elements, respecting local cultural customs, business habits, laws and regulations, etc .; fully understanding the needs and pain points of customers; thinking about users' motivations, feelings, and ideology; even if they have the Internet, they need to be close to users "Said Yu Fei, general manager of Tuya Smart Europe and Asia.
In addition, in order to further promote the intelligent transformation of local enterprises, Tuya has launched the "Nebula Plan", which aims to empower global enterprises and eventually form a dazzling galaxy to cover the world. According to statistics, the "Nebula Plan" in 2019 has supported more than 22 core brands on six continents and extended more than 200 brands.
The cooperation between Tuya and Calex is a successful practice of Tuya's "global localization" strategy and an in-depth value exploration of the European smart home market.
