is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
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Hoto exists because someone got bored.
CEO Lidan Liu, the company’s founder and a notable industrial designer, tells The Verge she was tired of advising from her consultancy Designaffairs China. I have to build something on my own, she thought. And back then, she was spending a lot of time in her workshop surrounded by the same old tools.
“The tool industry, it never changes, the products are boring, very masculine and very much designed for professional users,” Liu thought. “We can start something new.” So she founded iMonkey Technology, which later became Hoto, short for “Home Tools.”
She didn’t have to build it alone. She knew a cofounder of Xiaomi, one of China’s biggest companies, from when they served together on design award jury panels. She texted Liu De in 2016, asking to meet. He encouraged her to join Xiaomi’s supplier incubator program, which opened up countless doors. She could develop her own relationships with Xiaomi’s component suppliers, and sell her first products under the Xiaomi Mijia (“Mi Home”) brand, in exchange for a 10 percent stake in her startup.
She pitched Xiaomi’s cofounder ideas every two weeks for nearly six months. Hoto’s first product became a three-way collaboration. In 2017, Liu’s team designed a stylish slim screwdriver set with 24 bits from Wiha, a top-shelf German screwdriver brand, and a pop-out magnetic case to gently hold each bit. The product was emblazoned with the Xiaomi and Wiha brands.
But Xiaomi, skeptical of the results, only ordered 5,000 sets for its launch. “A lot of people told us it isn’t going to work, it’s so niche, it looks so different and weird,” Liu says.
“And in seven seconds, it sold out,” she tells me.
By 2020, Hoto was selling five Xiaomi products, including powered versions of its screwdrivers, plus the first tools under its own brand. As of today, Hoto has sold over 4 million pieces of Xiaomi-branded gear — and roughly another 5 million pieces of its own. In the past year, sales have more than doubled.
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