Narwal Marks 10th Anniversary With Founder Letter, Renewed Home-Cleaning Focus

The report said Narwal began in 2016 with fewer than 10 people in a 25-square-meter office in Dongguan's Songshan Lake. Its first product, J1, was developed over more than three years. Close to launch, the team found that a round mop left cleaning blind spots at corners. Although cash flow was tight and restarting meant major risk, the team replaced the round mop with a Reuleaux triangle mop. J1, described as the world's first robot vacuum able to wash its mop automatically, went on sale on Nov. 11, 2019, and quickly received market validation.

Narwal's product history follows a sequence of user-pain-point fixes, according to the report. J2 in 2021 introduced modular automatic water supply and drainage, letting the robot vacuum fill and drain water like a washing machine. J3 in 2022 carried the DirtSense wastewater recognition system and a smart management function that let the machine judge how dirty the wastewater was after mop washing. J4 in 2023 used a cyclone-guided anti-tangle roller brush to address hair tangling, a problem the report said had troubled the industry for more than 20 years. Xiaoyao 001 in 2024 integrated perception, decision-making and interaction, with a dual-chip, dual-eye spatial perception system that supports recognition of more than 100 common household objects.

By 2026, Narwal had laid out four product lines and accumulated more than 1,500 patent applications, the report said. It describes its brand positioning as a global AI smart cleaning expert, with AI as a tool capability and smart cleaning as the destination. The name Narwal comes from Zhuangzi's “Xiaoyao You,” where the whale represents strength and wisdom and cloud suggests lightness and ease, the report said. Its high-end Xiaoyao product line shares that source.

Narwal's early brand slogan was “free and easy, with something you love,” which pointed to freeing people from tedious chores so they can spend time on what they love. As its products moved from single-point functions to whole-home convenience, the brand expression shifted to “enjoy a free and clean home.” The report said this is a natural trajectory: a clean, comfortable home is the precondition for freedom, and technology takes on the burden of housework so people can relax.

In 2022, founder Zhang Junbin wrote a handwritten letter to early J1 users. For the 10th anniversary, he again used a letter to start a ten-year dialogue, this time shifting from narrator to listener and collecting replies from users around the world, according to the report. The report cited a couple who spent four years building a movable home by the Heihui River in Dali; an Ecuadorian ceramic sound artist who shapes clay and makes it produce ancient tones; and a French family of four living in an imaginative house between Cangshan and Erhai, recording life with paintings.

Narwal said it does not define the kind of life people should aspire to. It says it does the same thing: clean the home so users have more time to pursue what they love. The report said the company's 10th anniversary is not a starting point for transformation but a confirmation of its original intention. It remains focused on home cleaning and on innovating for users, with its four product lines aimed at specific pain points such as frequent water changes, hair tangling, unclear dirt detection and incomplete mopping.