Narwal at Ten Years: From the J1's Automatic Mop Washing to a Global AI Smart Cleaning Expert

Over the past decade, the changes in the home cleaning sector may not have been earth-shattering, but they have been solid and profound enough. Robot vacuums have long since gone from a novelty tried by a few to entering millions of households, becoming an ordinary appliance that average families take for granted. Industry standards have also iterated step by step: manually washing mop pads has become a thing of the past, and sweeping and mopping in one unit has become a basic standard; base-station self-cleaning, automatic water supply and drainage, anti-tangle design, and environmental perception have linked together the entire industry's upgrade trajectory. The focus of competition has also quietly changed: no longer is it just about how many cleaning actions a machine can complete, but about how many times a person still needs to intervene by hand.

When Narwal entered the market, most floors in Chinese homes were tile or wood, and mopping was a real, everyday necessity. But in earlier years the industry generally emphasized sweeping over mopping, and once the mop pad got dirty, you ultimately still had to scrub it yourself. What Narwal targeted was precisely this real problem that had long been overlooked. Looking back, this starting point was both the beginning of this company's story and an important stroke in the industry's transformation.

A difficult but correct path

When Narwal started out, what lay before the team was a problem in the industry that had not yet been properly solved.

In 2016, the founding team began R&D in a 25-square-meter office in Songshan Lake, Dongguan, with fewer than ten people. The first product, J1, was refined for more than three years, and as launch approached, the team discovered that the round mop pad left cleaning blind spots in corners. At the time the company's cash flow was tight, and starting over meant enormous risk, but they still made up their minds to change the round mop pad to a Reuleaux triangle mop pad. On Double 11 in 2019, J1, the world's first robot vacuum capable of automatically washing its mop pad, officially went on sale and quickly gained market validation.

This was a difficult but correct path. It was correct because it anchored to a pain point that genuinely existed for users yet had long been ignored; it was difficult because there was no technical reference, funding was tight, and there was no shortcut. It was acceptable to launch a little later, but not to leave cleaning blind spots. This choice also laid down the underlying tone of Narwal's product-making over the past decade: first solve users' real needs, then let the market test it.

Products are the measure of time

Looking through the history of Narwal's product iterations, a clear logic emerges: every innovation is an insight into users' real needs, not a spec sheet.

In 2019, Narwal J1 achieved mop-pad self-cleaning, pushing the entire industry into the self-cleaning era. In 2021, J2 featured modular automatic water supply and drainage, letting the robot vacuum automatically take in and drain water like a washing machine, driving automatic water changing from a single-product innovation to industry-wide adoption. In 2022, J3 featured the DirtSense™ wastewater recognition system and Narwal Smart Management, enabling the machine to autonomously judge how dirty the wastewater is after the mop pad is washed.

In 2023, J4 used a cyclone-guided anti-tangle roller brush to respond to the hair-tangling problem that had plagued the industry for more than twenty years. In 2024, Freo 001 integrated perception, decision-making, and interaction into one, with a dual-chip binocular spatial perception system supporting recognition of hundreds of common household objects. Robot vacuums began to understand the scenes in the home.

By 2026, Narwal had established four product lines: robot vacuums, wet dry vacuums, vacuum cleaners, and mite removers, with cumulative patent applications exceeding 1,500. The numbers are growing, but the original intention in making products has not changed: discover needs from users' real lives and innovate for real needs. A decade of accumulation has also made the brand positioning clearer, namely a global AI intelligent cleaning expert. AI is a tool capability, intelligent cleaning is the end point, and expert means drilling deep and doing thoroughly into the small matter of home cleaning.

From free ideals to clean daily life

This positioning is in the same vein as the origin of the brand name.

The name Narwal was inspired by the line in Zhuangzi's "Free and Easy Wandering": "In the Northern Darkness there is a fish, and its name is Kun." The whale represents strength and wisdom, while the cloud brings an image of lightness and ease. This also echoes Narwal's product direction: let technology take on the tedious work of home cleaning and give cleanliness and ease back to daily life.

Strength and lightness, bearing and ease—this set of seemingly contradictory qualities is Narwal's unchanging core over ten years. The high-end product line is named Freo, sharing the same origin as the name and continuing the product direction: technology must have the ability to shoulder trivial household chores, and the user experience must be relaxed and at ease enough.

Narwal's early brand proposition was "Free and at ease, with something you love." This sentence points to a state: people should not be trapped by tediousness and should leave time for what they love.

As product capabilities moved from single points to whole-home peace of mind, the brand expression gradually landed in a more concrete place: enjoy a free and clean home. From "Free and at ease, with something you love" to "enjoy a free and clean home" is Narwal's natural trajectory of growth: a clean and comfortable home is the prerequisite for freedom. When technology shoulders the burden of housework, people can truly relax. The former was the initial direction; the latter is a tangible promise to users, turning freedom from a concept into something felt every day.

Tenth anniversary: handing the conversation to users

When the brand proposition landed from direction into promise, for its tenth anniversary the brand chose to hand the right to speak to users.

In 2022, Narwal founder Zhang Junbin once wrote a handwritten letter to first-generation J1 users. On the occasion of the brand's tenth anniversary, the founder once again opened a ten-year dialogue with a letter, changing from narrator to listener and collecting replies from users around the world.

Today, Narwal has entered more than 30 countries and regions worldwide and served more than 6 million user households. There is a couple living in an RV who spent four years by the Black Hui River in Dali hand-building a movable home, sitting on the ground and living alongside nature; a ceramic sound artist from Ecuador who shapes clay and makes sound in a kiln room, letting clay wind instruments play ancient tones that travel through thousands of years; and a family of four in France who moved into an imaginative house and record life with paintbrushes amid the Cangshan Mountains and Erhai Lake.

The sparks of life are not necessarily grand narratives; they hide in tiny moments, becoming a reassuring barefoot walk, a parent-child game uninterrupted by housework, a quiet stretch of time alone. Millions of families mean millions of ways of living. Narwal does not define what kind of life people aspire to, but it has always been doing the same thing: clean the home so users have more time to pursue what they love and create more sparks for life.

Still focused on home cleaning, continuing to innovate for users

The tenth anniversary is not the starting point of a transformation, but a confirmation of the original intention.

Narwal remains focused on home cleaning and continues to innovate for users. The four product lines cover those specific user pain points in the home: frequent water changes, tangled hair, not knowing where is dirty, incomplete mopping... These are all small things, yet they repeatedly consume people's time and energy. Solving users' pain points one by one is what Narwal understands as innovating for users.

In its first decade, Narwal proved one thing: making the small matter of floor cleaning effortless enough is itself the most sincere respect for life. Just like the whale in Narwal's name, it rises from the Northern Darkness and rides the wind upward, not to show off by flying high, but so that people standing on the ground can live at ease and with composure.

The first decade was a difficult but correct path. In the next decade, the direction remains clear.