Reviving iRobot: Build a Marketplace

Strategic turnaround vision: how struggling hardware companies can reinvent themselves through platform thinking, ecosystem development, and marketplace business models

iRobot, the pioneer of robotic mopping, faces financial struggles due to competition and a failed acquisition by Amazon. Building a marketplace around its control app, iRobot-Home, could offer a way out by providing home maintenance services and generating additional revenue streams.

At its peak, iRobot stood as the undisputed global leader in consumer robotics – the category pioneer, the technological benchmark, and the brand that defined what a robotic vacuum was supposed to be.

This dominance proved fragile once a wave of low-cost, high-proficiency Chinese competitors flooded the market. The combined engineering prowess, rapid iteration cycles, and tightly integrated manufacturing of vendors such as Roborock, Ecovacs, and Dreame delivered comparable — and often superior — performance at far lower price points.