Xiaomi doesn't really make air filters and vacuums, they are made by their partners. Xiaomi is providing retail service to those partners. Xiaomi also provides

Xiaomi doesn't really make air filters and vacuums, they are made by their partners. Xiaomi is providing retail service to those partners. Xiaomi also provides partners other services, like pooling purchases to lower price and pooling loans to lower rate. One financial analysis of Xiaomi I read (it's in Korean, I couldn't find anything in English) is that it is in part a lending company funded by float from manufacturing partners. Xiaomi has a personal loan product which grew by 100x in two years to ~1 billion. Liquidity comes from delay between retail sale to partner payment.