Another 100 billion market, "new species" scrubbers swept young people, Vipshop sales soared 455%

You may ask, what is a scrubber? With the help of the lazy economy, this "new species" has recently risen rapidly. In just one year, the proportion of floor washers in the sales of all categories of cleaning home appliances has jumped from 1% to 16%, and the market performance is on par with sweeping robots and wireless vacuum cleaners. Some institutions predict that the scrubber may have a market size of 100 billion yuan in the future.

"New species" breaks the old pattern of the clean home appliance market

The time for the scrubber to enter the Chinese market is not long. In 2016, American brands Hoover Hoover, Pizza Hut and Domestic brand Timco TINECO released the first batch of floor/floor cleaning machine products. Such products can clean hard floors such as floors and tiles while sucking up sewage and treating wet and dry garbage. However, in the early days of entering the market, functional scrubbers did not become popular.

After multiple rounds of technical iteration, a new generation of wireless intelligent scrubbers ushered in a sales explosion period in 2021. According to the industry analysis released by Aowei Cloud Network (AVC), the sales of scrubbers in the first quarter of 2020 accounted for only 1% of the total category of cleaning appliances, and this proportion jumped to 16.3% in the first half of 2021, second only to sweeping robots and wireless vacuum cleaners in the entire category of cleaning household appliances. In 2020, the sales volume of floor washers in mainland China will be about 1.29 billion yuan, and the analysis predicts that the market size of scrubbers will exceed 4 billion yuan in 2021.

The main retail sales of scrubbers are concentrated in online channels, accounting for about 80%. Taking Vipshop as an example, since January 2022, the sales volume of Vipshop floor washers has increased by 455% year-on-year; among the consumer groups, the post-90s crowd accounted for 42%. Among them, the sales volume of Timco TINECO Fuwan wireless scrubber increased the most year-on-year. At the same time, in addition to Timco TINECO, the sales of pizza bissell, Haier, Midea and other brands of scrubbers in Vipshop have also maintained an upward momentum.

It is worth mentioning that the Timco TINECO brand belongs to the listed company Coworth, which is a leading enterprise in the field of cleaning appliances. According to the latest data from Vipshop, the Coworth sweeping robot and the Timco TINECO Fuwan floor washer both sat firmly in the top position in sales in the same category. Aowei cloud network data also shows that during the double 11 period in 2021, the market share of these two products in China will reach 47% and 70% respectively.

The scrubber took advantage of the lazy economy to soar

Why can the scrubber knock on the door of a Chinese family? We can get a glimpse of it from consumer feedback. At the Vipshop meeting, the user's evaluation of the scrubbing machine was "clean and sharp, free hands", "very easy to use, washing the floor and mopping the floor once completed, saving time and being clean", "completely liberating me from the floor", "dragging the whole house around every day before going to bed is clean"...

With the acceleration of the pace of life and the advancement of science and technology, the lazy economy has risen rapidly in China, and the post-90s generation, which has grown into the main labor force of the family, is eager to get rid of heavy housework. At the same time, due to the impact of the epidemic, the time at home has been extended, and people have higher requirements for the quality and environment of home life. These factors have brought new growth opportunities to the home appliance market, which was originally peaked.

The scrubber is aimed at the pain points of Chinese families spending a long time mopping the floor. The living environment of Chinese families is dominated by hard ground, and the demand for mopping is relatively strong. Compared with the vacuum cleaner and mop, the scrubber is a suction and drag washing integration, and can clean a larger area of the floor at a single time, one key self-cleaning, in line with the needs of the lazy economy. The latest generation of intelligent scrubbers focuses on the selling point of human-computer interaction, and also attracts many young customers.

For the development space of the industry of scrubbers, the institution is optimistic. Southwest Securities believes that in the short term, with the differentiated competition of market participants and the launch of products with higher cost performance, the average price of products may be lowered to further promote the market volume. Haitong Securities analysis pointed out that according to the current number of 500 million households in China and the five-year replacement cycle of products, the annual sales volume of floor washers can reach 50 million units. In the long run, the market size of the scrubber can reach more than 100 billion yuan.