With a history of more than 100 years, why has the electric shaver become the "fragrant food" in the eyes of the brand?

As more and more consumers pay attention to their own image, in recent years, the beauty and health care industry has been heating up, even the development history of more than a hundred years of electric shaver industry, but also began to show a trend of segmentation layout, portable electric shaver has thus become a comprehensive brand such as Haier, eyebrows, nonferrous and other new forces brands and Feike, Panasonic and other original shaver brands to tap market opportunities in a direction.

For an industry with a long history, it is generally considered that there is a greater difficulty in subversive innovation in technology, and the original brand enhances the attractiveness of consumers through the introduction of products, which is obviously understandable, but the main companies behind the two brands of Sumei and Nonferrous were established in February 2017 and May 2019 respectively, and the establishment time is still less than five years, and comprehensive brands such as Haier have only begun to lay out in recent years. When faced with the mature industry of electric shavers, what exactly do these brands look for?

The diversified development trend of electric shavers is gradually emerging

Aowei cloud network (AVC) data show that in 2021, the retail volume of the electric shaver online market was 39.31 million units, down 9.2% year-on-year, and the retail sales were 7.32 billion yuan, an increase of 4.2% year-on-year, showing a trend of volume reduction and increase, the main reason behind it was last year's sales overdraft, insufficient new demand, and the market was saturated in stages. At the same time, the average price of electric shavers online in 2021 is 186 yuan, up 14.8% year-on-year, reflecting the healthy competition of the electric shaver industry from price competition to product innovation, and the diversified product layout advocated by electric shaver companies has also been recognized by more and more consumers.

At present, the electric shaver industry mainly shows five trends.

First, the improvement of the comprehensive strength of domestic brands in technology, research and development, channels and so on is surpassing foreign brands, and the industry threshold is increasing.

Second, the current electric shaver shows a trend of portability, trend, high-end, and intelligence. The market share of electric shaver products with new technologies and new selling points has steadily increased, and more and more products have innovative technologies such as multi-blade, full-body washing, wireless charging, dry and wet double shaving, and induction shaving.

Third, with the continuous increase of new products and the gradual improvement of functions, the market will be further subdivided, and the needs of consumers will also be diversified. Jingdong big data shows that the search index of acne muscle/sensitive muscle related search terms increased by 1124%, and 70% of men hope to shave without hurting the skin, minimizing skin irritation caused by shaving, and shavers in acne scenes have become the Top 2 related category, and razors suitable for sensitive skin should be born immediately.

Fourth, the focus of sales channels will be transformed, and the proportion of terminal sales will be greatly increased in the overall sales composition of the enterprise.

Fifth, for the marketing side, the dissemination and influence of products on social platforms are becoming more and more important.

It can be seen that with the improvement of living standards, the demand for electric shavers by male consumer groups has undergone some conceptual changes, and it has also promoted portable electric shavers to rely on their exquisite and compact appearance and richer use scenarios to become a dark horse in the electric shaver industry.

A single product can break through the subdivision category of 300 million scale

"In the case of weak development of the home appliance industry and the stable performance of the entire shaver industry, portable electric shavers have become the main force driving the rapid growth of the market." The relevant person in charge of Haier Personal Care told the China State Grid reporter. In the eyes of the person in charge, portable electric shavers are a subdivision category that "a single product can do more than 300 million", which has undoubtedly become an important reason for many brands that originally had no related business to join this market segment.

Compared with the traditional electric shaver, the portable electric shaver locates the travel crowd, small size, rich form, the use of the scene expanded to travel, vehicle and other subdivision tracks, is currently mainly divided into cylinder type, card type, flying saucer type three types of product forms.

The first type is the cylinder electric shaver represented by Haier, Xumei, Dana and other brands, mostly single-blade turbo rotary electric shavers, with a fuselage length between 5-12cm; The second type is the card electric shaver represented by Panasonic, Mijia, Nonferrous and other brands, which contains a reciprocating portable electric shaver with a single floating blade thickness of only 12cm and a double blade thickness of 15cm; The third type is the flying saucer electric shaver represented by Feike, which adopts the curved double ring knife net design, the shape is trendy and innovative, only the size of one palm, which is convenient for business trips and travel.

At this stage, portable electric shavers are being accepted by more and more consumers, with the layout for segments of the population, in the context of the increasing saturation of the electric shaver market, driving the progress of this market. AVC online monitoring data shows that the retail sales share of portable electric shavers in 2020 is 1.97%, and the retail sales share in 2021 is 5.51%, and the share increases by 3.54%.

At present, the innovation of various brands for new portable electric shavers is mainly reflected in the design, such as designing products into various shapes and some joint models. Like Feike's space small flying saucer series focus on the appearance of fashion flying saucers, the beard tide player series and some of the colored portable electric shaver products have emphasized sports car paint, Haier has also launched cylinders, torches and other shaped products, SM1 also uses anti-imitation porcelain fuselage to increase the touch and texture, these products are quite enjoyable, aiming to cater to young consumers " hunting", "personality", "trend" consumer psychology.

Liu Yali, research manager of the small electricity business department of Aowei Cloud Network, told the State Grid reporter that the main difference between the current portable electric shavers on the market is in terms of appearance and size, and the respective advantages between the three product forms of cylindrical, card-type and flying saucer are not very obvious, and because the portable electric shaver is small, most of them have only one blade, in order to make up for the lack of shaving power, they will do innovation on the knife network, such as six-leaf blades and automatic grinding.

Of course, at present, portable electric shavers still have serious problems of functional homogenization, and as more and more brands enter the market, the problem of product homogenization will become more and more prominent. At the same time, some local brands are difficult to break through technical bottlenecks in the process of product innovation, mostly based on foundries, and local supply chains and manufacturing capabilities are insufficient.

In order to solve the above problems, in the future, these companies should start to establish their own factories, or through cooperation with professional electric shaver manufacturers, continue to adhere to innovation in appearance, technology, process, etc., from the user's point of view, dig deep into user needs, and bring products to a more trendy, intelligent, high-end and differentiated direction. It is understood that Zero Li Technology, a subsidiary of Haier Group, has established the first comprehensive manufacturing base for the environmental appliances and beauty personal care industry in Chaohu, helping products to upgrade to the high-end and intelligent direction.

When asked about the future development direction of the electric shaver industry, Liu Yali gave three paths, one is efficient specialization, returning to the essence of the product, improving shaving efficiency and cleanliness, and improving the comfort of product use; The second is portability and use scenario expansion to meet the needs of subdivided groups; The third is to improve endurance.

The above-mentioned person in charge of Haier believes that from the category point of view, reciprocating shavers will become the direction of future development, its power is stronger, the cleaning efficiency is higher, and it is more suitable for the short and hard whiskers of Asians, while the technical threshold is high, the cost is high, and the number of domestic brands in this direction is still small. "In terms of product characteristics, the gift direction will also become the future exploration direction of electric shavers." Razors come with gift attributes and social attributes, sending boyfriends, colleagues, elders, etc., which is an excellent choice for gift-giving. ”