Image source @ Visual China
Wen | Yuan Guobao
With the opening up of the three-child policy by the state, the demand for confinement in society is also increasing, and the domestic service industry represented by the confinement service has become a hot outlet. However, with the influx of capital, the entire industry has begun to be chaotic, the trust between housekeeping companies and customers has begun to collapse, and there are still various problems to be solved in the future development of the housekeeping industry.
1, "a sister-in-law is difficult to seek", the domestic industry is now in short supply
2, the trillion market is mixed, and the domestic industry is frequently chaotic
3. How should the future housekeeping company be transformed and upgraded
In recent years, the domestic housekeeping industry has been in a period of vigorous development. Data show that from 2012 to 2020, the size of the domestic domestic service market has grown from the original 160 billion to 512.7 billion, and now the growth rate is still increasing.
As the largest domestic service enterprise in China, Swan Home has been in a state of loss in recent years, and the loss gap is gradually increasing. In addition, many small and medium-sized domestic service companies around the world have also closed their doors under various poor management and customer complaints.
Backed by such a huge market demand, why is the domestic service industry standing on the cusp still so difficult? The reasons behind this deserve our in-depth investigation.
"A sister-in-law is difficult to seek", the domestic industry is now in short supply
Recently, the topic of "the average monthly salary of the sister-in-law is 15,000 yuan" has been on the hot search. Unconsciously, the sister-in-law has become a high-income job, and the original humble domestic industry is gradually becoming a new outlet.
Although the fertility rate has declined in recent years, the market demand for domestic service personnel such as confinement and child-rearing sister-in-law has not decreased but has risen, mainly due to the lack of parenting knowledge of the new generation of parents.
In addition, the change in parenting concepts due to economic development is also an important reason. Compared with traditional parenting sisters-in-law who rely only on experience to take care of their babies, the current new generation of parents prefer professional sisters-in-law with certain professional knowledge such as nutrition and health care, behavior development, intellectual development and physical exercise.
According to incomplete statistics, the demand for monthly wives in the country is as high as 4 million person-times, but the number of monthly wives on the job is only 1 million. In addition, the high standards while the supply exceeds the demand have exacerbated the imbalance between supply and demand. It is reported that the gap between the supply and demand of the monthly wives in first-tier cities is about 68,000 to 85,000 people, and the gap between the monthly wives at home is as high as 30% to 50%, and many families are "difficult to find a sister-in-law". Supply and demand are so unequal, the wages of the sister-in-law and the child-rearing sister-in-law are naturally high.
"I didn't find it for two days, people are making an appointment a month in advance, so I'm afraid I can't find a high level." Mr. Wu, who has just become a father, runs to various major political companies every day, but still has not found a suitable sister-in-law.
Behind the phenomenon of "a sister-in-law is difficult to find", there is a huge market and untapped demand in the domestic industry. According to statistics, the annual turnover of orders in the monthly industry is as high as 2 million, which is 12 times that of ten years ago. It should be noted that many orders are lost every year due to short supply. There is no doubt that the rise of the housekeeping industry is not an accident, and the huge demand gap will continue to push the housekeeping industry higher. Experts predict that in 2026, the number of monthly orders will reach between 10 million and 12 million, the scale of the industry will expand by 7 times, and at least 2 million domestic sisters-in-law will be needed to meet the needs of the market.
In addition, the surge in pension pressure has also led to high demand for the domestic service industry in many families. At present, there are nearly 264 million people aged 60 and above in China, and the proportion of the elderly population has reached nearly 25%. According to statistics, of the more than 6 million households in Beijing in 2018, 2 million needed domestic services. In the face of such a huge market of customer groups, Hao Fuqing, deputy director of the Social Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, described the domestic industry as follows: demand spreads its legs, and supply cannot keep up.
In the "Proposal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Formulating the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-term Goals for 2035", it is proposed to accelerate the development of health, old-age care, child-rearing, culture, tourism, sports, housekeeping, property and other service industries. The demand for domestic aunts is so great that it is essentially people's pursuit of quality of life. This also puts forward higher requirements for domestic service, not only to take care of life and living, but also to integrate convalescence, nursing and health care.
The demand is growing steadily, the form and policy are favorable, the domestic industry in hand is bright, and the sister-in-law has become a fragrant feast in the industry.
Under the many favorable factors, the domestic service industry has been labeled as a sunrise industry, and the domestic enterprise seems to have ushered in its era.
"Internal worries" and "external troubles" of the domestic market
From 2012 to 2020, the size of the domestic domestic service market has grown from the original 160 billion to 512.7 billion. As the largest domestic service leading enterprise in China, the scale of Swan Home has been expanding over the years.
As of March 31, 2021, Swan Home has accumulated more than 16 million registered users and served more than 4.2 million users.
According to the prospectus, at the end of December 2020, GTV (total transaction value) reached 8.828 billion yuan (US$1.353 billion), more than the 2nd to 5th places in the same industry combined!
But unexpectedly, the life of this domestic leader is not as good as everyone thinks.
According to the data, the revenue of Swan Home in 2018-2020 totaled 1.721 billion yuan, but the net loss in the same period was as high as 1.82 billion. While the company's revenue has increased year by year, the loss gap is also gradually increasing.
Backed by such a huge demand market, why is it still difficult for leading housekeeping companies to make profits?
First of all, there are serious problems with the operation model of Swan Home. Housekeeping connects users and workers, doing "people-to-people" business, the most important core is to ensure the quality of domestic service employees to obtain customers.
However, the core of the business of Swan Home is not in the quality of service, it invests a lot of money in marketing advertising, relying on overwhelming publicity to seize market share and obtain customer volume.
In just two years from 2018 to 2020, Swan Home spent a total of 1.383 billion yuan on marketing, while the revenue in the same period was only 1.721 billion yuan. Due to the large investment in marketing, Swan Home naturally has no spare energy to improve the service level of employees, which hollows out the image of the enterprise.
On the Sina Black Cat complaint platform, there were 1571 complaints in the month when the swan arrived home, most of which involved multiple problems such as inadequate service, poor service attitude, and false sales of customer service.
Although investment marketing can increase the number of users in a short period of time, when the hot audience returns to rationality and the poor quality of its housekeeping services is exposed, consumers naturally vote with their feet.
This is not only a problem of swans arriving home, but also a common problem in the entire domestic service industry.
At present, the main body of the domestic domestic service industry is small enterprises, accounting for about 78%. Small businesses are in short supply of funds, most of which are designed to take advantage of the outlet to "pan for gold", and pay extremely little attention to the quality of service of domestic workers. Vicious incidents such as making false certificates, arbitrarily labeling fees, and taking up posts without a license have emerged in an endless stream in recent years; and even some "nannies" have directly and explicitly rushed to the old people's belongings, and the act of wiping the edge ball is simply incomprehensible.
In 2021, CCTV also exposed the chaos of the industry of the sister-in-law: the sister-in-law does not need to train and hold a certificate, only need to pay a certain management fee and retain the ID card to get on the job, and even in many places, nannies and sister-in-law can get the "certificate" issued by the company itself by paying a few hundred yuan.
The chaos caused by the lax supervision in the industry has hit consumers' confidence and expectations in the domestic industry, which can be called "internal worry". The outbreak of COVID-19 can be called an "external problem".
In 2020, compared with 2019, China's GDP development rate has dropped significantly: from 6% to 2.3%. The previous growth rates in 2017 and 2018 were 7% and 6.9%, respectively, which shows how much of a negative effect the epidemic has had on the development of the national economy.
The impact of the epidemic on the economy has made it impossible for many real economies to continue to operate, jobs are reduced, more people are idle at home, they have some time to do housework; at the same time, even those who are still working, they are more willing to save money to deal with unknown risks, after all, housekeeping is also a big expense; finally, everyone is worried that domestic workers will carry the virus and bring innocence to their families.
Many of the above reasons can lead to a phenomenon: "Do your own thing". Whether from an economic or pandemic perspective, this choice seems to be the optimal solution. Coupled with the chaos of the housekeeping industry, consumer confidence in the industry has been seriously consumed, and people are even more reluctant to hire domestic workers.
According to the data, the volume of household service transactions in 2020 was 4.48 million, and the number of transaction consumers was 1.07 million, down 34.7% and 15.7% respectively from 2019.
The reason for the continuous loss of Swan Home for three consecutive years is the reason that the Swan Home operation model "cannot live by oneself", and also the impact of the epidemic as the death of the times.
As a sunrise industry, the domestic industry is now struggling with internal and external troubles.
How should housekeeping companies be transformed and upgraded in the future?
Although the epidemic has brought a huge negative impact on the housekeeping industry, the current domestic market still has great prospects for development.
In the first half of 2021 alone, the monthly active users of internet home economics platforms reached 29.19 million. In the future, with the introduction of policies and norms, the domestic service industry will surely usher in a round of reshuffle, and the trend in the industry will become more and more professional and standardized.
After a series of "scandals", some old users have begun to hold a conservative wait-and-see attitude towards the domestic service industry, and if the domestic service industry wants to regain consumer confidence, it is first necessary to return to the core of the domestic service industry - service. To this end, housekeeping companies need to increase investment in the training of domestic service personnel, ensure the quality of domestic service personnel, and ensure the after-sales service of the transaction, participate in each service process, and use service quality to regain the position in the hearts of consumers.
As industry insiders said: "For the sake of optimal cost and greatest benefits, the platform only acts as a matchmaker for online information, and does not deeply participate in offline service personnel and service processes." Without this outsourced core business model changing, security issues cannot be fundamentally addressed. ”
In addition, housekeeping enterprises should make reasonable use of funds, improve marketing means, not only rely on marketing to obtain customers, but also simplify the intermediate redundant links, directly connect with employees and customers, and reduce unnecessary processes.
Finally, the trend of high-end, specialization and exclusivity in the domestic housekeeping industry is becoming more and more obvious. There are many types of housekeeping industries, including housekeeping companies, cleaning companies, property companies, etc., and the service industry is also subdivided into many types of occupations such as maternal and infant care, nanny, confinement, elderly care and so on. Recently, the domestic workers of first-tier cities have also appeared in the emerging profession of "sorting and collecting division", and in Hangzhou, the monthly salary of the finishing and storage division is basically more than 10,000.
The operation of the housekeeping company should conform to this market trend, make its business more refined and more professional, and the training of domestic service personnel should be more targeted, and build the brand of the housekeeping enterprise with high-end quality.
Domestic service enterprises should also learn to use Internet data to obtain information, collect customer preferences and biases, and solve problems such as asymmetry of domestic service information and difficulty in obtaining sources. At the beginning of this year, Swan Home also began to continuously increase digitalization, through online interviews, contracts, after-sales service and other fully closed-loop online and online and offline integration, to open up the asymmetric constraints of domestic information.
Housekeeping enterprises need to be based on society and people, get rid of the dependence on marketing, and find a business model that can take into account both tracks and at the same time. Only by putting people first and putting the needs of customers first, can housekeeping companies steadily seize the wind dividend and develop in the long run.