Image source @ Visual China
In the special spring of 2022, subject to the upgrading of the level of epidemic risk control, the material turnover cycle has been lengthened, and the "global static management" adopted by various places has also made many people choose to "hoard goods" and "hoard fresh", which makes the freezer unexpectedly become a sought-after commodity.
On April 24, on the night of the escalation of epidemic control in Beijing, Ms. Liu, who lives in Jing'an West Street in Chaoyang District, got her own freezer. "It took less than a week from the time I decided to buy it to when I received it myself. Fortunately, I had the foresight to have a freezer in stockpiling more convenient, which belongs to buying a peace of mind. ”
Another citizen, Ms. Yang, did not succeed in purchasing it. When she placed an order for a Midea freezer priced at 1,059 yuan, she was prompted that the product was being purchased and was expected to be available after April 30.
Public reports show that on April 24 alone, Beijing Suning Tesco sold more than 300 online and offline freezers, which is roughly equivalent to the usual monthly sales. Beijing Suning Tesco said that it has urgently stocked 5,000 freezers on the 25th to ensure market supply.
In fact, throughout April, freezers were popular products in the home appliance industry. According to the data of Aowei Cloud Network, from April 11 to 17, the offline sales of freezers rose by 46.44% year-on-year, and online sales increased by 31.71% year-on-year.
For a time, the freezer, like Coke, became a hard currency.
The freezer was on fire
Previously, the freezer could be said to have no presence in the home appliance industry.
The freezer, also known as the "freezer", is a device for storing food and other items at low temperatures, and there are two kinds of distinctions: domestic and commercial.
Commercial freezers are generally divided into convenience store freezers (also known as beverage cabinets), supermarket freezers (also known as cold food cabinets), kitchen freezers, with volumes ranging from 20L to 1600L, which are used for the storage and sales of various ingredients, cold drinks, fruits, flowers, etc. Household freezers generally have a temperature of -18 °C to -28 °C, mainly used for storing frozen food, and the general volume is 100-150L.
In home appliance refrigeration products, the penetration rate of refrigerators is usually higher than that of freezers. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the output of national refrigerators (freezers) in China in 2021 is 29.06 million units, while the output of household refrigerators in the mainland in 2021 is 89.921 million units.
Why did the freezer, which had not been tepid for many years, suddenly caught fire recently?
In fact, since the epidemic, the sales of household freezers and refrigerators have increased significantly, of which the increase in freezers is particularly significant. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the output of refrigerators in 2020 was 90.147 million units, an increase of 14.0% year-on-year; the output of refrigerators was 30.424 million units, an increase of 40.1% year-on-year.
Liang Zhenpeng, an analyst in the home appliance industry, said: "Although the freezer has a simple function and can only be refrigerated, it has a larger capacity and is more suitable for hoarding goods than refrigerators. "Generally speaking, the storage space of the freezer ranges from 100-300 liters, and in a brand of a double-door inverter refrigerator with a capacity of 508 liters, the freezing space is only 189 liters.
And the price of the freezer is generally cheaper, more than 1,000 yuan can buy 200 liters or even 300 liters of brand freezers, which makes consumers less stressed when considering buying. The price of the refrigerator is several levels higher than the freezer, a simple configuration of the basic brand refrigerator is usually about 2,000 yuan, and the more high-end built-in, double-door refrigerator is sold for tens of thousands of yuan.
Recently, the epidemic control in many places has been upgraded, people have been isolated at home for longer than expected, and the high demand for hoarding has made the freezer completely out of the circle.
Some consumers said: "In the past, I hated my parents to buy a bunch of vegetables and meat stuffed in the refrigerator and didn't eat them, but I didn't expect that now I would start to buy a freezer to hoard food." Some netizens shared on Weibo that the owners of the community have driven SUVs to sam's clubs to pull the freezer one car at another in the past two days, and he was also panicked.
Wang Debao, director of the marketing department of the ice washing marketing division of Changhong Meiling China, said that in the epidemic area, consumers have increased their demand for food storage, including a large number of storage and long-term preservation storage. Such demand has stimulated the sales of household freezers (small freezers and household cabinets under 220 liters) and large refrigerators, and the search for "vertical freezers" has also risen rapidly.
Consumers don't love freezers?
Although the freezer storage space is large enough and the price is low, it has not become the standard for thousands of kitchens in China.
Refrigerators have always been the main theme of the home refrigeration industry. According to the "2021 Jingdong Refrigerator Washing Machine User White Paper", refrigerator sales in the first half of 2021 were 57.2 billion yuan, an increase of 20.4% year-on-year. The data also shows that the growth cycle of the online and offline market prices of refrigerators is as long as 12-15 months, and it has always maintained double-digit growth.
Keeping up with the iteration of trends in technology and consumer space, this trait makes refrigerators prevalent in household appliances.
The refrigerator has multiple functions such as preservation and refrigeration, which is in line with the user demand of modern people to "eat healthy". According to the data, the selling points of the refrigerator category in the past were usually focused on promotional words such as "energy saving and power saving" and "silent", while in recent years, they have been replaced by "intelligent preservation", "rapid clean taste", "intelligent WiFi", "intelligent control" and "embedded".
The relevant person in charge of the South China region of JD.com once introduced that from the sales point of view, ultra-thin, sterilized net taste, partition storage and other functional types of refrigerators are favored by consumers. From the perspective of the change of user consumption tendencies, customers are gradually paying more attention to health, especially paying attention to the partitioning and preservation functions of refrigerators. This makes the refrigerator with its own multi-function win the love of the market.
In addition, the products of refrigerators have been innovating in functionality. In addition to insurance and refrigeration, in recent years, enterprises have also continued to explore new development space in deodorization and smart home.
In contrast, the freezer, product innovation for many years seems to have stayed in place.
So far, the vast majority of freezers have only basic refrigeration functions. In fact, the freezer can have two functions of refrigeration preservation and frozen preservation, but two greenhouse cabinets are required. Due to the particularity of the freezer refrigeration technology, in the single-greenhouse cabinet, the freezer can only perform one function alone, not two at the same time, and can only be carried out in the double-temperature cabinet.
The general lack of humanized design of the freezer also leads to the low enthusiasm of users. At present, the freezers on the market are generally not partitioned, and the removal of food is very inconvenient. However, in the past two years, some brands have gradually aligned themselves with the design of refrigerators and launched vertical and differentiated products.
Objective physical space has also become one of the reasons that restrict the sales of freezers. Usually, cabinet freezers have a very large footprint, which is not friendly to users of small-family homes. For example, Haier's 1399 yuan and 203-liter freezer is 960mm long and 560mm wide, which is equivalent to the floor space of nearly two single-door refrigerators.
In addition to the problem of the product itself, the domestic underdeveloped cold chain market also makes people pay less attention to storage products such as freezers.
According to public information, the cold chain industry in Europe, the United States, Japan and other countries has developed for more than 150 years, with a sound cold chain logistics system and technical applications, which can highly control every link of cold chain logistics. According to the data of the research agency, more than 90% of the agricultural products in Europe, the United States, Japan and other countries have entered the circulation of the cold chain system, of which the cold chain circulation rate of fruits is as high as more than 95%.
China's cold chain logistics developed in the 50s and 60s of the last century, according to today is only more than half a century, the current penetration rate and efficiency is far less than the above countries. According to the "2021 Fresh Agricultural Products Cold Chain Storage and Transportation Technology Development Report", the total volume of fresh agricultural products in the mainland each year exceeds 3×108t, and the comprehensive cold chain circulation rate is only 19%; the loss of food and fresh agricultural products in the circulation link is serious, resulting in direct economic losses of 680 billion yuan per year.
It can be seen that in China, the efficiency of cold chain storage terminals such as freezers needs to be further improved.
Let the freezer industry "roll" up again
Before this round of freezer popularity, the mainland freezer industry has entered the stock market state.
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2020, the number of refrigerators (cabinets) in China will exceed 100 across the board, basically achieving one household and one refrigerator, of which the urban market is 103.1, the rural market is 100.1, and the overall national is 101.8.
Industry insiders mentioned that the reason why home appliances have entered the stock stage in China is that China's economic development has reached a certain stage, entered a saturation period, and becomes the release stage of stock; on the other hand, the development curve of China's real estate and the development curve of home appliances in the past 30 years are highly consistent, and now the peak period of real estate development has passed, and the peak period of development of home appliances has also ended.
Liang Zhenpeng told Yiou that like other home appliances, the freezer is already a very mature industrial chain. Coupled with the simplicity of the function, its production costs have been driven down. At present, the main brands of freezer products on the market are Haier, Xingxing, Midea, Hisense and Rongsheng, etc., as well as some sporadic small brands of home appliances, usually priced at about 1500 yuan.
In recent years, there have also been innovative brands taking the route of high-end refrigeration, launching high-end freezers with an average price of more than 30,000.
In 2016, AUCMA launched a -40 °C cryogenic freezer, which can enable food cells to quickly pass through the "maximum ice crystal generation belt" through rapid low temperature freezing, thereby realizing cell-level lock-in storage. In 2020, AUCMA launched a household cryogenic freezer, using -65 °C cell-level freshness technology, and the freezing capacity was increased by 6 times.
But AUCMA's official Taobao flagship store data shows that most of its ultra-high-end products have not been paid or only a few payments. That is to say, the ultra-high-end freezer has not achieved a circle break in the market.
So will the change in consumption habits brought about by the epidemic have an impact on the sales of freezers in the future?
In this regard, Liang Zhenpeng believes that at least until the first half of this year, the sales of freezers will continue to be popular.
First of all, the normalized epidemic has made people form the habit of daily hoarding, and in addition to the refrigerator, the freezer may become a supplementary storage force. Secondly, as the weather gradually becomes hotter, the home appliance industry itself has also ushered in a peak sales season. In addition, the upcoming e-commerce platform 618 promotion will also temporarily stimulate consumers' desire to buy.
The price of the freezer may also rise. Relevant people said that in fact, from 2020 onwards, subject to the higher prices of labor costs and raw materials (plastics, sheet metal, panels), the prices of home appliances are rising across the board.
However, in the long run, the sales explosion caused by the demand side this time may not be able to bring about subversive industry changes. Industry insiders generally believe that the current freezer industry is already a stock market, and the inflection point may not appear.
However, driven by multiple factors such as the normalization of the epidemic and the imminent arrival of the peak consumption season, there will be more merchants who will make more fuss about the freezer.
What can be seen is that several major appliance brands are not idle.
On April 18, Haier Freezer public account pushed an article titled "Spring Hoarding New Posture, Freezer Becomes a Good Helper", teaching users how to use refrigeration to hoard goods, and saying that "in special periods, for the family to eat enough, a freezer can meet your imagination." On the Jingdong platform, Haier also launched the activity of "hoarding enough for 15 days at a time, and the whole family can enjoy the freshness".
Midea put the refrigerator freezer at the forefront of the "home hoarding" category on the homepage of Tmall's official flagship store. Midea also said that the recent search popularity of refrigerator products has been the same as that of Tmall double 11.
From the perspective of the industry, the cold chain related industrial chain policies have also been mentioned recently.
On April 12, the Ministry of Transport, the State Railway Administration and other five departments jointly issued the Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the High-quality Development of Cold Chain Logistics and Transportation, proposing to optimize the layout of cold chain facilities at hub port stations and improve the network of cold chain transportation facilities for production and marketing.
Public information shows that during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the cold chain logistics market will have a compound annual growth rate of 17%, and it is expected that by 2025, the scale of the mainland cold chain logistics market will further jump to about 897 billion yuan, and the cold chain logistics industry has great potential.
As a part of the cold chain storage, the future freezer may have a wider imagination space.
Resources:
"What rubber and plastic materials will be brought to the fire in the freezer refrigerator that accompanies the hot sale of hoarding vegetables?" What is the impact on the production and marketing of the industry? CBN
"The freezer is on fire", will the surge in demand be short-lived? , China News Weekly
"Partition more hoarding goods how much capacity refrigerator is favored", Xiamen Evening News