Small household appliances "change face": from popular to cold
Author|Mangsang
In the past three years, the outbreak of the stay-at-home economy has brought yogurt machines, egg cookers, soy milk machines, air fryers, health pots, etc., a number of small household appliances with small appearance, rich functions and relatively cheap prices. But as young people get out of the house and return to work, small appliances are entering a difficult time.
According to the total data of AVC traditional channels, the retail sales of 13 categories of small kitchen appliances in 2022 will be 52.03 billion yuan, down 6.7% year-on-year; Retail sales were 220.49 million units, down 12.7% y/y. After entering 2023, the clean appliance industry will also experience sluggish growth. Industry data shows that in the first half of 2023, the omni-channel retail sales of the domestic market of the cleaning appliance industry reached 15 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of only 3%.
When the "Internet celebrity small household appliances", which once represented a delicate and beautiful life on Xiaohongshu and almost everyone had one, became the "idle king" on the idle fish platform, the small household appliance industry is also experiencing a "face-changing plot" from popular to cold.
"Lazy economy" or IQ tax?
In the video of the lifestyle blogger, the ideal life of contemporary young people should be like this: after getting up, first squeeze a glass of juice with a wall breaker, and then put the whole wheat bread into the breakfast machine, golden bread with bright red tomato slices and bacon and turquoise lettuce to make a nutritious sandwich, "lazy" can also enjoy a wonderful breakfast; Before going to work, turn on the sweeping and dragging integrated robot, turn on the home camera during work and interact with the pet; After going home, take a shower, put your clothes in the washer, lie down on the sofa beautifully, use the standing hair dryer, blow your hair while playing with your mobile phone... In the beautiful and convenient living atmosphere created by bloggers, small household appliances are often an important element in creating home life.
The "2022 China Consumer Trend Report" shows that the post-00s generation can be called "all-round lazy people". 90% of post-00s choose not to cook, while 79.5% of post-95s are "housekeeping command experts". As a result, these small household appliances with light structure, exquisite appearance, intuitive function and simple operation have been quickly planted out of the circle under precision marketing.
To some extent, small household appliances carry young people's yearning for an ideal life, but the same "plot" from following the trend to falling dust and idling also shattered this beautiful dream in an instant - almost all small household appliances cannot escape the criticism of "lack of high-frequency use scenarios".
On social media, "air fryer" was voted as the first useless commodity with the first idle rate, and the cleaning area "dishwasher", "vegetable washing machine", "floor scrubber", "window cleaning robot", etc. are also the hardest hit areas, and the products originally designed to free their hands are complained by many users that the function is not commonly used, cleaning is inconvenient, product quality is uneven, and maintenance is difficult. Behind the idle of 100 yuan and 1,000 yuan of smart small household appliances is the user's experience of blood and tears of "money is not spent, and efforts are not spent".
Station B up owner "Jessica Kaka" once complained that the window cleaning robot "will play crash if it is not good". Especially as a high-rise resident, "Jessica Kaka" is worried every time when working with the window cleaning robot, and once encountered a robot crash at the highest point of the window in the studio, she couldn't reach herself, and she was afraid that the consequences of the robot falling would be unimaginable. And this robot can only scrub smooth and seamless glass, scrubbing patterned glass and cracked tile walls can easily increase the probability of crashing.
Another pulling product is a shoe washing machine. Last year's sudden explosion of shoe washing machines, its peak year-on-year sales increased by more than 700%. Netizen Xiaozhe bought a shoe washing machine within 500 yuan under the online short video Amway, but after starting, he found that the shoe washing machine at this price has a small capacity, can only wash up to 1~2 pairs of shoes at a time, and does not support automatic water injection and drainage, and the stains such as sediment left by the shoes have to be cleaned out of the machine. The process of washing shoes is also relatively rough, and there are many restrictions on the type of shoes, and delicate high-end shoes do not dare to put them in. After only one use, Xiaozhe hung the shoe washing machine on the idle fish and planned to change hands, but the 99 new product cut half price and few people asked.
* Shoe washing machine buyer reviews on e-commerce platforms
In the mixed reviews of "IQ tax" and "lazy real fragrance", small household appliance fever has completed the whole process of Internet celebrity products from explosion to loneliness. According to data from Oviyun.com, the retail sales of small kitchen appliances in 2022 will be 52.03 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6.7%; Retail sales were 220.49 million units, down 12.7% y/y. This is also the second consecutive year that the small household appliance category has shown a downward trend after the rapid development.
More and more consumers are also realizing that many small household appliances are pseudo-demand. Just as the Kindle eventually became a "bubble noodle artifact", the treadmill ended up being a drying rack, and the air fryer was actively idle fish.
Homogenization is serious, and listing is involution
The small household appliance market is cold after excessive consumption, mainly due to the problems that continue to be exposed after the industry rushes. As Fang Hongbo, chairman and president of Midea Group, mentioned when reflecting on its own business, "Midea's small home appliance business is not facing a problem of development, but a problem of survival. ”
On the business side, the fundamental problem behind the high idle rate of small household appliances is the single functional attributes of the product. For example, during the epidemic, the air fryer brand that can be cooked with one button used social media to quickly ripen the market, and many young people who can't cook but can't order takeaway, the air fryer focuses on the convenient experience of quickly making food, but in fact, the air fryer is most commonly used to make fast food such as fried chicken and french fries. After the epidemic was released, the demand for takeaway and eating out rebounded, which naturally led to a decline in users' demand for air fryers.
The demand overdraft only affects the sales of air fryers, and the greater challenge of air fryers is the trend of home appliance integration, that is, under the trend of home appliance integration, air fryers are becoming a performance of major appliances. Traditional brands such as Fangtai, Boss, Midea, Subor, and Daewoo have all launched steaming and frying all-in-one products, which integrate the air frying function and have received a good response from the market.
This kind of change in the integration of functions in the small household appliance market has already occurred in products such as soy milk machines and juicers, and the wall-breaking machine that integrates the functions of juicers, soy milk machines, blenders, grinders and other products has rapidly exceeded 10 billion after entering the Chinese market, while the market share of soymilk machines and juicers with single functions is further declining.
All small household appliances with single functional attributes have similar problems as air fryers: fewer application scenarios and low frequency of use. Once other products with more comprehensive functions appear, these small household appliances with single attributes can easily be marginalized or even eliminated.
In the Chinese market, small appliances also face the challenges of smaller kitchen areas and more complex production needs. Public data shows that the area of mainland family kitchens is generally small, 6 square meters per capita is the mainstream, and after installing sinks and stoves, there is not much area left. Therefore, the integrated kitchen appliances that do subtraction in space and add in function are more in line with the development trend of Chinese families.
In fact, small household appliances have been pinned on high hopes by the entire home appliance industry. In 2020, the online market size of small household appliances reached 36.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.4%. Under the background of the relatively solidified market of major appliances, small household appliances have attracted investors and factory brands. According to Tianyan inspection data, there are more than 1.438 million small household appliance related enterprises in the mainland, and the number of online small home appliance brands is about 1,910 at the peak.
The entry threshold for small household appliances is not high, which provides an excellent industry background for the rapid establishment of vertical new tracks, but it is also an important reason why the consumption boom of small household appliances is difficult to sustain. Behind the market dividend attracting cross-border entry from all walks of life, a large number of products are actually produced by foundries, and the homogenization of products is serious, and brands and manufacturers are forced to exchange prices for markets, frequently starting price wars.
Although the price satisfies consumers, the quality of products and services cannot keep up. It is not uncommon to report unqualified quality of small household appliances, and search for small household appliances such as "air fryer" and "wall breaker" on the complaint platform such as black cat complaints, and there are more than 1,000 complaint records, involving product quality, after-sales service and other aspects.
The lack of factors such as "reliability" and "safety" has also made young people gradually wary of small household appliances, which is for small home appliance manufacturers that are developing rapidly but the function and R&D path are not yet mature, and the market competition strategy of "quantity over quality" is also one of the important factors affecting the market penetration of small household appliances.
Looking back at the popular history of small household appliances, it can be found that the life cycle of popular products is generally not long. In 2017, Joyoung and Mofei launched a portable juicer, which won the limelight for a while and kicked off the growth of small household appliances of Internet celebrities. However, in just a few years, portable juicers and juice cups have become cold from being popular, and Mofei and Jiuyang have shifted their focus to developing the next blockbuster.
Major manufacturers continue to incubate similar brands and products through replicable explosive formulas, accelerating the consumption of consumers' patience and curiosity. In the end, there are only a few products that can really evolve from Internet celebrities to mainstream products. However, even if the egg steamer and air fryer that have become the mainstream have no obvious barriers in technology, major manufacturers can only work hard in the marketing link after all. In essence, the reason why the small household appliance category depends on marketing is still weak product strength.
How do manufacturers recreate user value?
In order to save the decline, small household appliance manufacturers have made many attempts. Some manufacturers choose to expand categories, diversify and transform, and try to drive market growth by increasing selling prices and gross margins. For example, at the end of 2021, Xiaoxiong Electric announced the abolition of the electric electrical appliance division and the pot and pot division division, and on this basis, the baby products business department was established, and the original personal care products department was upgraded to a personal care and health business department. After the reorganization, the input and output of the number of maternal and infant products will be increased.
In addition, in the past two years, Little Bear Electric has also entered the "big appliance" track such as rice cookers and electric kettles. However, the road to diversified transformation is long and long, and in the 2022 financial report released by Little Bear Appliances, kitchen appliances are still the main source of revenue for Little Bear Appliances, accounting for more than 80% of the annual revenue. Among them, the revenue of pot and pot products was 1.005 billion yuan, which was the only home appliance category with a revenue of more than 1 billion, a year-on-year increase of 31%, and the revenue accounted for 24%, while the revenue of humidifiers, massagers and other household appliances that Xiaoxiong Electric has worked hard to develop in the past two years accounts for less than 10%.
Secondly, the increase in the layout of new consumption scenarios such as online marketing, the adjustment of e-commerce channels, and the expansion of new traffic dividends are also one of the transformation explorations of manufacturers. For example, Subor has increased the construction of the e-commerce "one-pallet goods" model, and actively deployed emerging social e-commerce platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou; Joyoung has also actively embraced content e-commerce, increased its investment in content platforms such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Weibo, and expanded the corresponding online brand flagship stores and live broadcast rooms according to different categories, customer groups and channels; While deepening mainstream e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD.com, Little Bear Electric is also actively expanding emerging social e-commerce channels to ensure all-round reach to consumers.
Expanding categories and sales channels is an important means to improve performance, but the current small household appliance market is facing a moat battle.
Regardless of the factors of brand appeal, product positioning and sales channels, product quality and technical content will always be the most solid moat for home appliance manufacturers. The competition in product development and supply chain upgrading determines the future role of manufacturers in the market, which is not only related to product capacity and yield, but also a necessary prerequisite for reducing costs and improving gross margins.
A fact that cannot be ignored is that small household appliances have fast update iterations, short life cycles, innovative details, and the use experience is the key to competition. This inevitably requires small household appliance enterprises to increase investment in technology research and development to enhance product competitiveness and added value, increase the intelligence level of small household appliances, and increase the ability of integrated matrix to meet the diversified needs of consumers.
If small household appliance manufacturers want to save the hearts of consumers, the most important question they need to answer is how to precipitate brand value in the era of traffic anxiety. The core cornerstone of the brand must be the product, marketing and channel construction investment of huge manpower, material resources and resources, the return will eventually fall on the product.
For brands, the value of the product is equivalent to the purchase value of the user, and the product can meet the needs of the user in the transaction process, so that the user feels really worth the money or even the value for money. Only when the product function solves the needs of users, can the launch get better repurchase, consumers will have emotional resonance, brand goodwill and trust, and the value of marketing will have the opportunity to be maximized.
After upgrading production lines and supply chains, improving product quality is the most important task and goal for small home appliance manufacturers. After taking this solid step of products, small household appliances can consolidate the value in the lives of young people, and then achieve brand popularity, and it is expected to become an important growth driver for the consumer market.