#精品长文创作季#
Author: Wen Yu, Editor: Xiao Shimei
Half seawater, half flame, this may be the truest portrayal of China's kitchen appliance industry in 2023.
On the one hand, the stock market is still continuing, the intensity of competition is still escalating, and small and medium-sized brands are collectively disappearing into the dust; on the other hand, kitchen appliances are still the most imaginative of the five major family consumption scenarios, and the long-term logic of 300 billion long-term space has never been changed by short-term changes.
Thousands of sails have passed on the side of the sinking boat, and thousands of trees have spring in front of the sick tree, and with the elimination of a large number of long-tail brands, it is the head brand to recreate the future. Beneath the calm waters, the waves have risen.
[The past is not gone, the future is here]
There are no big ups and downs, and the narrow range fluctuations are maintained, which is the main tone of the kitchen appliance market since 2018, and this trend will continue in 2023.
According to AVC data, the retail volume of China's kitchen and bathroom market was 87.33 million units last year, a slight increase of 0.8% year-on-year, and the retail sales were 167 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.3%.
However, the result of the stock game is not collective pressure, but the intensification of polarization, "some people resign and return to their hometowns, and some people rush to the field under the stars".
According to the latest financial report of Robam Appliances, in 2023, the company will achieve a total operating income of 11.202 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.06%, and a net profit attributable to the parent company of 1.733 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.20%, a growth rate of nearly double the overall market of kitchen appliances. At the same time, the net cash flow generated by the operating activities of Robam Appliances was 2.392 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22.99%, and the net present ratio was 138%, which shows that the quality of the company's income statement last year was also relatively high.
If the time is extended, the ability of the head company to go through the cycle is more obvious. For example, even in 2017-2020, when the adjustment of kitchen appliances was the most drastic, the entire industry once fell into negative growth, but the average annual compound growth rate of revenue and net profit attributable to the parent company of Robam Appliances still reached 5.02% and 4.36% respectively.
Specific to each sub-category, for many years, it has continued the situation of Robam Appliances and Fotile standing side by side, among which Robam Appliances has always sat firmly on the "Iron Throne" without suspense.
Taking the range hood, the core product of kitchen appliances, as an example, in 2023, the market share of Robam Appliances and Fotile in the online market will be 24.73% and 20.88% respectively, an increase of 2.51pct and 0.82pct year-on-year, respectively, while the market share of Robam Appliances and Fotile in the offline market will be 30.97% and 29.71% respectively, and for example, gas stoves, in terms of retail sales, the online and offline market shares of Robam Appliances will be 24.46% and 30.02% respectively There are also online kitchen appliance packages, with a market share of 31.47% in retail sales of Robam appliances and a market share of 32.86% in two-piece smoke stoves, both ranking TOP1 in the industry.
From 2019 to 2022, under the background of the overall decline of 22.9 billion in the scale of the domestic kitchen and bathroom market, the revenue of 9 listed kitchen and bathroom companies increased by 16.1 billion against the trend. As the losers of the game, those low-quality and inefficient back-row enterprises can only hand over the market.
According to the latest statistics from AVC, from 2019 to 2023, the number of brands participating in the low-end market, low-end market, high-end market, and high-end market in the range hood online market has decreased by 84, 29, 17, and 5 respectively.
Once the Matthew effect is formed, it will not be easily terminated, before the emergence of variables that are enough to subvert the overall situation, the steady-state pattern of the kitchen appliance industry is almost impossible to be broken, and the industrial concentration will continue to increase. However, if the entire industry continues to maintain stock competition, then the only way for leading enterprises to maintain growth is to hope that the industrial concentration will always increase, but this is obviously unrealistic.
In any industry, the evolution of its competitive landscape has never been achieved overnight, but has obvious rhythms and laws. Taking white electricity as an example, after the market share of CR3 (Gree, Midea and Haier) reached 60%, although the industrial concentration is still improving, the rate has slowed down significantly. Kitchen appliances are also facing the same problem, since 2020, the head brand has quickly seized the market with the opportunity of channel change, and the industry has immediately moved into the "K-shaped" development stage, but no one knows how long this dividend can be eaten, once the trend slows down, even the head enterprises are bound to face new growth bottlenecks. Therefore, everyone does not want to sleep on the credit book, the sixth year of stock adjustment, the seemingly tepid kitchen appliance market, in fact, is brewing a new change.
In the second half of 2023, major kitchen appliance brands have landed new concepts, Robam Appliances has updated its corporate positioning to "cooking full-link overall solution provider", Three-winged Bird has released the concept of "fully embedded smart kitchen", COLMO has proposed the concept of "family social center", Vantage has proposed "clean kitchen system", and Fotile has proposed high-end full-scene kitchen appliance solutions.
A closer look reveals that there is a common denominator behind all these brand transformations, the general recognition that the current development path has come to an end, and that new growth poles must be found before the dividends disappear.
Although they are both looking for possibilities and ways out for the future, the development models represented by these two choices and the possible development paths in the future are completely different.
【The Timekeeper and the Clockmaker】
In 1994, James Collins, a famous American management scientist, and Jerry Bolas collaborated to complete the masterpiece in the field of enterprise management - "Evergreen".
For the book, the authors interviewed 700 CEOs from the Fortune 500 and Entrepreneur 500 companies, and selected 18 key follow-up companies from 200 representative companies, which were founded in 1812 and as late as 1945. After a protracted and powerful in-depth study, the author has come to a conclusion that is enough to influence the historical process of management:
Those that can go through the cycle are usually "clockmakers" rather than "timekeepers".
The biggest difference between the "timekeeper" and the "clockmaker" is that the former still continues the old development model and tends to use products to win the world, while the latter is committed to building a new industrial development paradigm, which is based on the complete inclusion of the old paradigm, and on this basis, there is a further qualitative leap.
From the feature machine to the smart machine is a paradigm shift, because the smart phone completely inherits the function of the instant messaging of the feature machine, and on this basis, it is further grafted with the results of the mobile Internet, in which Apple plays the role of "clockmaker"; from fuel vehicles to smart electric vehicles is also a paradigm shift, because the latter is no longer simply a tool to help people achieve displacement, but acts as the third intelligent space of human beings, the "clockmaker" at this stage Compared with those kitchen appliance brands that pursue horizontal category extension, Robam Appliances, which has transformed from a single hardware vendor to a full-link overall solution provider for cooking, is also becoming more and more like the "clockmaker" of Chinese kitchen appliances.
According to the long-term tracking attention of "Market Value Observation" on Robam Appliances, since the release of digital kitchen appliances, the company has been brewing to promote a round of industrial change, but at that time it was not seen that it was building a new order, and now with the continuous improvement of the overall development framework, the intention of this paradigm change has become clearer and clearer.
For example, the company still uses hardware as a carrier to cut into the market, but the products are no longer limited to this, as well as software and content; it still focuses on the cooking scene, but the service scope is no longer just cooking, but includes the whole link before, during and after cooking; it still pursues the individual development of the enterprise, but there is an extra layer of co-creation and symbiosis with the ecology; it still insists on technology-driven development, but at the same time, it also begins to emphasize the humanistic value of returning to cooking.
There is no absolute difference between "timekeeper" and "clockmaker", but there are different values in each stage of development of the industry. When the industry is in the relay stage, the "timekeeper" has more advantages because of pragmatism, but when the industry enters the era of great transition, the "clockmaker" with the ability to disruptively innovate is obviously more potential.
[From satisfying needs to creating needs]
The current kitchen appliance industry has distinct two-sided characteristics.
On the one hand, the demand for cooking never ends, especially in a country like China, which has a deep food culture, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, the national catering revenue will reach 5,289 billion yuan in 2023, a sharp increase of 20.4% year-on-year. As the economy continues to grow, the demand for food is bound to be further stimulated and released, as long as more and more people can fall in love with cooking, the market size of 300 billion may not be the end of the kitchen scene.
On the other hand, China as a whole has bid farewell to the era of commodity shortages, replaced by involution and surplus, which is a common problem in almost all industries, and is not unique to kitchen appliances. In this context, it is not destined to be a long-term solution in the past product competition thinking. Starting from 2022, Ren Fujia, president of Robam Appliances, has repeatedly shouted on different occasions that the industry should give up the idea of creation, not to innovate for the sake of innovation, and not to ineffective involution in products.
However, whether it is a high-frequency upgrade of product performance or a horizontal pull through the whole house category, in essence, it has not jumped out of the zero-sum game trap of competing for existing users, and cannot really make the whole market bigger, and then reopen an incremental era. What the kitchen appliance industry needs most now is actually to create demand.
As long as we can create demand, we can expand the market. If the mobile phone industry is still stuck in the era of feature phones, then many families, especially those in grassroots areas, may only need a mobile phone for the whole family to complete external contact and communication. However, when the entire industry transitions to the era of smart phones, human clothing, food, housing and transportation are all precipitated on a mobile phone, the market demand and space are completely different, even rural housewives who do not participate in commercial activities have to have a mobile phone, because they need to be used to brush Douyin, need to make video calls with their children, and need to make mobile payments.
The same is true for kitchen appliances, assuming that there are now 100 million people cooking in China, if kitchen appliances companies can make 200 million Chinese people enter the kitchen through their own efforts, then the industry space will be doubled on the spot. In order to create demand, first of all, we must jump out of the shackles of the original development model, and only by breaking can we stand, and at this time, the advantages of enterprises like Robam Appliances are reflected.
To give a simple example, in recent years, Robam Appliances has opened up a digital kitchen appliance track based on the re-understanding of cooking, which is no longer a simple hardware, but a software and hardware ecological integration solution built based on a generative large model, which can provide everyone with an exclusive personalized experience throughout the cooking chain, which can not only effectively reduce the cooking threshold, liberate productivity, but also realize the cooking creation needs of thousands of people. With the blessing of digital kitchen appliances, those who didn't know how to cook may now be able to get started, and those who can cook may now have more desire to cook, and new needs are born.
From the current point of view, it is difficult to say whether this exploration of Robam Appliances can be converted into the expansion of industrial space, but the general direction is definitely no problem. If all enterprises can work in this direction, everyone will collect firewood and the flame will be high, and the kitchen appliance industry will detonate the market by creating demand.
This is an era of forced progress, the pace of industrial development will not stop for anyone, China's kitchen appliances have been adjusted for more than 5 years, this sideways is not destined to be the norm in the coordinate system of history. Technological progress, innovation in thinking, and demand stimulation are all accelerating the arrival of a new round of kitchen revolution.
Like a baby who is about to mature in the womb of his mother, the new life of Chinese kitchen appliances may be just around the corner.
disclaimer
The content of this article related to listed companies is the author's personal analysis and judgment based on the information publicly disclosed by listed companies in accordance with their legal obligations (including but not limited to temporary announcements, periodic reports and official interactive platforms, etc.), and the information or opinions in this article do not constitute any investment or other business advice, and Market Value Watch does not assume any responsibility for any actions arising from the adoption of this article.
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