In 2024, Hong Kong TVB star Charmaine Sheh will become popular with "News Queen". In mid-March, she came to AWE2024 as a celebrity experience officer specially invited by Fotile; At the same time, Fotile released a new "clean washing scene solution" for dishwashers.
The event was very enthusiastic, but few people could realize that ten years have passed since the advent of Fotile sink dishwashers, igniting the "take-off" of China's dishwasher market in one fell swoop.
Over the past decade, China's dishwasher market has grown at a compound annual growth rate of more than 35%, and the retail sales of dishwashers in 2023 are nearly 19 times that of 2014.
However, the total annual retail scale of dishwashers is still only 11 billion yuan, and the market penetration rate is still seriously lower than expected. According to the calculation of Aowei cloud network, this figure is only 2.9%.
However, even so, the industry still defines dishwashers as "just needed" products in the limelight in China's kitchen appliance industry. According to the common understanding, the market penetration rate of just-needed products should be at least more than 50%.
As a result, ten years after the dishwasher industry "took off" in China, there was a set of contradictory judgments - the penetration rate is still too low, which means that there is an ideal of broad development space in the future, but also means that the current market acceptance is seriously insufficient.
How to make the ideal and reality of dishwashers in the Chinese market fuller?
The growth rate has slowed down year after year, not only the "pot" of the general environment
While the compound growth rate of 35% over the past decade has been high, the year-on-year growth rate of dishwasher retail sales has declined significantly over the past three years. According to the retail data provided by Aowei Cloud Network, the year-on-year growth rate of retail sales in China's dishwasher market in 2021~2023 will be 14.9%, 3% and 8.7% respectively. The year-on-year growth rate of dishwasher retail sales in the first quarter of 2024 slowed to 6.5%, slightly higher than the 2.9% year-on-year growth rate of China's overall kitchen appliance market. In addition, the year-on-year growth rate of retail sales in the past three years has hovered around 2% for three consecutive years.
Despite this, dishwashers are still regarded as one of the few products with incremental space in the field of kitchen appliances and even in the field of major appliances. In the past AWE2024, dishwashers are almost a must for all kitchen appliance brands, and they have vividly demonstrated the innovation of dishwasher cleaning technology, product form, appearance design, and cross-border integration.
For kitchen appliance companies and even the entire home appliance industry, dishwashers are products that theoretically have huge market increment space and relatively high profit margins. This is driving more brands to enter the market. According to incomplete statistics, the number of brands in the current dishwasher market has exceeded 200, and the brand influence and technical threshold have played an important role in the market form dominated by users in pursuit of high-quality life. A number of data exports show that at present, whether in the online or offline market, the concentration of the top five dishwasher brands is more than 60%, and the main sales share of the market is concentrated in the hands of several major brands such as Siemens, Fotile, Boss, Haier, Midea, and Panasonic.
Driven by the joint efforts of many parties, dishwasher-related technology patents have shown explosive growth. According to the "China Dishwasher Patent Innovation Research Report (2024)", as of the end of February 2024, the cumulative number of patents granted for dishwashers in China has reached 12,364.
When more and more new brands emerge in an industry market and accumulate a large number of technical reserves, this market should show strong momentum and rapidly expand the overall scale. But that's not the case in the dishwasher market.
Some industry analysts believe that in the past three years, the dishwasher market has been hit by the new crown epidemic and the real estate market, and the overall marketing environment is extremely unfavorable. Especially under the premise that high-priced, large-volume dishwashers are extremely dependent on new house decoration and service installation and transformation, the pressure on market demand from personnel control and new house decoration is obvious.
But that's not all the reason why dishwashers are developing less than expected.
The person in charge of Midea dishwasher said that in addition to the poor real estate environment, market resistance also comes from two levels, one is that consumers' awareness of dishwashers has yet to be popularized, and the other is that most Chinese families have limited kitchen space.
Combined with user research and interviews with relevant people in the enterprise, the bottleneck of China's dishwasher market can be summarized as "adaptation". This is not only the adaptation of the four needs of "washing, disinfection, storage and protection" that is popular in the dishwasher industry, but the full-link adaptation of dishwashers from design to marketing to service. Only when the dishwasher is fully "adapted" to the life concept of most Chinese families will there be a real chance of exploding. At present, the problem of "adaptation" of user concepts that needs to be solved urgently in dishwashers is mainly focused on three aspects: form, storage and cleaning.
Solve one of the adaptation problems: form
Compared with European and American countries with a high dishwasher penetration rate, the kitchen space of Chinese families is generally smaller, and most families currently facing the renovation of old houses have a kitchen area of 5 square meters. In the case of the dilemma of new house decoration due to the problems of the real estate market, catering to the needs of old house renovation is a challenge that needs to be broken through in the dishwasher market.
In other words, the dishwasher market needs to improve the range of consumer awareness, and the majority of ordinary residents are the focus of its attention. Therefore, in terms of product form, it is not only necessary to pursue a large number of sets, but also to focus on solving the problem of high environmental requirements and difficult modification of small space kitchens.
Taking Midea's solution as an example, its design concept is to give users more cleaning and storage space. Midea has reduced the bottom space to the extreme on the technical side, carried out system integration design, and increased the effective use of space by 15%.
Another bottleneck in the dishwasher form is the simple posture of "bending over" during use. In a large number of user surveys, it can be found that the strongest demand for dishwashers in Chinese families is multi-person families, that is, families that live with the elderly, and the current mainstream built-in dishwasher shape design is very unfriendly to the elderly. In the future, the aging trend of China's society is obvious, and the silver economy has become a key policy orientation for the country.
In this regard, some companies are already launching relevant solutions. For example, the drawer dishwasher launched by Casarte, this design not only realizes the physical separation of the inner cavity of the dishwasher to achieve partition washing, but also solves the pain point that users need to squat frequently. In this solution, the user can choose to install one single drawer or two single drawers side by side, so that the dishwashing process does not need to bend over.
Fotile's solution is "double washing", that is, the sink dishwasher and the built-in dishwasher are integrated to minimize the unnecessary time of the elderly to bend over and squat to operate.
The old problem of the bottleneck of form is still the internal form, how to accommodate the pots and pans that meet the needs of Chinese families in a limited space, and each brand is constantly innovating and improving.
Solve the second adaptation problem: storage
The problem of not having enough space in the kitchen is also reflected in the storage space. The reason why the sterilizer was popular a few years ago is that it has a storage function, which saves time and space. This dimension is a big problem for dishwashers.
In the current consumer pre-purchase concept, dishwashers need sufficient washing and drying time, but the habit of Chinese users to wash dishes all year round is deep-rooted, and washing dishes is laborious but not long. Dishwashers that don't have a storage function require the user to wait for the washing and drying to finish, then remove the dishes and store them in another space – which is time-consuming and takes up space.
In addition, there are health problems such as bacterial growth in dishwashers due to water vapor and oily environment in pipes and cabinets, which are in conflict with the lifestyle of most Chinese families nowadays.
Among the current solutions, BSH is a representative solution that supports ultra-long-term bacteriostatic storage. BSH believes that the dishwasher drying process and post-drying bacteriostatic and long-term storage are one of the key points in the industry. Siemens home appliance dishwashers equipped with Jinglei technology realize the drying of the inner cavity and plastic tableware, as well as 96 hours of energy-saving sterilization and storage, on the basis of achieving global cleanliness.
Solve the third problem of adaptation: washing
The problem of heavy oil stains and different specifications of tableware in Chinese households has plagued the dishwasher market for many years. Cleaning is still a word-of-mouth problem that the current dishwasher must solve with all its might. This is also the core competitiveness of various dishwasher brands in the Chinese market.
The industry can see a wide variety of cleaning technologies. Some innovate in water flow, such as Fotile's high-energy bubble washing; Some innovate in the spray arm, such as Haier's mid-layer spray arm added between the upper and lower spray arms; Some innovate in the basket, such as A.O. Smith, which uses spin cleaning technology for dishes.
Even so, the industry has to face the reality: there is no perfect cleaning technology that can achieve absolutely clean solutions for any grease stain on any dish at any time, without damaging the dishes.
Overall, there is undoubtedly room for incremental growth in dishwashers, but the process of realizing opportunities is still arduous and thought-provoking. How to adapt to the rigid needs of Chinese families as much as possible, break through the current development bottleneck, and maintain the reputation of consumers, the industry needs to deepen the development and innovation of core technologies, and not rush for quick success.