Why can the small household appliance industry achieve a rise against the trend?

Since the beginning of this year, under the dual pressure of the impact of the epidemic and industry saturation, the development of my country's home appliance industry has been difficult. According to relevant data, the overall retail scale of my country's home appliance market in the first quarter was only 120 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 35.8%. At the same time, the retail sales of refrigerators, color TVs, air conditioners, and washing machines, which are regarded as the four traditional home appliances, also dropped sharply, and the market growth rate has obviously slowed down.

But even so, the development of my country's home appliance industry is far less miserable than other industries, because the explosion of online demand and sales has given great support to the entire industry. Under the requirements of epidemic prevention and control and home isolation, the popularity of the "stay-at-home economy" has driven the rapid growth of home appliance sales on e-commerce platforms, especially the sharp increase of small home appliances with smart and healthy attributes, which has successfully helped the industry resist the downward pressure.

The so-called small household appliances refer to household appliances other than high-power and large-volume household appliances, including small kitchen and bathroom appliances, small household appliances, and small personal care appliances. In the first half of this year, the omni-channel retail volume of small household appliances in my country was about 130 million units, a year-on-year increase of 6.5%. Among them, the online channel shined, with a year-on-year increase of 12%, becoming the main contributor to the industry's recovery.

So, why can small household appliances rise against the trend? This is inseparable from two factors. Everyone knows the direct factor, which is the impact of the epidemic. Under epidemic prevention measures such as home isolation and contactless, people need to meet their needs for life and spiritual entertainment, as well as more protection in terms of health and safety. These have given small household appliances opportunities and benefits for the sales explosion in online channels.

In addition, the deeper factor is people's pursuit and yearning for smart life. With the rapid development of urbanization and the continuous improvement of people's living standards and pursuits, small household appliances, whether in terms of function or value, are very consistent with people's personalized, refined and intelligent life needs. Coupled with the rapid development of the e-commerce industry, these have laid the foundation for the explosion of small household appliances.

Based on this, in fact, long before the epidemic, my country's small household appliance market had already begun to take shape and was showing signs of explosive growth. Relevant data show that as of 2019, the scale of the domestic small household appliance market has reached nearly 400 billion yuan, and products represented by sweeping robots have been very encouraging in terms of both sales and growth rate. If this development continues, it is expected that the market will exceed one trillion yuan in the future.

However, it is not easy to truly break through one trillion yuan. This requires our country's industry enterprises to cater to two major trends and solve three major problems!

Among them, the two major trends are intelligence and networking. Nowadays, with the continuous development of new-generation information technologies such as artificial intelligence, 5G, and the Internet of Things, as well as the continued increase in the popularity of the Internet, the concept of smart home is being proposed and implemented at an ever-increasing pace. As an important entrance and hub of smart home, small household appliances can only mature further if they cater to the trends of intelligence and networking.

However, in the process of catering to the development of the two industries, due to the lack of industry norms and standards, some companies have been sensationalizing and filling in the gaps, which has also led to a lot of problems in the industry market, such as products that are just gimmicks but not worthy of their names, products with useless functions and high prices, and frequent privacy and security issues, etc. Therefore, while promoting the development of intelligence and networking, it is also necessary to solve the corresponding problems.

First, we need to solve the problem of useless products and insufficient functions. At present, many small household appliances are claimed to be intelligent and have multiple functions, but in actual use they are very "stupid" and are similar to ordinary household appliances. Some functions are even flashy and cannot meet the needs at all. In this context, domestic merchants need to integrate various intelligent technologies to improve product functions and enhance practicality.

Secondly, we need to solve the problem of lack of industry and product standards. At present, due to the lack of industry norms and product standards in the small household appliance market, there are many vicious competition events such as price wars on the one hand, and data barriers between industries are becoming more and more serious on the other hand, which hinders the progress of the industry. In the future, the industry needs to strengthen standard construction, regulate industry development, enhance corporate exchanges, and promote mutual cooperation.

Finally, we need to solve the problem of an imperfect industry ecological chain. If small household appliances want to mature and develop, they need a mature ecological chain, which includes the production, sales, and services of smart small household appliances. At present, the industry has developed well in production and sales, but the after-sales market needs to be improved. In the future, we need to strengthen the layout of talents, services and other fields to promote the maturity of the industry.