In the era of social media, there is no shortage of Internet celebrities. In April, Liu Genghong , in May Wang Xinling , in June New Oriental Dong Yuhui... I don’t know who will usher in the next wave of hits in July. . Although Internet celebrities have astonishing traffic, they have a short shelf life, and most of them cannot escape the reality of being short-lived.
The same is true for the home appliance industry. Generally speaking, the industry calls non-rigid long tail small home appliances Internet celebrity small home appliances. During the 618 big promotion, when I opened the e-commerce software, a variety of small household appliances from Internet celebrities frequently flooded the screen. The traffic was there, but the sales volume and sales dropped. AVC online traditional channel monitoring data shows that the retail sales of 14 categories of small kitchen appliances in 2022 "618" (5.30-6.19) are 3.06 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.4% (including air frying). Excluding the fried goods category, overall retail sales fell 5.6% year-on-year. It can be seen that, except for the "top-tier" air fryer , all other small household appliances are showing a downward trend as a whole, especially for Internet celebrity non-essential small household appliances such as health pot and blenders, the downward trend is even more obvious.
The COVID-19 epidemic that broke out at the end of 2019 has reshuffled and reshaped the small home appliance industry. According to data from Aowei Cloud, the sales of all categories of small home appliances in China were 22.1 billion yuan in 2016, 27.4 billion yuan in 2017, 32.6 billion yuan in 2018, and 35.7 billion yuan in 2019. The entire small home appliance industry is in a steady growth trend. The emergence of the new coronavirus epidemic has changed this pattern. In 2020, China's online sales of all categories of small household electrical appliances surged to 59.6 billion yuan, but then ushered in a roller coaster-like decline. Sales of all categories in 2021 were only 55 billion yuan. Yuan. The reasons mainly include the following two aspects. First of all, since the COVID-19 epidemic, people have been staying at home, spending more time at home, and the physical space for entertainment has been restricted. The traffic of major e-commerce platforms has increased sharply. The e-commerce platform's traffic tilt towards small household appliances has exposed people at home to more categories of small household appliances, stimulating people's desire to buy. Secondly, driven by the social media platform "Eat for One", young people pursue exquisite life, and convenient and compact small appliances can just meet the requirements of young people with little savings for quality life.
In 2021, after a year of rapid development, the small home appliance industry has exposed various shortcomings, the novelty and recognition have declined, and sales have declined. In 2022, the small home appliance market will remain sluggish. Since March this year, the epidemic has once again broken out in my country's key consumer cities, making the originally sluggish small home appliance industry even worse. Under the harsh environment, consumer demand is conservative, making it difficult to release the demand for small home appliances with sub-rigid needs.
Internet celebrity small household appliances, there are many types, and there are many disadvantages.
Internet celebrity small household appliances are different from traditional conventional small household appliances such as rice cookers, electric fans, shavers, etc., and are typical representatives of China's small household appliances industry. During the epidemic, the high attention paid to e-commerce platforms and the traffic attracted by social platforms once pushed Internet celebrity small home appliances to the forefront, and their popularity has not diminished to this day.
Open e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and Pinduoduo, and you will find a dazzling array of small home appliances with various Internet celebrities. Kitchen appliances such as electric lunch box , automatic cooking machine , fruit and vegetable cleaning machine , automatic squeezing noodle machine , personal care products such as steam foot bath bucket, portable folding washing machine, underwear washing machine, etc., full of creativity , embodying the "exquisite" life of young white-collar workers. However, Internet celebrity small household appliances are still very popular, but there are also many shortcomings. Take heating lunch boxes as an example. If you search an e-commerce platform, you can see many comments about "slow heating", "loud sound", "smell of plastic when heated", etc.
According to the "Complaints Accepted by the National Consumers Association in 2021" released by China Consumers Association , the number of complaints about household electronic appliances ranked first with 108,000 complaints, including complaints about product quality and after-sales service. Accounting for about 70% of the total complaints, kitchen appliances and small household appliances have become the hardest hit areas.
A recent report released by Aowei Cloud Network shows that during the 2018 mid-year promotion period (May 30-June 19), among small household appliances, the retail sales of health pots and juicers fell by 17.3% and 17.3% respectively year-on-year. 18.0%, and desktop single-roast sales dropped by 45.3% year-on-year.
How far can Internet celebrity small home appliances go?
In recent years, the consumption outlook of young people has also changed, especially under the impact of the epidemic, consumption has become more conservative and Buddhist. The previously released 2021 "China Pension Prospects Survey Report" shows that the monthly savings ratio of the younger generation jumped from 20% in 2020 to 25% in 2021, and the monthly savings amount reached an average of 1,624 yuan. Different from the prevalent consumerism, " minimalism " has gradually become a trend among young people.
Ban Yuetan wrote in the article "Saving money to buy two houses, has the consumption outlook of contemporary young people changed?", living frugally, living with low consumption, saving countless "small consumption", in exchange for "the things that are just needed in life" "Big consumption" and saving money have begun to become the life goals of many young people. Today's young people "must spend what they are willing to spend, and never spend what is not necessary." They have become more cautious in the non-essential category of Internet celebrity small household appliances.
Internet celebrity small home appliance brands with tasteless products, cooling sales, and suppressed consumer demand, which focus on marketing but not on R&D and have low gross profit margins, are now facing the backlash of the capital market. The future of Internet celebrity small home appliances seems to have encountered a bottleneck, but through this year’s 618 The excellent performance of the Internet celebrity small household appliance air fryer also shows that the Internet celebrity small household appliance still has great potential. In the post-epidemic era, many home appliance companies in the small home appliance market are sorting out new ideas.
Midea Group Chairman Fang Hongbo once stated at the annual management meeting that Midea’s past success rules for small home appliances need to be fully iterated, including business models, industrial structures, industry rules, institutional mechanisms, product forms and new business formats, etc. aspect, and proposed that this is the survival problem faced by Midea's small home appliance business.
Small home appliance industry representative Bear Electric said, "To make the market space larger, we must promote the development of emerging categories. This requires a clear insight into the crowd and the extension of people's scenarios." Bear Electric strives to make the small home appliance market bigger and stronger. , enrich product categories, and delve deeply into segmented product usage scenarios. "Different life scenarios have different demands for small home appliances. If we keep up with consumer demands, the market will be particularly huge." From the perspective of improving the industrial chain, Xiaoxiong Electric also stated that in the future, it will focus on the construction of the entire closed-loop ecology, and all aspects of production, sales, maintenance, and services of small household appliances will be strictly controlled.
Rich categories, segmented scenarios, and focus on quality, but at the same time must maintain the cost-effective advantage of Internet celebrity products. Internet celebrity small appliances have a long way to go to make a comeback.
