The Decline of Small Home Appliances: A Pseudo Proposition of "Exquisite" Life

When did I buy an air fryer

Liu Yu, who was tidying up the room, looked at the corner of the miscellaneous room, and the air fryer, which had already been stained with some dust, fell into contemplation. The appearance of this small household appliance made Liu Yu couldn't help but look at items in the kitchen, such as a wall breaking machine, breakfast machine, and electric rice cooker, that had not been used for a long time. The air fryer was just a representative.

In fact, this may also be the fate of such small household appliances. In the first three years, with the rise of the "homestead economy", the disciplined yet refined lifestyle captured the hearts of a large number of young people on camera. Under the pressure of yearning for this kind of life and a mentality similar to "buying books is like reading", various novel small appliances crowded the kitchens of young people.

But after being impulsive, young people turned around and realized that the use of small appliances under the camera was enough to "drive any lazy person crazy". Subsequently, these so-called happiness influences are transformed into a display of "doubting life once, and hanging idle fish twice".

"Those who buy these things now are the victims of injustice," Liu Yu, who has just hung the air frying pan on the idle fish, roast.

01 Wall breaking machines "occupy" salted fish

Three years have passed, and young people have become more pragmatic.

In August 2022, Xiao Hai, forced to live at home, accidentally clicked into an electrical broadcast room with Tiktok, and the broken wall machine in the anchor's hands that "a glass of juice every day, beauty and beauty" moved him. After scanning the price of Xiaohuang's car, he said, 'You can have it over 200 yuan.' Xiaohai quickly placed an order and even longed for the exquisite life that the wall breaking machine would bring.

Unfortunately, after receiving the wall breaker, Xiaohai only used it a few times. During this period, Xiaohai realized that he didn't actually like fruits as much as he imagined, but instead became afraid of eating them. I finally know why some people say they don't like to eat fruits, but they love to eat peeled fruits. Even those like me who like to peel fruits have to consider how to mix and match them with nutritious ingredients. It seems convenient, but my heart is even more tired.

Cleaning a wall breaking machine is really painful. It's easy for the edges and corners to not clean properly, especially the blades are particularly difficult to clean, and it's possible to accidentally scratch your hand. "Looking at the wall breaking machine eating ash in the kitchen cabinet, Xiaohai plans to" give "it to someone who is destined for it the next time he moves.

And the situation of Xiaohai is not an exception. Nowadays, after years of polishing, small household appliances not only have high appearance and superior cost-effectiveness, but also have a particularly clear functional positioning. The word "exquisite" implements all advertising themes. Consumers only realize that they seem to overestimate the practicality of these small things by "inviting" them into their own cabin after "getting on top".

On the idle fish APP, there are many electric ovens, soybean milk machines, and air fryers. The discount labels such as "brand new" and "90% new" are generally marked below, but the price is nearly halved, and some sellers even sell it at a 30% discount. It can be said that "just sell it" is almost written on the face of sellers, hoping to find their "destined person" for these small household appliances that have fallen into ashes.

As early as early as 2022, Xianyu had released a minesweeping list of the "Top 10 Useless Goods", with the wall breaking machine being one of them. In the past year, if the number of product types for resale is calculated based on the reason of "not being used" or "accumulating dust", the air fryer has long ranked first.

When these small appliances became frequent customers in the second-hand market, young people who pretended to be exquisite realized that these small appliances did not bring any other benefits to their lives except for shrinking their wallets. And this is actually a necessity, because most of the small home appliance products on the market are not designed specifically for consumers' "rigid needs" in terms of positioning, but rather for achieving differentiation and finding ways to focus on the characteristics of "non rigid needs".

Of course, compared to a true intelligence tax, 'non rigid demand' is not a big mistake. After all, many manufacturers also need to rely on these 'non rigid demand' characteristics to position niche markets, explore new consumption scenarios, and increase the breadth of product categories. Therefore, to some extent, it has a promoting effect on the industry.

For example, Little Bear Appliances, known as the "first stock" of small appliances, can launch over 100 new products a year, and on average, one new product is launched every 3 days; In addition, Mofei, who started with a juicer and became famous for its multifunctional pot, has long extended its tentacles to various categories such as portable boiling cups, high-speed steaming and stewing pots, cooking utensils, cutting boards, and more.

The same applies to players from various tracks such as air fryers, floor washers, sweeping robots, and home treadmills. To put it mildly, small home appliance manufacturers are constantly subdividing consumer behavior habits and providing consumers with unique experiences in different scenarios based on traditional home appliances; But as the saying goes, it is because of novelty that small appliances attract young people, but liking novelty also means being easily bored.

Laziness and simplicity are innate human pursuits, and fictional refinement is clearly not an opponent. "Uselessness" naturally becomes a label that small household appliances cannot get rid of.

02 Limitations of segmented products

The "cold wind" of small household appliances has clearly become a fixed trend.

According to data from Ovi Cloud, the retail sales of small kitchen appliances in 2022 reached 52.03 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6.7%; The retail volume was 220.49 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 12.7%. This data is already the second consecutive year of decline in the small home appliance category after soaring in 2021.

And after entering 2023, there has also been a phenomenon of sluggish growth in the clean electrical industry. Industry data shows that in the first half of 2023, the domestic omnichannel retail sales of the clean electrical appliances industry reached 15 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of only 3%.

These data are consistent with the business performance of micro level enterprises. From the three small household appliances that have already announced their performance, Subor achieved a revenue of 9.983 billion yuan in the first half of the year, a year-on-year decrease of 3.31%, and a net profit attributable to the parent company of 881 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 5.6%; The 2023 semi annual report of Jiuyang Co., Ltd. also shows that the operating revenue in the first half of the year was 4.318 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 8.34%, and the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 247 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 28.66%.

Among them, only Little Bear Electric maintained its previous trend: revenue in the first half of the year was 2.341 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.68%, and net profit was 237 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 59.66%. Taking a closer look at the quarterly data, we can clearly see that Xiaoxiong Electric's growth rate was also excellent in the first quarter, and it entered a "stall" state in the second quarter.

This situation is undoubtedly a tragedy for the entire small home appliance industry. After all, the characteristics of most industries that are in good condition should be stable growth at the head, rising and falling at the waist, and drinking soup at the tail. Moreover, even Little Bear Appliances' stock price has dropped by 30% in the past three months, and its market value has shrunk from its peak of 15.9 billion yuan in 2020 to 8.4 billion yuan on October 24th, a drop of nearly half, making other small appliance companies even more miserable.

In response to the problem of the small home appliance market being cold, the mainstream view in the market is not only that young people have become "lazy", but also that this is a sequela of the industry's excessive overdraft of consumer potential.

From a product perspective, small household appliances frequently encounter idleness, and the fundamental problem behind it is that the product's functional attributes are too single. In the first three years, the air fryer was born, and it stood out on social media with its "one click cooking". It was a life-saving tool for young people who were not skilled enough and had difficulty finding takeout. However, in actual research, more people only use fried sausages after initially experiencing fried chicken and French fries. After the complete opening up in early 2023, the demand for takeout and dining out rebounded, and the air fryer was even forgotten in the corner.

Going deeper, perhaps even more crucial is the gradually emerging trend of home appliance integration. In other words, the "frying" of air fryers is already becoming a small performance in many electric products.

At present, the traditional brands such as Fangtai, Boss, Midea, Supor, Daewoo, among the major household appliance brands in the market, all have launched the products of steaming, baking and frying machine, and almost all of them have integrated the function of air frying, which has received a good response from the market. The wall breaking machine, which integrates the functions of juicer, soybean milk machine, cooking machine, grinder and other products, is also a classic example.

It can be said that small home appliance products that pursue a single function and segmented positioning are inevitably eliminated.

03 written at the end

In this situation, small home appliance manufacturers have actually made many attempts to revitalize themselves.

Among them, expanding categories and diversifying transformation have become the main means to drive market growth by increasing selling prices and gross profit margins. Taking Xiaoxiong Electric as an example, at the end of 2021, it was announced to abolish the Electric Appliances and Pot Cookers business units, and on this basis, establish the Infant and Child Products business unit. The original Personal Care Products department was upgraded to the Personal Care Health business unit.

In addition, in the past two years, Little Bear Electric has also coveted "big appliances" such as rice cookers and electric kettles, attempting to overtake on curves. But ideals are full, reality is backbone, and the path of diversified transformation is not as smooth as imagined.

In the 2022 annual report released by Little Bear Electric, data showed that kitchen appliances still accounted for over 80% of the annual revenue and still accounted for the majority of its revenue. Among them, the revenue of pot and pot products reached 1.005 billion yuan, making it the only household appliance category with a revenue exceeding 1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 31%, and a revenue share of 24%. On the contrary, in the past two years, Xiaoxiong Electric has invested a large amount of research and development funds in household appliances such as humidifiers and massagers, but the actual revenue accounts for less than 10%.

At least based on data performance, small home appliance manufacturers have not yet been able to find new ways out in China.