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Source | Insights New Research Institute
As the saying goes, ginger is old and spicy. It is said that the elderly are experienced, stable and sophisticated in handling things.
As the saying goes, the waves behind the Yangtze River drive the waves ahead. It's about the experienced new people and new things are better than the old people and old things.
These two sentences seem to be contradictory, but they are full of philosophy. The competition between the old and the newcomers has always been a hot topic among the market. matching case.
From the struggle between old and new forces in the kitchen appliance industry, we can see that the "front wave" of traditional kitchen appliances relies on their own tenacity to hold back the "back wave" of new forces. We can also see that the new generation The power is unwilling to submit, and the struggle of "my fate is up to me".
1. Under the pressure of performance, traditional kitchen appliances show resilience
It is no secret that the overall decline of the kitchen appliance industry is no longer a secret. GfK Zhongyikang estimates that the compound growth rate of range hoods from 2019 to 2022 will be -3.0%, and the market size will be around 35 billion yuan in 2022, a year-on-year decrease of 8.4%; The annual compound growth rate is -1.5%, and the market size in 2022 will be around 23 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6.0%.
Among the many categories of kitchen appliances, only integrated stoves are going against the market.
The compound growth rate of this category from 2019 to 2022 is 23.5%, and the market size in 2022 will be about 30.5 billion yuan. Although the year-on-year growth rate has slowed down compared with last year, it still maintains double-digit growth (14.3%).
It is also with the help of integrated stoves that the new forces of kitchen appliances represented by Zhejiang Meida, Martian, and Yitian Intelligent have brought a great impact on traditional kitchen appliance companies.
However, in 2022, after the repeated impact of the epidemic, the superimposed economic downturn cycle and the continuous downturn in real estate and many other unfavorable factors, the new forces of kitchen appliances whose main sales products are integrated stoves can't stand it anymore. produce greater toughness.
The clues can be clearly seen from the 2022 annual reports of each company.
The revenue of traditional kitchen appliance companies Fotile and Robam Appliances is in the tens of billions, and it was 16.243 billion and 10.272 billion respectively last year; Vantage and Wanhe are in the second echelon, with revenues of 6.628 billion and 5.819 billion last year.
It is worth noting that Robam achieved a double increase in revenue and profit last year (Fotile did not publish profit data), and its net profit reached 1.572 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 18.07%. The net profit of 550 million yuan achieved a year-on-year growth of 53.33%.
In contrast, Martian, Zhejiang Meida, Yitian Intelligent and Shuaifeng Electric, the four new kitchen appliances with integrated stoves as the main direction, except Yitian Intelligent achieved a slight increase in revenue and profit, the other three The item data are negative growth.
Operating data of major kitchen appliance companies in 2022 Data source: official/financial report
Entering 2023, the overall situation has not changed much. According to data from Aowei Cloud.com, in the first quarter of 2023, the market size of kitchen heating (smoke, stove, disinfection, washing, inlay, collection, electric heating, and combustion heating) was 27 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 2.3%.
Reflected in the financial reports of kitchen appliance companies, the decline is more obvious.
In the first quarter of this year, more than half of the seven listed kitchen appliance companies saw a decline in both revenue and profit. Among them, the traditional kitchen appliance companies Boss Electric and Vantage have achieved growth in revenue and net profit despite the downturn in the market environment, which is not easy.
Operating data of major kitchen appliance companies in the first quarter of 2023 Data source: financial report
2. Real estate is the surface, and channels are the foundation and essence
Kitchen appliances are an industry highly dependent on real estate, especially integrated stove products. Due to the need for installation and decoration, they are usually closely related to new house sales. Zhejiang Meida investor research information has disclosed that in 2021, 95% of the company's integrated stove products Revenue comes from new home renovations, with the remaining 5% coming from old kitchen remodels.
On the surface, the long-term downturn in the real estate industry has dealt the heaviest head-on blow to kitchen appliance companies. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the sales area of commercial housing from January to October 2022 was less than 111,200 square meters, a year-on-year decrease of 22.3%. It was basically the same as that from January to September, of which the area of residential sales decreased by 25.5%.
The Aowei Cloud report also believes that "the long-term and medium-term outlook of new housing is not satisfactory, and the focus of growth of home appliances will be shifted to stock housing."
But follow this logic and think a little more deeply. Under the same market environment, why can traditional kitchen appliance companies withstand the pressure and even achieve growth against the market? The short board is revealed.
Due to historical reasons, there were no mandatory product standards and market supervision when the first generation of integrated kitchen was born. At that time, when the Ministry of Science and Technology went to Zhejiang Meida for research, it gave the evaluation of "technology is ahead, and the law lags behind". Therefore, the integrated kitchen aimed at the beginning. Markets outside the Fifth Ring Road with weak supervision have been classified as "marginal products" by the industry for a long time.
It wasn't until the Shengzhou Kitchenware Association released the "Integrated Stove Product Industry Alliance Standard" in 2010, and the introduction of the first national standard two years later, that the development of the integrated stove industry gradually became more formal. The market strategy of "encircling the cities from the countryside" has grown rapidly in the vast third- and fourth-tier markets.
The biggest difference between new forces and traditional kitchen appliance companies in terms of channels is the imbalance in the layout and efforts of various channels.
Following the evolution of kitchen appliances, KA channels represented by Gome and Suning were the undisputed mainstream in the 2000s; since 2012, e-commerce channels have grown rapidly; since 2018, the proportion of refined decoration channels has increased rapidly.
Newcomers to kitchen appliances generally adopt a direct sales model that connects directly to distributors at the city and county levels. The penetration in KA channels such as Suning and Gome is very low, far less than the deep roots of traditional kitchen appliance companies.
According to the research report of Huachuang Securities, as of the end of last year, the number of KA stores of Zhejiang Meida, Martian, and Shuaifeng Electric Appliances, the three new kitchen appliance companies, was about 2,000, 750, and 200, respectively. There is a big gap between about 3,000 and Vantage's 2,555 KA stores.
Source: Huachuang Securities
In terms of e-commerce channels, Martian is relatively strong. Data from Aoweiyun.com shows that Martian’s online retail sales of integrated stoves accounted for 24.9%, and its market share increased by 1.4%, leading the second place by 11.2%.
However, limited by customer awareness, the overall share of online channels in the industry is not large. According to statistics from Aoweiyun.com, from January to September 2022, online and offline sales of integrated cooking stoves accounted for 23% respectively. , 77%, sales accounted for 18%, 82% respectively.
As for the engineering channel, the penetration of new forces in integrated kitchens is very low, almost zero.
As a comparison, let’s take a look at the channel layout of Robam Electric. In addition to maintaining the lead in the offline KA channel, during the period of rapid development of e-commerce from 2012 to 2017, the revenue of e-commerce channels increased from 10% in 2012 to 31% in 2017. %; After the refined decoration channel started to rise in 2018, the refined decoration revenue rose from 8% in 2017 to 25% in 2020.
Obviously, when the demand for sales terminals shrinks, the interception of upstream channels is very important. Traditional kitchen appliance companies have greatly enhanced their ability to resist risks through a balanced three-dimensional layout on channels.
3. In addition to channels, what other cards does the new force have?
The newcomers of kitchen appliances are definitely unwilling to rest on their laurels, but besides making up for the shortcomings of the channel, what other cards can they play?
Let's first look at how traditional kitchen appliance companies build their own second growth curve.
Robam Electric can maintain positive growth in 2022, thanks to the richness of product categories.
Last year, Robam released a new generation of high-performance integrated stoves, ultra-thin range hoods, large-capacity steam-baking and frying machines, decontamination machines, and creator refrigerators. A full range of kitchen appliances.
Among the individual products of Robam Appliances, the online retail sales of embedded all-in-one machines accounted for 14.6%, and the offline retail sales accounted for 30.9%, ranking first in the market; in terms of dishwashers, the scale of the entire dishwasher industry in 2022 The growth rate was 2.9%, while the growth rate of Robam dishwashers was as high as 22.95%. In terms of integrated stoves, Robam Electric’s large-cavity steam-baking integrated stove took only 4 months to win the first place in the double-line sales of the same category.
It started from the category of integrated stoves, but is also trapped in the category of integrated stoves, resulting in a single product layout. The new forces of kitchen appliances have obviously noticed this.
Last year, Martian formally proposed the strategic direction of "building the washing category into the second growth curve", and launched new matrix integrated dishwashers such as D70, D50, D30, and D31.
Entering 2023, Martian has successively released two new integrated stove dishwashers, D70S and D75. According to the Martian 2022 financial report, the operating income of washing products is 127 million yuan, accounting for 5.6% of the company's operating income. The transformation of product direction has shown certain results.
In addition, Martians also invested more than 100 million yuan in research and development last year, an increase of 44.12% compared with 2021, to explore the intelligence and digital innovation of kitchen appliances.
On the basis of integrated kitchen products, Martian launched a set of MCOOK smart kitchen system, which integrates the three fields of smart interaction, smart cooking and smart ecology, thus realizing the upgrade from product intelligence to scene intelligence.
Yitian Smart pays close attention to product innovation, pioneers the fan under-mounting technology in the industry, and based on this, launches the industry's first independent steam and oven integrated stove, which makes the breakthrough of the independent structure of steam and oven possible to a certain extent.
In addition, the smart cooking steward S9 released by Yitian has promoted the intelligent upgrade of unmanned cooking to a certain extent, and has also brought Chinese kitchens one step closer to the "unmanned" era.
In terms of product sales, Yitian D2ZK (steamed and roasted integrated model) is the best-selling model online from January to May 2022, accounting for more than 70% of Yitian’s total online sales. S8A (steamed and roasted independent model) It ranks among the best-selling models offline, and also accounts for more than 70% of Yitian's total offline sales.
The above data shows that the mainstream products in the current market are integrated steaming and roasting stoves, and Yitian has caught up with the windmill of this market wind shift through product innovation. Yitian Smart can maintain a slight increase in performance last year, formed by technological innovation The advantages of product strength played a very critical role.
It is an obvious trend. With the deepening of intelligentization and digital transformation of various enterprises, the entire industry will also be driven. At this time, channels and products are the basic capabilities. If enterprises want to leverage greater performance growth points, the industry The direction of involution will be in the direction of R&D and innovation capabilities.
In this regard, the new forces stand on the same starting line as the traditional kitchen appliance companies, and no one knows whether the future is bright or the bottomless abyss.