Why Does the Demand for Sweeping Machines Decline While the Pusher Vacuum Cleaner Demand Rise Continuously?

Why Does the Demand for Sweeping Machines Decline and the Demand for Pusher Vacuum Cleaner Continues to Rise?

Since the beginning of this year, the overall scale of the home appliance market has fluctuated significantly, mainly manifested as the following changes.

Change 1: The offline market continues to recover

Since this year, the online market has continued to become the main sales channel. However, the offline market for vacuum cleaners tends to recover. According to the data, the vacuum cleaner accounted for 11% of the offline in February 2020, and the proportion increased to 17% in April. But online vacuum cleaners still occupy a large market share of vacuum dust cleaners. However, the offline share is expected to be further improved in May. The reason for this situation may be that products such as king clean vacuum cleaners can more directly feel the product capabilities during the offline experience in the context of the epidemic being controlled, so they gradually recover.

Change 2: The proportion of sweeping robots declines, and the push rod vacuum cleaner continues to rise

In the past two years, sweeping robots have achieved rapid growth in terms of market attention and product market size. But since this year its growth has slowed down significantly. The online share of sweeping robot products fell from 49.6% last year to 40.8%, and the offline share fell from 21% last year to 16.1%.

At the same time, push-rod vacuum cleaner products have achieved growth, with the online share rising from 27% last year to 31.2%, and the offline share rising from 55.6% last year to 66.9%.

The frequent price wars in the field of home appliances in the past two years have also caused the average price of some categories to continue to decline, but in this year, push rod vacuum cleaner has seen an increase in the average price of vacuum cleaners. This situation may be related to the following two reasons.

First, the products of sweeping robots still need to be optimized. According to earlier data from third-party data companies, the total sales volume of sweeping robots from January to November 2019 was 5.585 million units, a slight increase of 1.9% year-on-year. But before 2018, the volume growth rate of the industry was about 50%.

The overall development of the industry has slowed, and brands have encountered growth problems. The decline in head brand revenue and falling profits also seem to characterize the bottleneck of the entire sweeping robot industry. The emergence of such a problem is affected by epidemic factors. At the same time, we think it is also related to the two following factors.

On the one hand, the problem of homogenization. At present, the structure of products on the market consists of the main brush, a side brush, a waste bin, and a motor. The cleaning method is basically to use the motor to rotate at high speed to suck debris into the waste bin. The high-suction vacuum cleaner is good at this.

On the other hand, the ability still needs to be improved. For example, the robot wheel is covered with the dust during use. If the user does not clean up in time, it is likely that the ground will get dirtier. Besides, the cleaning ability of push rod products is outstanding. Compared with floor-sweeping robots, pusher-type products have stronger cleaning capabilities. In this year, push-rod products have launched products equipped with polymer lithium batteries, which makes the products have better performance in terms of weight and battery life. In addition, in terms of suction, products have been significantly improved, such changes enhance the user experience.

In addition to the above two changes, the competition from the market brand is quite fierce. As of April, the online top 10 brands accounted for 70.6%, down 3.1% year-on-year, such as wet and dry vacuum cleaners, robot vacuum cleaners, big power vacuum cleaners, Such a situation may be related to the increase of incoming brands. For example, Huawei’s ecological chain released the first vacuum cleaner products this year. With its own brand potential and fan base, it may quickly open the market, so the future vacuum cleaner market brand pattern may change further.