Bathroom revolution: how to make "national standard" more concerned
Consumer experience, like a touchstone, is more convincing than the experience gained from word of mouth.
Ms. Tao, who took her family to the south for a holiday this summer, really experienced the convenience and comfort of smart bathroom in the B&B hotel where she stayed for a few days, and planned to upgrade the bathroom at home. "This is an experience that will happen every day. I don't want to make do with it."
In 2023, it was called "consumption boosting year". Twenty measures aimed at restoring and expanding consumption were released a few days ago. They were actively laid out around six aspects: "stabilizing mass consumption, expanding service consumption, promoting rural consumption, expanding new consumption, improving consumption facilities and optimizing consumption environment". Together with relevant policies in various fields and categories, the 20 measures formed a package policy system of "promoting consumption and expanding domestic demand", especially grasping some key problems and weak links of current consumption. As a large-scale consumption, the household industry is also one of the blocking points, difficulties and key needs in the current consumption recovery process. The measures and suggestions of "enriching application scenarios, accelerating digital transformation and improving the level of intelligent greening" have been mentioned again.
Remote control, induction and non-contact ... Smart homes are on the road of iterative upgrading. The market price of head brands is becoming more and more close to the people, and many manufacturers have been shuffled while actively leaving the market. This has made more and more consumers experience unprecedented comfort and satisfaction with price reduction, which has also contributed to the increasing popularity of smart bathroom products, especially smart toilets. The White Paper on the Development of Smart Toilet Industry in China released at the end of 2021 shows that the penetration rate of smart toilets in China is only about 4%, which is far from the penetration rates of 90%, 60% and 60% in Japan, the United States and South Korea respectively. The market generally expects that this just means that this category is expected to grow in the future and is expected to become a "national standard".
Details determine customer stickiness
"Recommended by a friend, I changed the smart toilet in the bedroom bathroom last year, which is cleaner, more paper-saving, and really easy to use. I just want to change the other bathroom." In a building materials city outside Beijing's Fourth Ring Road, a young couple who are careful about money are choosing smart toilets, comparing the imported brands they bought last year with many domestic brands. They told reporters that it is precisely because of the more comfortable personal experience that they have a clear consumer preference, waiting for the price to be more suitable this year.
A truly intelligent product should be able to take care of the details of the needs of ordinary users to the greatest extent. Take the smart toilet as an example. It was first invented by Americans for medical and elderly care scenes, but it has gained universal popularity in Japan, which pays attention to toilet culture. The functions developed by the latter, such as seat heating, warm air drying, deodorization and sterilization, have become the innovation of this bathroom product and hit the pain points of many consumers: it turns out that this process can become healthier, simpler and more comfortable.
"What I value most is the cleaning function of this product. I remember the first trip to Europe, and I was deeply impressed by the design of toilet+independent bidet in the bathroom of Rome Hotel. Even if the space is not big, it is still the same. I feel very scientific and human." Mr. Li, who has been engaged in home design for many years, told reporters that the Romans who lived hundreds of years ago had healthy consumption habits and advanced consumption concepts in bathroom. Subsequently, the "one-button operation" Japanese smart toilet cover and its toilet seat, which carry more cleaning functions and humanized details, further refreshed his understanding of this bathroom product.
According to the public information of Guosheng Securities, the "2022 American Bathroom Trend Research Report" shows that 39% of the respondents in the survey have replaced smart toilets at home; American consumers pay more attention to sanitation and cleaning functions, which are ranked in order of popularity, namely nozzle (24%), self-cleaning (17%), seat heating (15%), night light (13%), automatic flip cover (10%), water splash prevention (9%) and automatic deodorization (9%). Obviously, the public's demand for the health of the home environment is an instinctive driving force. With the self-strengthening of this demand, the innovation and iterative upgrade of the details of smart toilets have become a trend and necessity, which reflects the foundation of this industry.
"Once healthy living habits and consumption habits are formed, it is not easy to change, and the fundamental function of bathroom products is to serve the health needs of the public. If this fundamental demand is solved in place, the development orientation of the industry will be identified. On the supply side, it is reflected in the changes in product details, and on the demand side, it brings customer stickiness." Manager Zhai, a senior sales manager of a domestic sanitary ware brand, told the reporter that from the use of antibacterial blue glaze technology to the self-cleaning of nozzles to the built-in foam shield, the competitive situation presented by the supply side forced enterprises to focus on consumer demand, explore humanized details and promote intelligent reform.
"The supply side is not reformed, the products taken out are not marketable, and the people do not pay the bill." Li Chunlin, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that it is necessary to adapt to changes in demand and create new demand through supply-side structural reforms; It is necessary to organically combine the implementation of the strategy of expanding domestic demand with deepening the structural reform of the supply side, enhance the adaptability and flexibility of the supply structure to changes in demand, and at the same time lead and create new market demand with high-quality supply, expand new consumption space, create new consumption scenarios and enrich consumption experience.
Consumption upgrading is unstoppable.
Intelligent bathroom products are the development direction of the home furnishing industry and the current consumption hotspot. This field is experiencing the transition from "just-needed consumption" to "improved consumption", and consumption upgrading is just the right time.
The Research Report on the Trend of Household Consumption in China in 2022 shows that consumers' demand for improvement in function iteration and style updating exceeds the demand for passive replacement. The core categories in family bathroom space, such as toilets, have the characteristics of strong functionality, high cost performance and gradual upgrading of consumption experience, and the bathroom industry has a high correlation with real estate. With the decline in the number of new houses entering the market, a large number of stock houses have entered the renovation cycle, and the demand for improved ones has grown steadily.
In addition, under the background of accelerating aging, the large-scale production of head enterprises in the bathroom industry has brought down the cost, and the average price of smart toilets has also continued to move down. Various factors show that, as a more functional product, the overall cognitive level of smart toilet has been steadily improved after years of consumer cultivation, especially after the popular science of family and personal hygiene in the past two to three years, which is expected to further improve the penetration rate.
In the first half of 2023, China's GDP growth rate reached 5.5%, exceeding the forecast target of about 5% set at the beginning of the year, in which consumption made an important contribution. At the moment of "residents' willingness to consume has recovered", the total retail sales of consumer goods in China increased by 8.2% year-on-year, reaching a total of 22.75 trillion yuan. It cannot be ignored that since the strategy of "expanding domestic demand" was put forward in 1998, China's policy focus has been on expanding investment demand, while the means and policy tools for expanding consumption are relatively limited. With the narrowing of the space for expanding investment and the decline of marginal efficiency, further innovation of "policy tools for expanding consumption" and improvement of "institutional mechanisms for expanding consumption" have become the key to releasing the potential of consumer demand. This consensus is like "adding another fire" to the emerging smart home industry.
The "Several Measures on Promoting Household Consumption" jointly issued by the Ministry of Commerce and 12 departments on July 18 clearly stated that it is necessary to "promote smart home appliances, integrated home appliances, functional furniture and other products, and improve the intelligent and green level of home". "The starting point of the consumption promotion policy is not the so-called" empty wallet "and" overdraft demand ".On the contrary, it is to help residents save money, buy good and cheap goods, and buy new products and services that are more scientific and technological and more in line with demand." When interpreting the New Deal, Li Chunlin emphasized that as long as the government's policies are more effective and more beneficial to the people, the consumption and welfare of the people can be improved simultaneously.
Domestic brands overtake in corners.
The influx of local enterprises has driven down the price of smart bathroom products, and also achieved the popularization of smart bathroom. At present, the toilets, shower rooms, bathtubs, bathroom cabinets, hardware faucets, etc. in the family bathroom space have all realized different degrees of intelligence, among which the intelligent toilets are the most widely used. According to industry estimates, every 10% increase in the household penetration rate of smart toilets in China will increase the market demand by nearly 100 billion yuan, and there is a huge demand gap.
As an imported product, smart toilet was introduced to China market by Japanese bathroom brand TOTO as early as the end of 1980s. In 1995, the first smart toilet cover made by China people rolled off the production line in Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, marking the beginning of the era of domestic independent production and manufacturing of smart toilets. However, the electronic components of this period were imported from Japan, and few manufacturers were involved, and the product output was very limited. In the middle and late 1990s, with the rapid development of domestic economy, the abundance of social capital, the accumulation of related technologies and the vision of private entrepreneurs, this emerging industry has achieved great development. From 1995 to 2014, domestic smart toilet products reached the scale of annual sales of more than 100,000 sets and annual turnover of nearly 2 billion yuan, and the number of manufacturers has also increased from the previous ones to dozens.
In 2015, the article "Go to Japan to Buy a Toilet Cover" published by Wu Xiaobo, a financial writer, triggered a wide range of social discussions. The national awareness has been greatly improved, and thanks to the policy blessing, the manufacturing of smart toilets in China has developed rapidly. Domestic brands have sprung up like mushrooms after rain, and the number of brands has increased from more than 30 in 2015 to 258 in the first half of 2020, mainly distributed in Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Fujian and other places. From the Japanese and American brands with first-Mover advantage once dominated, it took only a few minutes to the domestic brands "divided into one side" and overtook them in corners. Moreover, in the special period of economic downturn in 2020, the smart toilets adhering to the concept of healthy living and having "non-contact" performance have maintained a contrarian growth rate of 10%.
"Although there are many market participants and the number of manufacturers has increased to more than 300 by the end of 2021, there are not many domestic sanitary ware brands with independent production lines, and most of them are in the OEM mode after' resource integration'. This dispersed form that cannot be changed in the short term is an inevitable situation in the initial stage of industry development." Manager Zhai told reporters that the 4% penetration rate by the end of 2021 means that China's smart toilet market is a vast blue ocean. In the final analysis, market breakthrough means technical breakthrough and innovation breakthrough, and many competitors can only rely on their strength to break through if they temper their technical core in the process of shuffling. According to Aoweiyun. com, the brand concentration of TOP5 in China's smart toilet integrated machine industry was 39.4% in 2020. In contrast, the brand concentration of smart toilet lids was relatively high, which was 70.8% in 2020.
The data also shows that the consumption market of smart toilets in China is mainly concentrated in first-and second-tier cities. The White Paper on the Development of Smart Toilet Industry in China published by China Household Grid in December 2021 reveals that the penetration rate of smart toilets is above 5%~10% in first-tier cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, and around 3% ~ 5% in new first-tier cities, but it is almost blank in third-and fourth-tier cities and township markets, which indicates that there is a broad space in the terminal consumption market of smart toilets, and the sinking market will become the development of this industry. Of course, whether the product positioning and quality supervision in the sinking market can be done well is still the key to the stability and success of this industry.
"Each of us is a consumer, and improving the consumption environment is an important support for restoring and expanding consumption." In the government's interpretation of 20 measures to expand domestic demand, "dare to consume and willing to consume" is closely related to market supervision. Since promoting market consumption is a systematic project, which includes consumption capacity, consumption hotspots, consumption desire and consumption environment, the future market supervision will start from three aspects: building a system, keeping the bottom line and raising the line, and strive to create a secure consumption environment and effectively promote the quality and expansion of consumption.