Can a refrigeration and range hood set priced at 30,000 yuan help Fangtai, which is under pressure of hundreds of billions, to calm down?

What new stories can range hoods tell?

There is a question on Zhihu, "Since the kitchen is so hot in the summer, why doesn't anyone install air conditioners in the kitchen?" Is it okay to install air conditioners in the kitchen? The answer to this question is obvious. It is true that we sweat profusely when cooking in the kitchen in the summer, but it is also true that very few kitchens have air conditioners installed.

Cooling down the kitchen, especially in the summer, has become a practical issue for us to enjoy life. However, neither the air conditioning industry nor the kitchen appliance industry has yet provided a feasible and universal solution. Fotile, which has been deeply involved in the range hood market, recently launched a solution to use range hoods for cooling.

Range hoods have a new function: cooling the kitchen

The story of range hoods seems to have come to an end: strong suction, self-cleaning, smart screens, and even security systems. On top of completing the basic functions of smoke suction and exhaust, manufacturers have continuously pushed up the price of range hoods by adding these functions that we can or cannot imagine, from a few hundred yuan in the past to several thousand yuan today, and even range hoods that cost eight or nine thousand yuan are no longer rare.

The price of range hoods has skyrocketed as their functions have increased. However, this is far from the end of the self-inflation of range hood products. In fact, the overlapping functions are likely just the beginning of the abnormal development of this industry.

At the beginning of the month, FOTILE launched a new product, the second-generation integrated cooking center, whose biggest promotional function is that it can cool down the kitchen. In other words, FOTILE has added a new function to the range hood: blowing cold air.

Who says fire and water don’t coexist? It is reported that this refrigeration range hood from FOTILE realizes the two functions of refrigeration and smoke exhaust at the same time with the same system.

That is, a relatively small refrigeration compressor and refrigeration evaporator are placed in the range hood to realize the refrigeration function of the range hood, and the oil smoke and heat are discharged to the outdoors through the same pipe. In other words, there is no need to install an external unit of the refrigeration equipment, nor is there a need to drill holes in the kitchen to occupy extra space.

It is said that its built-in refrigeration equipment includes an ultra-thin low-wind resistance microchannel condenser, a fast-drainage microchannel evaporator and a powerful refrigeration compressor, which can ensure fast and effective refrigeration in an integrated small space. The wide temperature adjustment range is from 16 to 30°C, which can provide a cool environment for the "family chef".

It sounds like everything is great, right? But here comes the twist: such a good product concept, in principle, has no technical difficulty in realizing it, so why has it been delayed until today?

Cooling the kitchen is a false need

At present, although kitchen cooling is a practical problem that the industry urgently needs to solve, achieving this goal through cooling with range hoods faces some equally practical difficulties.

Installation is fun at first, but regrets come later. It is common in the home furnishing industry to regret after purchase.

In fact, Fotile is not the first company in the industry to make refrigeration hoods. As early as 2016, Midea launched a Tianjing refrigeration hood that combines refrigeration and smoke extraction. At that time, it attracted the attention of both the air-conditioning industry and the kitchen appliance industry because it was the first cross-border product that connected the two operating systems of kitchen appliances and air conditioners.

However, ideals are beautiful, but reality is cruel. The market performance of Midea Tianjing refrigeration hoods is so poor that they have stopped selling them. There is no trace of this product on JD.com and Taobao.

In fact, most people in the industry believe that the positioning of refrigeration range hoods in the market is awkward. Generally speaking, there are two ways to achieve kitchen cooling, one is household central air conditioning, and the other is single mobile air conditioning or refrigerator.

With the significant reduction in costs, the current price difference between household central air conditioners and ordinary household air conditioners has narrowed to 30%. Especially in the context of consumption upgrading, household central air conditioners have become the choice of more and more people, and overall kitchen cooling is a once-and-for-all option.

It is worth mentioning that the second-generation integrated cooking center with cooling function from FOTILE is priced at 41,398 yuan, and the first-time price on JD.com is 28,980 yuan, which is close to 30,000 yuan. The question is, with such strong financial resources, will consumers still install central air conditioners worth 20,000 to 30,000 yuan at home?

In the kitchen cooling scenario, most consumers actually prefer portable single-unit air conditioners, which generally cost between two hundred and eight hundred yuan. They are not only more maneuverable, but also more suitable for cooling small spaces.

Therefore, many people in the industry believe that it is not very meaningful for Fotile to follow Midea's lead and release this refrigeration range hood. It is a small matter to copy others' ideas, but it is a big deal to deviate from the market track and create false demand. If it is like Midea, and the product is taken off the shelves in two or three years, it will not be of any benefit to its own brand image and revenue growth.

Deformed product strategy under the pressure of the 100 billion yuan target

Obviously, refrigeration range hoods are unlikely to become a new revenue growth pole for Fotile. At present, the new product has been released for half a month, but the number of pre-orders in its JD official flagship store is still not visible.

It can be said that this new product of FOTILE is more likely to improve the market layout and re-emphasize its high-end positioning. In other words, this is just a product for FOTILE to "show off its muscles", and its publicity significance is far greater than its actual sales significance.

The traditional range hood market has entered a bottleneck period, and its growth rate has almost stagnated in recent years. The average annual compound rate from 2017 to 2020 has dropped to -1.04%. According to data from Aowei Cloud Network, the retail volume of range hoods in 2020 fell by 7.6% year-on-year to 22.83 million units, with sales of 31.95 billion yuan, a year-on-year decline of 9.3%.

Public data shows that from 2017 to 2020, Fotile Group's operating income was 10.67 billion yuan, 10.976 billion yuan, 10.944 billion yuan and 12 billion yuan respectively. Since 2018, the operating income growth rate of two listed range hood companies, Robam and Martian, has fallen from 20% to less than 5%, and Vatti shares have even experienced negative growth for two consecutive years.

On the one hand, the industry is affected by the regulatory policies of the real estate industry. On the other hand, the traditional kitchen appliance market is approaching saturation. In this light, it is estimated that it will be difficult for Fotile to achieve the goal of 100 billion yuan by 2030 set in 2017.

According to data from Aowei Luopan, the average price of FOTILE's offline products was 7,239 yuan in the first seven months of 2021. When the prices of products such as range hoods and stoves have reached such a high level, where the subsequent growth will come from has obviously become a big problem. After all, not everyone needs a range hood and stove that costs tens of thousands of yuan.

In fact, as Fotile's rapid growth has gradually stagnated and the revenue growth expectations for the range hood market are no longer large, if it wants to seek a breakthrough in scale, it must explore new growth poles beyond range hoods. Fotile's expectations for new revenue points lie in entering the small home appliance market.

In April 2020, Fotile launched its first light kitchen brand "Mibo", officially entering the small home appliance market in order to attract more young users. From the perspective of the industry background, in the first half of 2020, affected by the epidemic, the demand in the small family market heated up and even experienced a blowout. The growth space far exceeded that of large home appliances, and it grew steadily. Entering the small home appliance market is the choice of many large home appliance companies, such as Midea, Haier, Gree, etc.

However, the market changes very quickly. The small home appliance market, which had been booming in the past few years, began to decline in the second half of last year and has cooled down in the first half of this year. According to data from Aowei Cloud Network, in the first half of this year, the retail volume of small home appliances totaled 119 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 8.2%, and the sales revenue was 25.08 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 8.6%.

Industry insiders believe that the small home appliance market had already entered the early stage of saturation in 2019, and the good performance in 2020 was the result of overdraft under the epidemic, and the growth will continue to slow down in the future. This is indeed not good news for Fotile, which has ambitious plans in the small home appliance market.

After the industry demand entered a plateau period, small household appliances, like large household appliances, rely heavily on marketing efforts for sales breakthroughs. For example, the two listed range hood companies, Robam and Martian, had sales expenses of 1.271 billion yuan and 237.7 million yuan in the first half of the year, up 42% and 55% from the same period last year.

Therefore, if FOTILE wants to break through the fierce competition in the small home appliance market, it will have to invest a lot of marketing expenses. For FOTILE, which is determined to reach 100 billion yuan as soon as possible, the small home appliance market seems to be a difficult path to take.

Looking around with a sword in hand, everything has returned to the starting point. The hood and stove are the old business. Perhaps this is why there is a refrigeration hood set priced at 30,000 yuan - FOTILE's second-generation integrated cooking center. From this perspective, FOTILE's launch of such a product is not so much about creating a new revenue growth point as it is about diversification hitting a snag and returning to the original starting point.

How to achieve the sales target of 100 billion yuan? Can Fangtai meet the overwhelming pressure by selling its products at super high prices? Perhaps, facing this question, Fangtai itself is very nervous. After all, this product is indeed not popular on major platforms.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.