Farewell to the era of high growth, where is the kitchen appliance industry heading?

What can be confirmed is that the high growth era of China's kitchen appliance industry, which has lasted for nearly 20 years, will come to an end, and the industry will return to the normal channel of sustainable development. However, whether this means that the kitchen appliance industry will "turn from rising to falling" starting from the second half of 2017 needs to be confirmed again after observing the performance of leading companies and the market.

The kitchen appliance industry is in crisis, and the rise has stopped and the market has adjusted back, which may become a big news in the Chinese home appliance industry in the future. In fact, since the country took decisive action to strengthen the regulation of the real estate market last year, and after a 10-12 month lag buffer period, the external market environment in the second quarter of this year has begun to have a lasting and far-reaching impact on the development of the kitchen appliance industry, and will drag down the market performance in the second half of the year and the next two years.

In the past nearly 20 years, the kitchen appliance industry has been the only one in the Chinese home appliance market to grow rapidly, mainly due to the rigid market demand under the huge demographic dividend. First, it was driven by the kitchen upgrades of urban families, and then by the kitchen upgrades of rural families. It can be said that the rapid development of real estate over the past 20 years and the rapid improvement of family housing conditions have become the biggest driving force for the "volume growth and profit growth" of the kitchen appliance industry. This is a fact that no kitchen appliance company can deny.

Of course, unlike the traditional large and small home appliances, kitchen appliance companies have also taken a new path driven by products and demand in the past 20 years, getting rid of the low-price chaos and seeking a new path of high-value development. First, they used the unique smoking and fire cooking of Chinese families to set a "product threshold" that foreign kitchen appliance companies could hardly break through, so that local companies could have the right to define and commercial space for independent innovation and development in products.

Subsequently, based on this industry threshold, Chinese kitchen appliance companies were able to better innovate product functions and technologies around user needs, forming a new pattern of "high-end leadership" unique to the Chinese home appliance industry. Therefore, all Chinese and foreign kitchen appliance companies cannot deny the role and contribution of Fotile and Robam in the industry.

Over the past 20 years, relying solely on the three major product lines of "range hoods, gas stoves, and disinfection cabinets", China's kitchen appliance industry has produced a large number of well-known companies, including Robam, Fotile, Sacon, Vatti, Vanward, and Macro. At the same time, it has also attracted the participation and competition of foreign brands such as Siemens and Electrolux. More importantly, Chinese companies have been the leaders in the kitchen appliance industry from the beginning, while foreign brands have completely become supporting roles in the localization process. This is also a major feature of China's kitchen appliance industry.

In the first half of this year, the growth rate of the operating performance of kitchen appliance listed companies such as Robam Electric and Vanward Electric slowed down, especially in the second quarter of this year compared with the same period last year. Researchers from relevant institutions in the capital market can be said to be "the first to know when the river water warms in spring", and they sensitively judged that the high-growth era of the kitchen appliance industry will face a new turning point. In other words, the external era background that supported the rapid growth of the kitchen appliance industry in the past 20 years no longer exists, and at the same time, the market popularity of the traditional "smoke, stove and exhaust" three-piece set is also encountering a periodic growth bottleneck.

Under such circumstances, the overall high growth of the kitchen appliance industry is difficult to maintain and continue, as it encounters obstacles both internally and externally. Of course, the counter-trend growth of some kitchen appliance companies will continue to appear, and the industry will not fall immediately, but will return to the normal state of development, with the growth rate slowing down rather than disappearing. This should be the basic direction and fact that can be confirmed.

Also, as early as a few years ago, kitchen appliance companies began to explore business growth drivers beyond "range hoods, stoves and exhaust systems", including the use of embedded and integrated kitchen appliances to drive the rapid expansion of the market size of new product categories such as microwave ovens, steam ovens and dishwashers, as well as the upgrading of consumer demand, by combining real consumer upgrades with product technology upgrades to leverage industry upgrades.

Of course, transformation and upgrading takes time. After the accumulation of various factors, the kitchen appliance industry must realize that the only irresistible force is that the external market demand is weakening, while the internal market demand and user habits are also differentiating. The external environment of the kitchen appliance market has changed, and the internal consumer demand has changed even more. Therefore, kitchen appliance companies must also go through a 3-5 year period of major adjustments, changes, and turmoil to truly cope with changes from the market and users.

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.