According to the total online promotion data of AVC, in Q1 2023, the retail sales of humidifiers reached 273 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of -34.1%, with a retail volume of 1.205 million units, a year-on-year decrease of -49.1%. With the sharp decrease in demand and a significant contraction in industry scale, a large number of brands with poor risk resistance have exited. However, at the same time, there are also opportunities for new brands to see segmented tracks and join.
Structural upgrading is expected to drive the humidifier industry out of the haze
Looking ahead, we can almost predict the rise of a category similar to floor washers. From the perspective of retail sales alone, it is expected to exceed 50% in Q4 2023, and the annual proportion is expected to exceed 50% in the next three years. Through quality upgrades, the market size of humidifiers is expected to break through the bottleneck and expand again, with pure products occupying the dominant position this time.
Structural upgrading is expected to drive the humidifier industry out of the haze
Looking ahead, we can almost predict the rise of a category similar to floor washers. From the perspective of retail sales alone, it is expected to exceed 50% in Q4 2023, and the annual proportion is expected to exceed 50% in the next three years. Through quality upgrades, the market size of humidifiers is expected to break through the bottleneck and expand again, with pure products occupying the dominant position this time.
The advantages of new channels have emerged, benefiting differentiated new products and emerging brands
In addition to traditional e-commerce platforms, we have also observed the strong rise of Tiktok. By horizontal comparison, we can find that not only the proportion of Tiktok of humidifiers is increasing rapidly, but the proportion of Tiktok of floor washers has even exceeded that of traditional e-commerce platforms. With the rapid influx of low-end products and the tilt of resources of head brands, the proportion of Tiktok of some categories is growing rapidly, and it will also bring the mentality of buying things in Tiktok to the public consumers. At the same time, the online channel monitoring data of AVC shows that the price band of Tiktok channel is gradually approaching the conventional channel, and the proportion of middle and high-end channels is even higher than that of the conventional channels. With the rapid popularization of this emerging form of purchase, new products with high face value, easy display, black technology, and high cost performance ratio will also emerge.
New entrants take a different approach and attempt to tap into the potential of ultrasonic products again
From the product perspective, we can see that in the past 23 years, new brands have mostly started with ultrasonic humidifiers, hoping to gain a share in this still the largest market share. However, based on last year's market situation, the market share of mid to high-end ultrasound products is relatively low due to the compression of pure products at the same price range. This is due to various problems caused by different humidification methods, making it difficult for high-end products to compete with pure products at the same price range. This has led to a clear price gap between ultrasound products and pure products. However, some brands are attempting to rediscover the potential of high-end ultrasound products, I want to take a share in this wave of quality improvement. However, the low-end market has entered the Red Sea, and big brands have made their prices very low by virtue of their excellent supply chain capabilities. It is difficult for new brands to obtain enough Lebensraum, and they can only find another way. At present, the direction we observe is mainly low-end products with fashionable appearance.
Pure price differentiation, price threshold emerging
With the continuous development of the market, there are gradually differences in functions across different price ranges, and intelligence has become a standard feature. Functions such as automatic air drying, "wind", and "water" filtration have also begun to appear to solve user pain points. As these functions and the price of pure humidifiers themselves decrease, consumers can already purchase pure products with better functions at relatively low prices. The online monitoring data of Ovi Cloud (AVC) shows that the 300+, 800+, 2000+segments have significantly increased year on year, the price threshold has begun to appear, and the concentration ratio of some segments has rapidly increased.