The weather is still not hot, terminal retail is still sluggish, but the requirements for shipping have not been reduced. The cost in all aspects is still high. From manufacturing to shipment, from the channel to the terminal, every aspect of the air-conditioning industry is under heavy load. The pressure, experienced two consecutive years of explosive growth in the air-conditioning market seems to be entering a self-renewal stage.

All the pressures are concentrated on one aspect, that is, the channel inventory that is still growing. Two months ago, the inventory was already over 40 million units, and there is reason to believe that this figure may exceed 50 million units. All stocks before the real peak season are only temporary phenomena. However, considering the overall situation of the domestic market in the immediate future, if huge stocks are not effectively digested in the short term, then the crisis of the industry will blow.

Industry may be radically competitive

The aggressive competition represented by price warfare has not appeared in the air-conditioning market for many years. On the one hand, the leading brands represented by Gree, Midea, and Haier are positioned with appropriate prices, and the industrial eco-environment is well maintained. This also leaves a wealth of market opportunities for the follow-up brand; On the other hand, the domestic and international air-conditioning market has been relatively well-developed in the past few years, and the relationship between supply and demand has not been tense until we must use radical competition to obtain market space.

It is worth mentioning that due to capital market factors, leading brands have basically abandoned the cost-competitive competition method of price wars in the past decade. Moreover, due to the rapid development of e-commerce platforms, they are currently occupying a dominant position in the commercial circulation field. , Made a very good price benchmarking.

With the constant inventories of the domestic air-conditioning market and historically high levels of supply and demand, and the intensification of contradiction between supply and demand, the measures that can enable companies to activate the market have been very limited. At the same time, the e-commerce platform has developed to a certain extent, and its business model dividend has been obtained. With full release, the growth rate in the later period can hardly replicate the speed of previous years. In the general environment where the real estate market is also becoming stable, the engineering machine market and new-generation demand space have been significantly reduced.

Therefore, around some models and products, in the regional market, the price war broke out in some areas is not an alarmist. High inventory has caused a serious imbalance between supply and demand, a huge drop in supply and demand to promote price fall itself is the general law of the market economy. If the price war spreads in a large scale, it is feared that the superior industrial ecology will be destroyed.

Brand may exit the market in large numbers

There are not many companies in the country that have a complete technology research and development and product development platform, an independent brand promotion and marketing system, a complete channel layout and independent production capacity, and a certain production and sales scale in the market. Basically, two hands can Number of over. However, the number of brands in the domestic market is very large. It is understood that there are at least 200 domestic air-conditioning industries based solely on the number of brands.

When the industries such as refrigerators, washing machines, and TVs encountered periodical bottlenecks, the continuous growth of the air-conditioning market has attracted a large amount of resources. Some of them have entered the air-conditioning sector through the heavy asset model of self-built factories. Some brands It is a diversified expansion of the company that has already had large-scale production and sales in other household electrical appliances. However, more brands use OEM or ODM methods to create a survival and development path through their own network channels.

A large number of these brands are marketing the market by imitating the LOGO of a foreign-funded enterprise or a domestic well-known household electrical appliance company, and there is a general short-term behavior. Many of the remaining air-conditioning manufacturing companies have urgent requirements for the output of the production capacity and provide these brands with Into the air conditioning industry facilities.

This is because, despite the fact that more than 200 brands have emerged in the Chinese air-conditioning industry, a large part of these are not long-term brand planning and corporate development visions. It is not so much a short-term investment in the opportune air-conditioning market. It is a speculative act when the air-conditioning market opportunity comes.

Now, the demand resources of the air-conditioning market are very scarce, and the space for speculative profits has been narrowed, and risks and pressures have suddenly increased. Although leading and mainstream brands have not adopted more competitive price competition, the changes in product structure, especially frequency conversion, The decrease in the price of Grade 1 energy efficiency products and the increase in the proportion of e-commerce platform sales have weakened the competitiveness of a large number of small and medium-sized brands. With the pattern of insufficient opportunities for profit, the withdrawal of brands is a normal phenomenon in the development of the industry.

Circulation of channel resources is hindered by the deterioration of the industrial environment

Under normal circumstances, the finished products of air-conditioning companies will be directly exported to the commercial circulation field. Therefore, the vast majority of current record inventory is concentrated in channels. The larger the scale of product backlog, the more channel funds will be squeezed. In fact, it is not the first time that the domestic air-conditioning market has 100 billion yuan in inventory. In 2015, it had a similar situation. At that time, many dominant and mainstream brands were forced to destock, which led to air conditioning. The industry's shipments dropped sharply during the year.

If the current inventory size during the peak season this year does not appear to be sufficiently digested, then the supply of upstream components from 2019, the production and sales of complete machinery companies, and the development of commercial circulation will be directly affected by the negative impact of high stocks. The interests of the industry chain will be damaged.

More importantly, when the inventory of channels is larger, the circulation space for subsequent products will be smaller, the channel resources for returning enterprises will be scarce in the coming year, and the circulation space for new products to the market will be suppressed. Manufacturing factory or commercial circulation platform, the new year's market operation will carry a heavy burden.

The current domestic air-conditioning market needs a certain amount of time for self-adjustment, which requires companies to have good patience and sufficient resources to absorb stocks. Under such circumstances, the company's comprehensive competitiveness can be increasingly reflected. The production and sales model of large-scale distribution of goods and goods will inevitably bring about the consequences of high inventory. In this regard, enterprises are not without expectations. However, the game of industrial competition will impede the advancement of all enterprises involuntarily. High inventory is only temporary, air-conditioning The demand for products is still huge.