Lead: The worst situation in the air-conditioning industry is that even in the high season, even if there is a high-temperature climate market, it is still sluggish. Now it is. However, this situation is not accidental.

'This weather has been high for many days, but the air conditioner is still not selling well, the pressure is very high,' the manager of an air-conditioning brand in East China told the author. In early July, the author was visiting some air-conditioning factories. At that time, the CEOs responsible for the operation of the domestic market are feeling that the market sales in June and July this year are not comparable to the same period of last year. At this time, Aiken Power Grid also carried out some agents and dealers. Interviews, when talking about the current air-conditioning market, they almost all expressed the same view: Although the temperature is coming up, the retail of air-conditioning is still bleak.

It is the collective mentality of air-conditioning manufacturers. The obvious seasonal market demand difference makes the peak season of each year become the most important place for manufacturers. In the past two years, the domestic market appeared during the peak season. Historic blowout market, and since June this year, the entire air-conditioning market has not reached the company's expectations, and far from each other. The worst condition of the air-conditioning industry is that even in the high season, even the high-temperature climate market is still weak. This is the case now. However, this situation is not accidental.

Demand resources are greatly digested in advance

As we all know, the data of 2017 cold year has reached a record high in both shipments and retail volume. In 2016, the domestic air-conditioning market also showed a year-on-year high growth rate. Growth, household air-conditioning products, including engineering machines, have achieved at least 130 million sets of upper wall. If mobile air conditioners, duct machines and multi-line products are included, the domestic market has more diversified demand resources in the past two years.

In the environment where the real estate market is strictly regulated, with the passage of time, the average household ownership of the domestic air-conditioning market will only be higher and higher. In contrast, the new demand is in the opposite direction, and the space in the blank market is getting smaller and smaller. In fact, not only household air-conditioning products, the performance of household central air-conditioning in 2018 was also unsatisfactory, and the sales data of a large number of manufacturers showed a huge year-on-year decline.

After entering the 2018 cold year, various air-conditioning companies have not relaxed their investment in the terminal level, especially under the pressure of high inventory. The factory has been spared no effort to adjust the inventory to the appropriate level through terminal orientation. .

From the trend of the online platform in the past six months, it also plays a role in the early digestion of demand resources. This kind of effect can be seen in the sales of large numbers of enterprises in the '6.18' activity. In May, the domestic market also had a large-scale retail climax, which also reflected the release of demand resources at that time.

Structural opportunities become the norm in the market

During the peak season, the blowout market has high requirements for the production of air-conditioning manufacturers, and the reserve market has relatively high requirements. Therefore, many years ago, the entire industry is advocating reasonable consumption, and it is expected that the sales ratio will be balanced in the off-season, and the domestic market will be before 2016. This trend has been shown. However, the air-conditioning industry has a rule that is not worthy of admiration: However, when the market environment is poor, the distribution of sales in the off-season season is more average.

However, under the overall weakening of the domestic air-conditioning market, there are also a large number of structural opportunities. A very simple example is that the South China market has performed better in the past few months than in the same period last year, many in the Guangdong region. The leading small and medium-sized brands have excellent market performance. The North China region also experienced a short-term sales boom in May, while the key region of the domestic market, the East China market, has not experienced high growth in 2018, inter-regional structure. The difference is very obvious.

The product structure has a trend of polarization. The three-level energy-efficient fixed-speed products and energy-efficient frequency conversion products occupy the two ends of retail consumption. The differentiation of dumbbell-type demand reflects the brand's promotion of various products to a certain extent. A large number of small and medium-sized brands have adopted the three-level energy efficiency fixed speed machine as the main sales model, and many mainstream brands are promoting the market penetration of energy-efficient products.

The structural change of commercial terminals is not something that has happened in recent years. The online platform has become the mainstream commercial terminal of the air-conditioning industry through the rapid development of the past few years. The sluggish trend of the domestic market in 2018 seems to be for e-commerce sales. There is no substantial impact, and each company still maintains its growth momentum in e-commerce sales. However, it is difficult for offline terminals to form a synchronized rhythm with the online market. Most of the past ten months have been concentrated in the offline market.

What needs to be guarded is that the release rate of online terminals has been significantly slowed down compared with the past. The decline in growth rate also reflects the coming of the business model bottleneck. The current product pattern of the domestic air-conditioning market, price changes, brands The formation of the pattern, etc., is also the demonstration of the high-speed development of the e-commerce platform.

Ecological environment maintenance has become the responsibility of industrial development

In the past two years when the market demand is abundant, the main contradiction in the domestic air-conditioning market is that the release of production capacity cannot keep up with the emergence of demand. With the reversal of the relationship between supply and demand in the market, the main contradiction in the domestic market has become the inventory control and demand scale. As the overall market in the peak season did not show a large enough growth rate, the large-scale press in the channel in the early stage of the factory became a huge inventory, and the digestive rhythm of the inventory will also affect the evolution of the ecological environment in the later stage of the air-conditioning industry. trend.

The reason why the air-conditioning industry can enter a large amount of social capital and has hundreds of brands, in addition to the considerable demand space, the good industrial ecological environment is also the core element, especially the high-price strategy of leading brands. Ecological maintenance plays a key role.

It is worth mentioning that although some small and medium-sized brands have carried out price increases at the end of May due to the pressure of raw material costs, leading and mainstream brands have not directly adjusted the price system. The pressure of exceeding the demand will catalyze the various companies have to take More effective, even radical competition. Moreover, the lack of market demand resources will not weaken the performance appraisal of the factory at the marketing level, which may have a negative impact on the maintenance of the existing ecological environment.

Similar to refrigerators, washing machines and other products, the demand for the latter part of the air-conditioning market will also focus on the upgrading of products. In fact, this situation has already appeared before 2016, but the explosive growth of market demand in the past two years has distorted. The rhythm of supply and demand resources, a typical phenomenon is the collective leap forward in the air-conditioning industry last year. It seems that the surplus of production capacity and idle assets may become a common phenomenon in the future.

Rationally face the demand pattern led by product upgrading, effectively control the pace of product shipments to ease channel pressure, rationally adjust the price range, and maintain the interest structure of all links in the industry chain, which will make the ecological environment of the air-conditioning industry The vendors in it have a better future.