In the last two weeks of July 2018, almost the same as in the past three years, the heat wave once again swept the land, and many high-temperature warnings were issued throughout the country. However, the same is true for dealers who were still out of stock last year. In the storeroom, the backlog of air conditioners can’t be sold out.
In the past three consecutive summers, the 'high temperature out of stock' has pushed the production and sales scale of China's air-conditioning industry to a peak again and again, and pushed the confidence of the industry to a bursting position. At this time last year, there was an executive of an air-conditioning company. In the next two or three years, the domestic air-conditioning market will only exceed 100 million domestic retail sales.
The reality after the end of the 2018 freeze year is full of contradictions in this optimistic expectation – on the one hand, the production and sales of the air-conditioning industry in the 2018 cold year has reached a new high; on the other hand, the channel inventory has once again exceeded 45 million units, and the retail market environment is becoming bad. stand up.
When high temperature has been unable to boost the air conditioning retail market, China's home air conditioning industry has once again reached an important turning point.
2018 cold years continue to be crazy after the worry
After the high temperature in the last month of the 2017 cold year, the history of the household air-conditioning industry has rarely seen the two consecutive seasons of out of stock, which also created conditions for the further development of various air-conditioning companies in the 2018 cold year. The attitude is very simple: low inventory, prosperous sales. This simple logic and the hot sales situation in the air-conditioning market for three consecutive years not only made many mainstream air-conditioning companies determined to expand production capacity and produce at full capacity, but also made a small number of unheard of small and medium-sized enterprises. Brands flooded into the market.
At this time a year ago, China's household air-conditioning industry was booming. However, the reporter of "Electrical Appliances" made an analysis and judgment in the early 2018 and the middle of the year, and believed that the pressure on the air-conditioning retail market is gradually increasing. On the one hand, Although the stock was out of stock again in the cold year of 2017, the overall level of inventory was not as low as 20 million units. On the other hand, the real estate market was frozen by the policy in the second half of 2017, and it once supported the rapid development of air-conditioning retail sales in the last cold year. The market pull will no longer exist.
However, after 2018, the high-volume production of the entire air-conditioning industry continues, until the retail pressure is too great in July.
In this situation, the production and sales scale of China's household air conditioners has reached a new peak for the third consecutive year. According to industry online shipment data, in the 2018 cold year, the total sales volume of domestic household air conditioners reached 152 million units, an increase of 13.51%. Among them, the internal sales reached 97.51 million units, an increase of 18.8%; the export volume reached 55.15 million units, an increase of 5.3%.
In the domestic retail sector, according to Zhongyikang statistics, in the 2018 cold year, the retail sales of household air conditioners reached 60.26 million units, an increase of 9.7% year-on-year; the retail sales reached 211.56 billion yuan, an increase of 12.8%.
In addition, according to the "Electrical Appliances" reporters understand that, affected by the frozen real estate market, the development of the household air-conditioning engineering machine market in 2018 is affected by the resistance, the overall scale is about 15 million units.
According to the sales scale of the retail side and the data of the shipping end, combined with the interview research of several mainstream companies, the "Electric Appliance" reporter believes that in the 2018 cold year, there are still more than 20 million inventories, after the end of the 2018 cold year. The domestic market air-conditioning channel inventory once again stood at a high of 45 million units.
Also on the historical peak, there is the scale of production capacity of household air conditioners. According to the rough statistics of the "Electrical Appliances" reporter, in the cold year of 2018, mainstream air-conditioning enterprises have all expanded their domestic production capacity, Gree's production capacity has reached 55 million units, and the United States has reached 44 million units. Increased to 22 million units, Oaks increased to 18 million units, TCL increased to 13 million units, Changhong increased to 8 million units, plus Hisense, Chigo, Galanz, and the new Meibo, Yunmi, which did not significantly expand production. With many emerging brands, the total capacity of China's household air conditioners has reached nearly 220 million units, and the growth rate of production capacity is close to 20%.
At the same time that a number of production and sales data are on the peak of history, the deterioration of the air-conditioning market environment has gradually emerged. With the disappearance of the first- and second-tier urban real estate market, the national debt level has increased and the demand for air-conditioning demand has increased over the past three years. Overdraft, the retail market for household air conditioners has shown a downward trend in growth since 2018.
Aowei Cloud Network (AVC) pushed the total data to show that from January to July 2018, the overall retail sales of household air conditioners was 141.8 billion yuan, up 7.5% year-on-year; retail volume was 41.39 million sets, up 4.0% year-on-year – retail The growth rate of scale has been extremely obvious compared with the first half of the 2018 cold year.
According to the information provided by the National Information Center, after 2018, under the influence of the decline of the real estate market and the high level of air-conditioning possession, the sales volume of East China and North China was lower than expected, while the market of Grade 3 and 4 became the retail growth of air-conditioning. The main driving force. In addition, it is worth mentioning that the multi-party data shows that the online sales of the air-conditioning industry in the 2018 cold year accounted for more than 30%, the online channel in this year and the offline traditional agent channel, KA chain channel officially Formed a three-legged situation.
Market competition
In fact, the 2018 cold year has faced a relatively complicated market situation from the beginning. Whether the market demand is overdrawn or not, whether the real estate market will have a negative impact will not stop. But this has not stopped the air-conditioning mainstream enterprises from increasing their efforts. The strategic deployment of shipments. The domestic air-conditioning market has also seen a rare market competition situation. In the case that the market concentration is already very high and the brand pattern is supposed to be very stable, the first, second and third-line brands are all overweight, and many new brands are rushing. Enter the market.
A year later, the end result is still rather surprising. According to multi-party statistics, the domestic air-conditioning in the retail market, the share of the top five brands ranked the total share of more than 90% over the previous year cold time and enhance end About 8 percentage points.
This means that, when a second and third tier brands and new entrants to the entire force, a large part of the brand did not achieve the expected results, the air-conditioning market brand pattern, before the actual arrival of the next wave of pressure, has rendered differentiation state .
Continuation of the trend of the previous year, the Oaks is still the best performance of all brands that one. At the end of 2017 quickly get rid of the new plant is put into production, after the Oaks capacity constraints, an occasion to further speed the development of the electricity supplier channels, and pioneered the The traditional offline dealership model has been transferred to the factory's direct supply of 'network batch conference', which has achieved excellent results. The online and offline market has achieved a total sales volume of more than 14 million units in the 2018 cold year, with a year-on-year growth rate of over 40%. And this growth situation still has a continuing momentum.
After further optimizing the optimization of 'people's single-in-one' and the air-conditioning market rules, Haier fully utilized the co-creation sharing platform Haier COSMOPlat in the cold year of 2018 to introduce a mass customization model, focusing on achieving 'zero distance from users'. Mass customization model, subverting the traditional supply chain model. Haier's series of 'self-cleaning' products, additional purification technology to solve consumer pain points, fresh air technology, and promote shared air conditioning, not only achieved more than 30% sales in the 2018 cold year The increase, and the successful improvement of product structure, achieved an average price increase of nearly 10%.
Midea's air conditioners have been quite active in the 2018 cold year. After the successful implementation of the 'T+3' model of Little Swan, Yin Bi, who is the general manager of the US air-conditioning business unit, shoulders the promotion of 'T+3' in the air-conditioning business unit. An important mission including transformation. Promoting 'T+3' and reducing channel inventory levels have achieved stage results in the 2018 cold year. Deliberately reducing agents and optimizing channel structure will continue in the 2019 cold year, but the resistance is relatively Larger.
Gree is on the road that hits 200 billion yuan in annual revenue. Home air conditioners are still the top priority of the main business. Gree has not stopped the rhythm of high production throughout the year, and this rhythm has continued. More than two years. Therefore, Gree still maintains the industry average in terms of shipments. In the past three or four years, Gree's channel inventory has been repeatedly suppressed again and again, again and again at the critical moment, but in the 2018 cold year The terminal market in the peak season is not satisfactory, Gree's channel inventory is once again super high. Faced with the emergence of new models such as the real rise of e-commerce channels and the 'network approval', the traditional Gree channel model is facing severe challenges.
The Gree family is in the air-conditioning industry. Chen Shaolin, the person in charge of TCL air-conditioning, clearly stated that after rushing to the total sales volume of 10 million units, TCL air-conditioning should achieve 'quality growth', power e-commerce, preferential line At the same time, the implementation of technology research and development as a premium strategy. Although the growth rate of TCL air conditioners seems to have slowed down in this year, but TCL is very clear, after the scale, the product strength and brand power is improved Guarantee of market position.
The above five brands are the top five brands that have collectively expanded their market share. In fact, this brand pattern was unexpected in the industry two years ago. In this pattern, although Gree and Midea’s market position has not been affected The challenge, but Oaks has followed, TCL has broken out from the top three brands. The leap forward of Oaks and TCL means that brands such as Hisense, Chigo, Galanz, Skyworth are not stopping. More importantly, in As the market continues to move towards a good period, the result of the market share will be an unprecedented competitive pressure in the period of tight market conditions. Those emerging brands that have entered the air-conditioning industry in the cold year of 2018, except In addition to the fact that a few of Yunmi and others have achieved their desired goals, most of them have not faced unexpectedly huge pressures to survive.
Going by the water, not going backwards, becoming a satirical industry phenomenon outside the outstanding brands of the 2018 cold air conditioning market.
The days of sailing against the water, maybe soon.
Unprecedented challenges facing the 2019 cold year
The 2019 cold year has already started more than a month. From the situation of the reporters at the dealer level, the opening situation of this year has been extremely severe. In the last three months of the last cold year, the situation of the domestic air-conditioner retail market has been Sharp down.
Zhongyikang data shows that from May to July 2018, the monthly sales of air conditioners increased by 25.5%, 18.2% and -29.2% respectively. The history of air-conditioner retailing has rarely seen a 'bridging' decline.
Some industry insiders believe that the retail cliff-type decline in air-conditioning in July was related to the high-temperature out-of-stock situation in the previous year. However, many respondents and dealers said that there was still a large area of hot weather in July this year. The situation is very different.
In fact, the situation in the 2019 cold year in front of the air-conditioning industry has been very clear - the inventory is super high, but the market demand is overdrawn; the production capacity is high, but the housing market has limited power; the gambling will still be, but the macroeconomic situation is not good. .
Although the statistics of multiple data are different, it is consistent that the industry in the air-conditioning industry is facing a high inventory of 2019 in the cold years. Some institutions even estimate that the channel inventory is approaching 50 million units. Even this year, even the peak retail sales are only More than 60 million units, the pressure of the industry can be imagined. It is understood that from July 2018, in addition to Gree, most air-conditioning companies have significantly reduced the scheduling efforts, the previous three consecutive high-production status finally stopped Stepped down.
Most of the companies surveyed said that after the previous three years of big sales, most of the demand in China's air-conditioning market was overdrawn, and the air-conditioning possession of urban residents has been greatly improved. In the first- and second-tier cities, the main demand growth of household air conditioners comes from 'Old-for-new', this is an important reason why the high temperature reappeared this year and did not drive the surge in retail sales.
The market environment also seems to be developing in an unfavorable direction. From the perspective of consumption power, the income growth of Chinese residents has slowed down noticeably, and the debt level of residents has risen rapidly. The main direction of consumption is concentrated in tourism, leisure, etc. The willingness and ability of durable consumer spending are declining.
From the real estate market with direct driving power to air conditioners, from January to June 2018, the sales area of commercial housing was 77.143 million square meters, up only 3.3% year-on-year. The sales area of commercial housing in the eastern part of the air-conditioning market fell 5.4% year-on-year. Even though the housing market in the Midwest has warmed up, the driving force for the air-conditioning market in the short term is still very limited.
Therefore, from the perspective of sales environment, the contradiction between supply and demand in the air-conditioning market in 2019 is extremely serious. It is not known how much pressure the entire market can carry. Under this situation, air-conditioning enterprises have deepened the market space of three to six levels and expanded the central and western regions. Regional markets are almost an inevitable choice.
It is worth mentioning that after the end of the 2018 cold year, the air-conditioning industry not only left high inventory, but also achieved further upgrading of the product structure. In the offline market, the sales volume of inverter air conditioners in the first half of 2018 has exceeded 70%. The sales volume of energy efficiency level 1 products is also close to 50%. On the online market, the upward adjustment of product structure has also led to an increase in the average price of air conditioners.
Most of the companies surveyed clearly stated that although the shipment situation in the past three years is very good, the work of upgrading the product structure and expanding the proportion of sales of medium and high-end products has never been interrupted. On the one hand, it is to cope with the pace of upgrading the Chinese consumer market, on the other hand, Increase innovation and increase the performance of research and development.
An executive of an air-conditioning company bluntly said: 'In the end, we will vigorously transform and innovate and accumulate product strength, so that we can remain invincible when the market is in adversity.'
The 2019 cold year in which the market situation has turned down has already begun. Is there a space for the small brands that have just entered this year? Will the mainstream brand pattern showing differentiation be adjusted again? Will the traditional air-conditioning channel model be subverted? Will the price war start again? Will the air-conditioning sales scale decline seriously?
The winter to test the true strength of air-conditioning companies has arrived.