Source: CHEAA-run China Appliance magazine

The rising concepts of high-efficient cleaning, quality life and healthy home lead to a sales bonanza for home vacuum cleaning appliances particularly electric floor washers.

Market performance

The fast-growing electric floor washer market has been a strong driver of China’s vacuum cleaning market in recent years. Following the fast growth in 2021, it kept a strong momentum of growth in the first half of 2022 despite the 7% sales value growth of the overall vacuum cleaning appliances amid the flareups of covid-19 which dented consumers’ confidence in consumption and led to a plunge in home appliance market in general.

In the first half of 2022, the retail sales value of electric floor washers stood at 4.2 billion Yuan, up 84% YoY, and sales volume 1.37 million units, up 87% YoY, according to All View Cloud. The large market potential and strong growing momentum attracted a large influx of industry players including professional vacuum cleaning appliance makers such as Tineco and Bissel, traditional home appliance makers such as Haier and Midea and emerging brands such as Dreame.

Monitoring data from All View Cloud show that, the number of electric floor washer brands soared in only a year and a half from January 2021 to June 2022, surpassing 100 in June. It is learned that the market is highly concentrated with top 3 brands accounting for a combined share of 86.2%.

Technical pain points

China’s growing home cleaning market, coupled with consumers’ rising demands, fueled the development of new products and niche markets. The hardwood floor and tile floor of Chinese households cannot be well cleaned without mopping. Currently, products on the market include vacuum cleaners, vacuum cleaning robots, steam mops and electric floor washers. The home vacuum cleaning appliance category is growing fast.

Some technical pain points surface as the industry grows including battery life, noise, the cleaning of dead corners, weight and tank capacity. Plus, product homogenization, over hype and the lack of industry standards are also issues to be addressed.

To advance the industry development, CHEAA released its standards T/CHEAA 0018-2021 Household and similar use electric floor washer on Oct 20, 2021. The standard fills the void of the industry and provides a guidance for enterprises to optimize products which allows for better consumer experience and contribute to the market expansion of the category. Plus, it helps in market regulation and is expected to drive the industry to grow in a healthy way in the long term.

Distribution channels

The emerging marketing channels also play a big part in the rise of electric floor washers. On Douyin (the Chinese version of Tiktok), the GMV of home appliances rose 312% YoY in the past year with consumers of home appliances on the platform up 473% YoY. As an emerging category, consumers know little about the product. In this context, new distribution channels such as short video and live streaming provide a strong boost in the expansion of electric floor washers.

Monitoring data from All View Cloud show that the combined retail sales value and volume on traditional e-commerce platforms came to 1.1 billion Yuan and 360,000 units respectively in Q1 2022. The sales on Douyin was 27% that on the traditional e-commerce platforms in Q1. But the home appliance brands on Douyin was only half of that on traditional e-commerce platforms, which indicates large potential to be tapped. As to brand landscape, home appliance brand landscape on Douyin was not steady, which provides an opportunity for industry players to outflank the existing market leaders.

With good performance made in H1, the market prospect of electric floor washers is believed to be promising in the second half of the year with new brands involved, new functions developed, and new products rolled out though the market competition is fierce. All View Cloud predicts that the electric floor washer market will reach 10.5 billion Yuan as of 2022, up 81% YoY.