White goods market differentiation

White home appliances refer to electrical products that can replace people's housework, mainly including washing machines, some kitchen appliances, and improving the living environment to improve the material quality of life (such as air conditioners, refrigerators, etc.).

As the barometer of the real economy trend, the performance of the white goods sector in mid-April has already reflected the evolutionary trend of the future competition pattern of domestic white goods enterprises. This performance is directly reflected in the share price of many listed companies. There have been huge fluctuations in time.

In fact, the trend of the domestic white goods market in the past three months this year is similar to that of the capital market. Although it has shown signs of recoverable growth on the basis of 2012, not every company in the process of recovery is The product categories are all growing at the same pace. The different circulation modes of different regional markets in the same industry show different trajectories. Scattered, chaotic, and mixed movements have become the main tone of the current domestic market.

Factory and channel shipments deviate

“It is estimated that the air-conditioner industry's simultaneous growth in shipments in the air-conditioning industry will be more than 10% from January to March this year,” Yang Jie, an online person in charge of the industry, revealed during the communication with the reporter. “From our purchase of data on the upstream components of the entire plant It can be seen that the output of the factory this year is still very high, much better than this time last year."

However, this increase in data is not fully reflected in the channel. Shijiazhuang Tianwang Air-Conditioning Co., Ltd. is responsible for the People's Daily. When he was interviewed by reporters, he said: “Now the channels are under pressure, and at the end of last year, the pressure was too low, and the terminal digested again. Slowly, many merchants' warehouses are exploding, and the entire air-conditioning channel in Hebei is like this." Not only Hebei, the reporter has expressed similar viewpoints in the communication process among some large agents in Jiangxi, Fujian and Zhejiang. The high inventory rate is very slow. The factory's pressure on the channels is not reduced. “We are pessimistic about this year's air-conditioning market and are striving for stability in the first half of the year and we must keep profits,” Wenpeng added.

Channels and factories have apparently deviated from the trend in sales. The US-based air-conditioning and relevant responsible person said in an interview: “By the transformation and adjustment of the past year, Midea’s air-conditioning will enter a new and rapid growth this year. In the development stage, the reporter learned from several regional sales companies in the United States that the growth of channel shipments from January to March this year was very significant. Yang Jie of Industry Online also mentioned: "This year's US air-conditioning production and sales growth performance is very prominent." Gree air-conditioning insiders also revealed: "Despite market pressure, but our shipments in the first quarter of this year is still growing."

According to industry analysts, the current performance of the channel and the good trend of factory shipments are not in conflict. Before the peak season, the factory will definitely exert great pressure on the channels. “Let channels fill water” is the traditional game rules of the air-conditioning market. If channel inventory is not saturated, it will lose market share and growth when demand peaks in the peak season. Therefore, the impact of inventories during the peak season of this year will not only be the overall sales scale for the 2013 freeze year, but will also affect the shipping performance of the factory in the off-season next year. In 2012, there has been a substantial decline, so the peak season in 2013. Performance is even more critical.

Ice wash grows better than air conditioners

Wang Jianguo, general manager of Midea Refrigeration Division, said in an interview with the media that refrigerators in the United States will show recoverable growth this year. According to the announcement of Midea’s overall listing, Midea’s refrigerator business revenue in 2013 will increase by 34% year-on-year.

Not only did Midea's refrigerators show such a good trend of development, but Shen Guohui, general manager of Galanz's ice wash sales, told reporters: “From January to March this year, our ice wash at Galanz increased by more than 1000% compared to the same period last year,” which is admittedly the same as last year's Glanz ice wash. The sales volume is relatively low, but it has to be admitted that the ice-washing market, which took the lead in adjusting the air-conditioning market in 2011, showed a more encouraging recovery in 2013. Not long ago, Zhang Rongzhong, general manager of Hefei Rongshida Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd., marketing company, said in an interview: “Our company’s sales in 2012 grew by more than 10%. This year, with the return of Rongshida brand, the refrigerator and washing machine products The scale of sales will climb to a new level."

Shijiazhuang Tianwang Air-Conditioning Co., Ltd. Wenpu also told reporters: "We have a better sales growth of refrigerator products this year. The growth of refrigerators can make up for the air-conditioning product shipments, which in turn will enable us to stabilize our overall scale this year." Due to the large scale of the air-conditioning market itself, the concentration of brand patterns is very high, which intensifies market competition to a certain extent. Therefore, in the process of recovery of the entire market, each brand and its agents do not show the same trend. . According to industry online data, sales in the domestic home air conditioner industry in the first two months of 2013 only increased by 3.84% compared with the same period of last year, and the growth rate was about 5 percentage points lower than the fourth quarter of last year.

It is worth mentioning that the brands that have entered the white goods market or are engaged in large-scale development in the past two years have performed better in the past three months in 2013. For example, the above-mentioned Galanz ice wash has precedence. Branch air-conditioning, Wing a washing machine, Zhejiang Jiyou Electric and so on. The rapid recovery of the ice-washed domestic market has also attracted more resources to enter the entire industry. On April 18, TCL Icewash laid the foundation for the Hefei Industrial Park. This is also the scale of the TCL appliance industry cluster will be further increased in the later period.

Many white goods have maintained a very optimistic judgment on the domestic market around 2015. Wang Jianguo said in an interview with the media that in the next 2 to 3 years, the United States must lay a good foundation for its products. With the advancement of urbanization, China's refrigerator industry will usher in a new peak in 2015. The sales target of Hefei Rongshida Sanyo in 2015 will reach 20 billion yuan. Panasonic air-conditioning also announced its mid-term plan at the end of March. In 2015, it will achieve sales of 2 million units in the Chinese market.

Diversification of regional market trends

After the market's own role and the strict regulation of real estate, the performance of the domestic primary and secondary markets in 2012 was not satisfactory. The weakness shown in these markets led directly to the lack of growth in white goods in 2012. However, after entering 2013, the recovery of the primary and secondary markets was very rapid. Galanz Shen Guohui told reporters: “I feel that the primary and secondary markets have grown rapidly this year, and the explosiveness of the county-level market is particularly evident. The four-tier market is also the township market Hysteresis." At the same time, he also provided a set of data: Wuhan Industry and Trade to the end of March sales of refrigerators and washing machines increased by 37% year-on-year.

It is precisely because of the bottleneck of the growth in the size of the township and township market that many of the agents with these regions as the main players are not optimistic about the shipment situation. In March this year, the reporter also met a small agent from Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province. He represented some second- and third-tier brands. The main players were the 34th-level market. At that time, he said that the market performance in 2013 was higher than the same period of last year. difference.

The end of the home appliances to the countryside policy has had a significant impact on the sales of the township market. Within a few years before, all white household appliances companies rely on home appliances to the countryside to develop and tap the township market. There are fewer and fewer demand points for blank space. Moreover, the penetration rate of the township market as a whole has reached a historically high level. These markets have not yet entered the peak period of product upgrading, which in turn makes the township market appear to be more comparable to the county level and the primary and secondary markets in 2013. Weak.

The rapid recovery of the primary and secondary markets did not weaken the competition among brands. The reporter learned that in order to increase the scale of channel pressure on goods and to prepare for the upcoming peak season, a large number of brands have snatched channel resources through aggressive price behaviors. , For example, in many areas there have been 2P cold and warm cash machine 3,000 yuan under the delivery price, 1.5P air-conditioning products are 2,000 yuan in price, 26 hot and cold hook the price is less than 1,600 yuan. In fact, starting from the end of last year, the shipping prices of leading brands in the air-conditioning industry have already dropped to a certain extent, which also brought changes to the price trend of the domestic market during the peak season this year.

Judging from the overall trend of the domestic home appliance industry, both the black and white home appliance products performed well in the first three months of 2013. The Chinese home appliance industry is also expected to reverse the unfavorable pattern of 2012 in 2013. In a growth channel, only the home appliance industry under the new era will not replicate the high-speed wide-growth mode of growth in 2010 and 2011. Stable changes on the basis of higher levels can already provide home appliance companies in which it is located. Provide enough room for development.