Home improvement digitization enters the deep water area, the industry needs new kinetic energy

After entering 2021, the designer group has become the new focus of the home improvement industry.

During the Tmall Home Furnishing Festival in March, Liping Designer and Tmall Home Furnishing jointly built an exclusive floor composed of 11 young and middle-aged designers who won domestic and foreign awards in the "Tmall Home Furnishing City 3D Mall";

Almost at the same time, they frequently sought cross-border Kuaishou, and launched the Kuaishou Home Improvement Festival in Foshan. They wanted to use the "Star Project" to let the designer group join the wave of live streaming;

Going back for a while, Suning is also cooperating with home improvement brands to conduct designer live broadcasts, and plans to recruit 1,000 designers and home furnishing experts through live broadcasts, tweets, goods and other platforms...

After the digital transformation of the home furnishing industry has progressed to a certain stage, all kinds of players collectively set their sights on the designer group in the industry chain, and try to tap the designer's IP value in the form of virtual model rooms, live broadcast and delivery, etc. I am afraid it is not What a coincidence.

Home industry

(Image source: Tencent Home, invaded and deleted)

01

The Fast and the Slow of Digitization

The digital transformation of the home improvement and home furnishing industry is no longer a new topic, and it is even said that it has formed a prairie prairie in the entire upstream and downstream industry chain.

For example, Ali has shown its muscles in the field of home improvement and home furnishing many times. In 2020, it has set the goal of "increasing the digitalization rate of home improvement to 20% in the next three years, and the transaction scale will reach 1 trillion yuan".

Another example is the digital transformation of offline business formats such as Red Star Macalline and Easyhome. The boundary between online and offline is gradually melting, and the integrated operation of online and offline has become a new normal.

In traditional home stores, smart terminals and SaaS services such as large screens, tablets, and small programs can be seen everywhere. The responsibility of shopping guides is no longer just to lead customers to experience offline, but also to provide customers with "light design" services. Online marketing is also advancing with the times, allowing the production of short videos to be efficiently mass-produced and streamlined. Many businesses have used 3D short videos and 3D sample rooms to create immersive scene experience combinations to replace the original 2D graphic recommendations.

Behind a series of actions, home improvement retail has taken a new path outside the traditional model:

When products, experience, stores, supply chain, contract performance and other links are digitized, it is no longer a dream for users to “go home” online. Check the digital products in the merchant's online store, and check the placement status of the products at home through AR and 3D technology;

When a user places an order for a certain product, merchants such as Easyhome can arrange delivery from the nearest store or warehouse, and can track the delivery and installation of the product in real time. Green screen technology is broadcast live in a three-dimensional virtual model room.

But these are just the "fast" side of the digitalization process in the home improvement industry. Technology has an irreversible trend in the reconstruction of the industrial chain, but technology has not changed the low-dimensional melee in the home improvement industry in a short period of time, and the long-tail market is still in an outdated traditional format.

At present, the number of domestic home improvement related companies exceeds 100,000, but the market share of the top 50 in the industry is less than 2%. Even if the digital transformation of leading companies such as Red Star Macalline, Easyhome, and IKEA is thorough, if the digitalization process stops at small companies, small workshops, and self-employed individuals, the industrial status quo with poor user experience and high transaction costs will continue for a long time. For a period of time, the transformation of the entire industry will be impossible to talk about.

The digitalization of the home improvement industry is entering the deep-water area. What is lacking is not tools and solutions, but a "prescription" to drive the transformation and upgrading of the long-tail market. If you want to reconstruct the industry ecology of home improvement, you also need to find the source of living water to accelerate the upgrading of the entire industry.

02

designer in focus

The pattern of "big industry, small business" in the home improvement industry is destined to be subverted in a short period of time, but it is not that there is no "shortcut" to speed up digitali

Electronic toilet sales are growing rapidly, China is entering the era of "smart toilet"

In 2015, the article "Go to Japan to buy a toilet seat" published by financial writer Wu Xiaobo was reposted by crazy comments on social media, which caused a sensation and set off a wave of Chinese people going to Japan to buy toilet seats.


According to what was revealed in a program on Japanese TV at the time, it is estimated that as many as 450,000 Chinese tourists spent nearly 6 billion yuan on shopping in Japan during the 10-day Spring Festival. Cover is one of the most popular household items among Chinese tourists. For a time, there was a grand occasion that "as long as there are Chinese tourists coming in groups, they will be sold out every day".

After more than a few years, similar news has long been lost. Chinese consumers can not only buy international big-name products through e-commerce platforms, but also more domestic brands for consumers to choose.

Recently, a "2021 Smart Toilet Online Consumption Trend Report" released by JD Big Data shows that the sales of smart toilets have grown rapidly. From 2017 to 2020, the sales of toilet lids have doubled, and the smart toilet integrated machine has even doubled tenfold.

The data shows that from 2017 to 2020, the sales of smart toilet lids have doubled, and the sales of smart toilet all-in-one machines have doubled by 10 times. According to data from the China Household Electrical Appliances Association, the share of smart toilets in China in 2016 was less than 1%. But in just a few years, sales have even increased tenfold.

The report pointed out that for consumers, experience comfort is the most important reason for choosing smart toilets, and 75.3% of people buy smart toilets for flushing functions and warm gaskets in winter. The data shows that 72.9% of consumers are more concerned about the heating function of smart toilets.

At the same time, 97.9% of consumers said they would recommend others to buy smart toilets, and 62.5% of consumers completed the replacement of their own toilets.

In addition, the report said that the price factor is the most critical factor for the popularity of smart toilets. In the past four years, the unit price of smart toilet lids has dropped by 35%, and the unit price of smart toilet machines has dropped by 67%.

At present, the development of my country's electric toilet industry has entered a period of rapid development, that is to say, my country has entered the stage of independent innovation from imitation and introduction of technology, and technological innovation will become the main theme of development in the future. Market competition is not just about price, scale, and quality, but product competition will play a major role, which will also announce the end of the era of relying on hype and using shoddy products as a means of competition. The competition of products will mean the competition of product design technology and manufacturing technology, and it will assess the comprehensive quality of the technological innovation ability and product manufacturing ability of the enterprise. GB/T23131-2019 "Household and Similar Use Electric Toilet Seats" The national standard just creates a platform for enterprises to demonstrate their product design and manufacturing capabilities, and fully demonstrates the comprehensive quality level of products, which creates a great opportunity for enterprise product competition. A more reasonable and fair competition platform is fairer to consumers.