The air purifier market will face unprecedented challenges in 2018

Air control efforts in China is kept continuous increase, which resulted in that the air quality of many cities has been initially improved. While the "clean air tide" which has last for several years, accompanied by haze, has suffered a cliff-like decline.

According to AVC data, the market size of air purifiers in 2017 was 16.2 billion RMB, an year-on-year growth of 20%. Although the annual growth is still considerable, but from the rhythm of sales of air purifiers in the whole year of 2017, the market has shown a clear trend of being high in the former but low in the latter, the growth of the whole year mainly relied on the sudden increment at the beginning of the year, and the growth rate in the latter half year had declined continuously. Even the heating period, which should have been the peak season for air purifier sales, appeared to be "not peak season".

According to the data of Beijing market provided by AVC, the sales of air purifiers in Beijing fell 57.6% in the 4th quarter of 2017 compared with the same period last year, which was the biggest drop in China. In the 1st quarter of 2017, the sales of air purifiers in Beijing increased by 116.6%. Meanwhile, AVC's data for the 1-4 weeks of 2018 also showed that the retail sales of air purifiers were 292,000 units, dropping 58.3% year-on-year.

So many industry insiders said that the air purifier tuyere had become the past.

Then the question arises. After the haze economy, where should the air purifier go in our country?

In fact, this wave of haze economy of air purifiers did not fail completely. On the one hand, Chinese consumers have begun to realize the importance of clean air for health, especially for the elderly, children and air-sensitive people. On the other hand, the enthusiasm of air purifier manufacturers has been fully mobilized. According to Zhongyikang monitoring data, 395 brands were involved in the online market in the first 20 weeks of 2018, which was basically the same as that of last year’s same period. It can be seen that although the performance of the air purifiers market at this stage did not reached the expectations of manufacturers, brand manufacturers still maintained a high enthusiasm for the market and a relatively stable rhythm in the delivery of products.

It can be said that nowadays the air purifier industry is not facing life or death, but has arrived at the fork road, and the direction of transformation needs to be determined.

Previously, Frank Hammes, an expert, said: "We should realize that when people are indoors, the air quality problem is not just PM2.5. Many substances can cause serious indoor air quality problems, such as formaldehyde, benzene series, TVOC, ammonia, radon released from decoration materials and furniture, which can lead to allergies, asthma and even cancer.

The Research Report of China Business Industry Research Institute also showed that the popularization rate of air purifiers in China is only 1%. Compared with 17% in Japan, 27% in the United States, 40% in Europe and 70% in South Korea, the difference is still far. Referring to the relevant data of developed countries with better air quality, we will find that the popularity of air purifier sales is not directly related to "haze", which is only an "extra" opportunity for China's air purifier industry.

In the future, the development of China's air purifier industry is still promising. It is not so much the tuyere of air purifier has passed, as the dividend of haze economy has passed. What follows will be the trend of the fair starting line and industry transformation.

Segmenting professional products maybe become the mainstream trend in the future.

Nowadays, our country's air purifier enterprises need to get rid of the dependence of products on haze. For complex indoor air purifiers, subdividing the product professionally may become an obvious feature in the development of the air purifier market in the future.

According to the monitoring data of Zhongyikang from 1 to 20 weeks in 2018, the subdivision of air purifiers and products for removing gaseous pollutants gradually showed strong development potential. Among them, products with formaldehyde removal function contributed to rapid growth in the market. Retail sales accounted for 70% of the market in the first 20 weeks of 2018, 3% higher than that in the same period of last year. The retail sales of aldehyde removal products were obviously better than that of non-aldehyde removal products.

Of course, it is not only formaldehyde removal, but also the targeted subdivision of air Evolver products will play their role in their respective fields. The development of air purifiers in China will also get rid of the single abnormal situation and gradually become more mature.

In 2018, the air purifier market is facing unprecedented challenges, but it is also the process of good money expelling bad money. There are sales effects brought by environmental improvement before, and quality requirements driven by consumption upgrading. So only the clean manufacturers persisting will succeed.