What is the reason for the five consecutive years of declining sales of air purifiers, and even the historic low market size?

What is the reason for the five consecutive years of declining sales of air purifiers, and even the historic low market size?

Compared with previous years, air purifiers are becoming less hot. Retail sales of air purifiers in the first half of 2022 were 2.13 billion yuan, up 24 percent year on year, and retail sales were 1.29 million units, down 29 percent year on year, according to data from Owei Cloud.

In fact, sales of air purifiers have been falling off a cliff since 2018. After two consecutive years of decline in 2019 and 2020, the industry predicts that the air purifier industry will hit bottom by the end of 2021 and is expected to see a rebound in 2022. Now it seems difficult to achieve the forecast, the outbreak of the epidemic in the first half of this year affected economic growth, household income, adding to the already declining state of the air cleaning industry. From the current situation, the air purifier market size has been at a historic low.

Effective measures for haze control:
The reason why the air purifier industry is cold is directly related to the fading of the haze economy, with the prominent effect of haze control. Air purifier has become a non-essential product in most people's eyes, the demand turns weak, the market sales will decline.

We should know that in 2013, when the severe haze weather appeared, the air purifier almost overnight became a well-known star explosive product, and also became an almost necessary "standard" product for many families. Data show that from 2015 to 2017, the air purifier market ushered in a continuous and substantial growth, and the annual growth rate of related enterprises' new registrations was as high as 96%.

Since 2017, with the government's anti-haze plan, the haze situation has improved and the number of blue skies has continued to increase, while the air clean market has entered the cold winter. According to ecological environment to release the ecological environmental quality situation shows that in 2020, the national ecological environmental quality continues to improve, more than 337 local and national city at 87.0% average fine days, rose 5.0%, more than 337 local and national city at 87.0% average fine days, rose 5.0%.

"Frequent smog is the main reason I bought an air purifier. Now that there are more blue skies, there is no need to buy one." Such voices represent the attitude of most consumers, whether they buy empty net products or not is directly linked to the haze. It can be seen that for most consumers, the main purpose of buying air purifiers is still because of smog.

"Fresh air" has gradually replaced air purifiers into the mainstream of the market:
In recent years, the new concept of "new wind" has been exposed frequently and the heat has been rising. Different from the familiar air purifier, the fresh air system is an air circulation treatment system composed of air changers, pipes, etc. In short, the fresh air system is in the case of no Windows, fresh air in, dirty air out, so that the room to maintain fresh air.

Fresh air conditioning is a category that has developed rapidly in recent years. Fresh air conditioning can almost cover the air purifier in function, so there is a substitution effect between the two. However, for air cleaning, it will be at an obvious disadvantage in the competition with fresh air conditioning. After all, air conditioning is a necessary household appliance, while the use of air purifiers is relatively limited and will occupy the physical space of the family.

Not only are fresh air conditioners gaining momentum, fresh air systems are also gaining popularity in the high-end market. According to the big data of Owei Cloud Network real Estate, in 2020, the sales scale of fresh air system is expected to reach 2.02 million units, up 38% year on year, and the sales volume is nearly 20 billion yuan, up 36% year on year.

With the popularization in recent years, the fresh air system has been known to more and more consumers, many new buildings can also be pre-installed fresh air system, and the fresh air as a big selling point, for paying attention to indoor air health or some families with children, the fresh air system is more attractive.
It is true that the air net market is shrinking, so the air net industry, which seems to be a backwater, has no future turnaround and no potential to be tapped?

In fact, under the gradual failure of the "smog removal" economy, the air cleaning industry has begun to seek the next marketing growth point "aldehyde removal economy", and purifying indoor air has become the new direction of air purifier. Search for air purifiers on e-commerce platforms, and it can be found that the mainstream air cleaning products on the market all take "formaldehyde removal and odor removal" as their main functional selling points. Through high-efficiency filters, filter elements, activated carbon and other substances, the adsorption, decomposition and purification of indoor formaldehyde are strengthened to achieve the use effect of removing indoor formaldehyde.

And for the diversification of indoor use scenarios, air cleaning products are also enriched. Such as cars, toilets, shoe cabinets, refrigerators and other closed small space, with odor removal, sterilization and other functions of customized products are constantly being developed.

In addition, affected by the impact of the epidemic and the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, the public's requirements for breathing environment are constantly increasing, and the demand for air purifiers is also changing. More and more consumers are paying attention to health threatening factors such as PM2.5, soot, formaldehyde and even bacteria and viruses. It can be said that the epidemic has accelerated the consumption upgrade of health home appliances, including air purifiers. For air purifier enterprises, how to find new opportunities to seize opportunities during the epidemic and alleviate the cold winter of the industry has become a problem that many brands should think about and solve.

In short, how to effectively purify indoor air and meet the health needs of users has become a "new proposition" for the next development of the air cleaning.