Create the "World's No.1" sales myth. Who is the king of floor washing machines?
The "longest" Black Friday in history has come to an end. It is not only a carnival for consumers but also a covert battle among brands, a place to glimpse the development trends of the industry. Although overseas is an away game, unlike the situation in previous years where businesses from various countries were competing on an equal footing, this year's Black Friday bestseller list has been "taken over" by a group of Chinese enterprises.
In the home appliance category, floor washing machines are undoubtedly a hot commodity. According to official data, during Black Friday, the sales of several floor washing machine brands have soared. The GMV of Tineco on the entire e-commerce platform exceeded 540 million yuan, with a total transaction volume of over 230,000 units. Several floor washing machine models such as Fuwan S5, Fuwan STRETCH S6, and Fuwan S7 Pro have become bestsellers, further expanding their leading advantages. The GMV of the independent station across all sites exceeded 84 million yuan, with a synchronous growth of 70%. According to the research data of Euromonitor International, calculated based on the sales volume (in 10,000 units) of each brand's household floor washing machines in the global retail channels in the second half of 2023 and the first half of 2024, Tineco's floor washing machine sales rank first globally. During this Black Friday, Tineco once again surpassed itself, achieving a 28% growth in GMV, leading the international market of floor washing machines.
It can be seen that although floor washing machines are "young" and the current market penetration rate is relatively low, only maintaining within the range of 3% - 4%, their sales volume and sales amount are showing a rapid growth trend. The data from AVC shows that in 2024, the shipment volume of floor washing machines has exceeded that of sweeping robots, reaching 2 million units, and the expected sales growth rate is around 15%.
With the improvement of living standards and the change of consumption concepts, the demand for smart cleaning appliances among overseas consumers is increasing day by day, and going global has become a must-answer question for Chinese consumer enterprises. As a technology enterprise specializing in smart home appliance solutions, Tineco is one of the active participants in the wave of globalization.
In 2020, with the explosion of popularity of its first Fuwan floor washing machine, Tineco quickly established a foothold in the overseas market. Seeing this, more domestic players have set sail for the imaginative international market. Only during the period from 2020 to 2022, the number of online floor washing machine brands worldwide has rapidly expanded from 15 to more than 200.
The market competition is also pushing manufacturers to pay more attention to technological iteration and innovation in product functions. In the following two years, Tineco has successively launched several products, and has received good feedback in both the market and user sides; the essence of a technological innovation and the explosion of a product is whether the deep-seated needs of users have been explored and met. Smart home appliances represented by floor washing machines have developed rapidly in recent years, but the overall scale still lags behind traditional white goods. Compared with the "refrigerator, washing machine, and air conditioner" that have gone from 0 to 1 and are now almost ubiquitous in every household, this gives Tineco great imagination.
In the conversation with 36Kr, Tineco CEO Leng Ling pointed out: "Cleaning is a rigid demand of people. As long as there is a home, there must be a cleaning demand, and users need a better solution. Then, new smart home appliances such as floor washing machines and sweeping robots have the opportunity to reach the same penetration rate as today's 'refrigerator, washing machine, and air conditioner', or even higher."
However, the current market is in the second half of the upward cycle. As the cleaning appliance track becomes increasingly mature, the competition has shifted from the early category dividend to the contest of technology, performance, and service. Starting from the first principle, how to achieve user growth and demand satisfaction through continuous product innovation? Tineco is walking out its own path.
01. Long-termism in Products
Returning to the product characteristics of floor washing machines. Common cleaning appliances in the market perform well in a single scenario, but their application limitations are also relatively obvious; for example, sweeping robots require a relatively flat ground, vacuum cleaners can clean carpets, but are powerless in the scenario of wet garbage; the cleaning process is also very cumbersome. In the past, when mopping the floor, the mop had to be repeatedly rinsed, the sewage had to be cleaned, the tools and processing equipment had to be taken care of to prevent odor, and the cleaning power of ordinary mops was limited, making it difficult to completely remove some stubborn stains and hygiene dead corners.
In contrast, the floor washing machine integrates the functions of a vacuum cleaner, a sweeping robot, and a mop. As a comprehensive product, it can reduce the cleaning steps of "sweeping first and then mopping", and integrate suction and mopping. While ensuring a strong cleaning force, it can also simultaneously handle dry and wet garbage and remove stains on the ground, and complete self-cleaning with one click.
It can be seen that the rapid rise of floor washing machines is essentially a full manifestation of product innovation and user demand satisfaction.
These technological and product innovations have promoted the increase in the intelligence level of floor washing machines, providing smarter and more convenient solutions to meet the cleaning needs of urban household users.
According to the data from GfK Zhongyikang, in the first half of 2024, the concentration of the top 5 brands of floor washing machines has increased to 80.8%, which means that the industry has entered a white-hot stage. Among them, product differentiation competition has become the key for enterprises to stand out.
For Tineco, product power is the basic question. This is reflected in its in-depth perception of user usage habits and the continuous iterative product detail functions.
For example, in the base station-type floor washing machine products, maintaining the base station is a major pain point that users face daily. Parts such as the sewage tank and filtration system are prone to accumulate dirt and hair, and produce odors. Some floor washing machines with upper and lower water need to manually clean the sewage tank, and the base station design has problems such as an imperfect drainage system and poor sealing.
In order to reduce the maintenance difficulty, starting from the home decoration stage, Tineco has created a 0.1㎡ aesthetic cleaning center in the new Fuwan Art Station floor washing machine, using an integrated idea to solve the floor cleaning problem. For the internal cleaning of the base station, the "Triple Cleanse" that simulates a dishwasher is introduced, and automated cleaning is carried out through three steps: pre-washing, fine washing, and self-cleaning.
Reserving a three-way pipeline and the position of the cleaning center before the decoration, the Fuwan Art Station can be directly embedded into the home decoration space. Connecting the space station to the angle valve, the floor washing machine can automatically detect the status of the clean water tank and fill it in time when it is short of water or not full. After mopping, the sewage in the floor washing machine will be automatically discharged to the residential sewage pipe or floor drain through the space station. When the sewage is emptied, the space station will conduct a deep flushing of the sewage bucket to ensure that the bucket is clean and odor-free.
Considering the space occupation problem, the aesthetic cleaning center only needs to reserve an area of 0.1 square meters to complete functions such as automatic water addition, sewage bucket flushing, charging and sterilization, providing users with a fully managed experience of "pick up and use, put down and clean", reducing the daily cleaning pressure.
Official data shows that the sales of Tineco Fuwan Artist Series floor washing machines have exceeded 100,000 units in two months after its launch. Leng Ling said, "Tineco insists on continuously upgrading the products. We believe that a good cleaning product should be able to better integrate into the users' homes. The Fuwan Art Station series has sold well in a relatively short period of time after its launch, which also confirms our strategy: Users like to buy valuable things."
There are many similar examples. For example, for the special cleaning needs of different users, Tineco has launched a multi-in-one combination product, including the Fuwan Chorus series that integrates functions such as floor washing and vacuuming, and the Fuwan Stretch Mix series with five-in-one functions. Through the subdivision and adjustment of the product matrix, it extends vertically to more usage scenarios.
It can be seen that continuous product innovation is the key to constituting Tineco's market competitiveness. And as the category dividend bottoms out, under the pressure of the global economic slowdown and inflation, Chinese enterprises including Tineco, whether they want to replicate the growth path of traditional white goods manufacturers or take a differentiated new brand route, cannot bypass a core user proposition.
02. Seeking User Value Innovation
The development of an industry is a spiral upward process. For example, in traditional white goods such as washing machines, from straight-tube washing machines, drum washing machines, to washing and drying integrated machines, product innovation has brought new market increments to the industry, solved some pain points of user needs, and optimized the product experience; or when users begin to pay attention to human-computer interaction, tools such as refrigerators, sweeping robots, and air conditioners add personalized functional services.
Leng Ling pointed out that the competition in the smart service market does not only rely on the contest between single-point technologies, but also depends on seeing the essence behind the competition for users, which is to continuously seek user value innovation.
"How to make the product more useful, more comfortable, more convenient, and more exquisite? For users, the technical parameters in the product introduction list are just a bunch of numbers. Whether one or two pain points can be truly solved is the focus of their attention. This also shows that a good product cannot be created out of thin air and imagination, but needs to be based on in-depth user insight." Leng Ling mentioned.
Specifically in the business system, Tineco explores from two major directions.
One is to expand the category, horizontally opening up multiple new category lines; in addition to the cleaning field dominated by floor washing machines, it expands into new product maps such as smart cooking and smart healthy living, enriching the landing scenarios.
For example, in the kitchen scenario, under the fast-paced life, people's cooking methods have become simplified and fast. At the same time, the problem of users eating nutritious and healthy food also needs to be solved. In this regard, Tineco starts from the cooking machine category and introduces AI into the cooking scenario.
Tineco Shiwan Smart Cooking Machine has a cooking data package and a delicious standardized cognition, equivalent to the "intelligent brain" of the food version. It can replicate the chef's recipes and perform functions such as automatic feeding, intelligent stir-frying, intelligent temperature control, and one-click self-cleaning. Recently, the Shiwan Smart Cooking Machine has carried out in-depth cooperation with Huawei Cloud. With the support of the Pangu model, the product can achieve one person with one flavor and a thousand people with a thousand flavors.
Noticing the refined needs of daily users for drinking water, Tineco has laid out the track of the integrated water purifier and heater, which can meet the users' needs for drinking water at multiple temperature segments. According to official data, the product of Tineco Yinwan Integrated Water Purifier and Heater has achieved a growth of more than 400% in the two years since its release.
The second direction is to expand the market and accelerate the expansion of global business.
Going global is not an easy task. A product going overseas involves many links and a long chain. It is even more difficult for Chinese enterprises to establish a brand influence in the extremely fierce global competition. This puts extremely high requirements on the enterprise's technical products, market judgment, and user insight.
In the early years, there was a discussion within Tineco about whether to compete on pricing or value pricing. At that time, the industry price of common wet and dry vacuum cleaners on the market was generally below 100 US dollars, and there were almost no products above 200 US dollars. However, Tineco priced its floor washing machine at nearly twice that, at 399 US dollars. This decision caused a great "discussion". Some internal employees thought that launching the first product in a new price range was "very risky". Some even suggested whether to consider a solution of sacrificing some product performance and reducing the price. However, Tineco still insisted on the user value orientation and used innovation to gain the recognition of users.
In Tineco's view, product power is the core factor that determines whether users will buy the product.
Ultimately, the facts verified Tineco's judgment. After the Tineco floor washing machine was released in the US market, it quickly attracted the recognition and purchase of a group of users, and the market share once reached 60% - 70%.
It is undeniable that in recent years, including the smart cleaning home appliance market, the market growth rate has significantly slowed down, and the changes in the marketing environment have caused many enterprises to be passively involved in price competition and product homogeneity.
"Price is the easiest to choose, but it is also the easiest to be surpassed. Rolling on price does not have a moat. User value innovation is the core competitiveness." Leng Ling said.
From the perspective of user portraits, Leng Ling believes that the current global user fundamentals are basically the same, and the consistency of people's demand for products and scenarios is as high as 90%. "When the needs of the vast majority of users are actually the same, the remaining 10% lies in detailed fine-tuning. This is also the difficulty in the second half, that is, how to do a good job in local operation and user communication and understanding."
For example, in European countries such as the UK and Germany, users prefer to lay carpets throughout the house, making stain cleaning more difficult. Using traditional carpet cleaning tools has problems such as laborious operation, poor cleaning effect, and long drying time. For this reason, Tineco has launched new products such as carpet cleaners overseas. Based on the power assist system and drying technology, during the use process, the machine can automatically predict the user's actions and provide assistance to reduce the operational burden; after cleaning, there is also a drying function that can solve the problem of the carpet being damp for a long time and enable immediate reuse; this product has also been liked by many American users.
Facing Japanese market users with limited housing area - home furnishing women who pay more attention to the portability and storability of products, Tineco has launched the FLOOR ONE S7 Combo series that is lighter and can be used with one hand.
Leng Ling believes that as a cleaning home appliance, the essence of product innovation of floor washing machines is to return to user value. "When the external environment enters the stage of rolling on price, industry, and competition, what Tineco can determine as the correct thing is: to adhere to user value innovation, continuously insight into user needs in the user scenario, and lead the industry development with technological innovation."
03. Tineco's Changes and Constants
From the perspective of the market development trajectory, the rapid development of smart cleaning home appliances originated from the wave of digital and intelligent product upgrades. Different from the logic of the "supply - demand" driven development of traditional white goods, whether an enterprise has the ability of technological research and development and continuous product innovation is closely related to how smart cleaning home appliances can maintain a steady growth after passing the market dividend period.