How many steps are there in total to buy a smart toilet?
Doing research among a vast number of guides, comparing prices frantically both online and offline, placing orders and waiting anxiously for the logistics, making an appointment for a master to come and remove the old and replace it with a new one, and even encountering problems with changing the circuit and waterway - it's hard for you to give a specific figure to answer. From selection, purchase, installation to use, there are too many "pitfalls" and uncertain factors in each step, and each "pitfall" will add several more hurdles outside the original process.
Behind this is the profound transformation that the entire home furnishing industry is undergoing. As the real - estate dividend fades and the incremental market reaches its peak, the industry has entered an era of stock competition centered on intelligent replacement. Consumers are no longer satisfied with just "having", but are pursuing the "excellence" that combines price, quality, and service.
Insightful into the shift in market demand, JD.com, with its advantages in the supply chain, self - operated model, and service system, has repeatedly compressed the long chain that troubles consumers. With worry - free order placement and integrated delivery and installation, now buying a smart toilet only takes two steps from purchase to use.
"If one day you start to control the curtain switch with your voice, you may find it hard to imagine pulling the curtain by hand later," the person in charge of JD.com's home appliances, home furnishings, and building materials business told 36Kr. Not only toilets, but the stock competition is forcing all categories in the home furnishing industry to transform towards electrification and intelligence.
This is also the most significant change he captured at the 12th anniversary of JD.com's home improvement festival this year. "The sales growth rate of smart home appliances and home furnishings is very fast." "In the future, JD.com hopes to continuously optimize the cost of smart home appliances and home furnishings through its own efforts and increase the market penetration rate of these products."
How much is a smart toilet really worth?
Ten years ago, "bringing back a smart toilet lid from Japan" became a hot - topic for a while. Even though it meant traveling far abroad, facing language barriers, spending one or two thousand yuan on a single toilet lid, and having the inconvenience of carrying it, many people still enjoyed it.
People's desire for a smart life is so strong, but why is it so difficult to achieve? What exactly is the difficulty in buying a good - quality smart toilet?
"Few people can quickly tell the approximate price of a smart toilet," the person in charge of JD.com's home appliances, home furnishings, and building materials business observed during years of sales. Consumers are easily at a disadvantage in the offline home furnishing market. "Because there is a certain distance between the (building materials) industry and consumers themselves, they have no perception of the price anchors of most building materials categories. Unlike a bottle of cola, when the price rises from 3 yuan to 10 yuan, everyone can feel it."
This cognitive threshold in price has provided an opportunity for industry chaos. Currently, the mainstream supply model in China's home building materials industry is a multi - level dealer - based leased shopping mall. This means that a product has to go through a multi - level distribution system from the factory to the consumer, and there is a certain price increase at each level. A survey by a ceramic tile brand shows that on average, each product goes through more than 4 sales links before the final sale.
The person in charge of JD.com's home appliances, home furnishings, and building materials business told 36Kr that especially during the previous industry dividend period, home building materials products were generally in short supply, but there was a lack of strict supervision over product prices and quality. "Most retail staff in shopping malls don't control inventory and prices. Even many operators of commercial shopping centers and trading markets don't know exactly what the merchants in their venues are selling. They just do the business of 'dividing and renting out the venues'."
"As a result, the actual value of the products is infinitely magnified through layer - upon - layer price increases, and the supply efficiency of the entire industry is also affected. This is not a sustainable and healthy growth model at all." 36Kr noticed that a smart toilet priced at 3,000 yuan on JD.com still sells for 5,000 to 6,000 yuan in some building materials markets.
Meanwhile, some home appliance and home furnishing brands have precisely grasped consumers' preference for "smart" and packaged low - cost accessories with high - tech terms. As a result, all kinds of new products with a 30% premium or even double the price have been launched, but consumers' actual experience remains the same.
36Kr searched for relevant keywords of smart home appliances and home furnishings on the Heima Complaint Platform and found that the number of complaints reached as high as 3,000. The problems reported by consumers mainly include unqualified product quality and false advertising by merchants. At the same time, the "Research Report on China's Smart Home Industry Technology Service Providers in 2025" shows that 63% of users abandon using smart home appliances due to redundant functions.
It is also affected by these chaos that the Chinese smart home industry has seen a phenomenon of high growth and low penetration coexisting. Relevant data shows that in 2025, the scale of the Chinese smart home market has exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 18.7% in the past three years, accounting for more than 40% globally. However, the overall penetration rate of smart homes is still low. In 2023, the penetration rate of smart homes in China was only about 15%.
"In the past, many brands had limited R & D investment and low efficiency in smart products. Now, the intelligent functions of most smart products have been significantly enriched. Relying on JD.com's supply - chain advantages, it can provide consumers with better - quality products at more favorable prices. In the future, the product cost will continue to be optimized, and the market penetration rate of smart home products will surely continue to increase," said the person in charge of JD.com's home appliances, home furnishings, and building materials business.
The secret of "good and cheap"
"If traditional methods can't solve the problems in offline home furnishing business, can we break the situation with e - commerce?" Facing the chaos in the industry such as opaque prices and difficult - to - guarantee quality control, JD.com's purchasing and sales team for home appliances and home furnishings has been thinking about how to enable consumers to buy good and cheap products with peace of mind.
In May last year, JD.com officially announced its "large - single - machine" strategy for home appliances and home furnishings categories. That is, through a large - scale large - order purchasing model, it reduces the marginal costs of brand merchants in design, production, logistics, etc., and passes on all these marginal cost savings to consumers.
Among them, Hengjie, a well - known sanitary ware brand, is one of the major beneficiaries of this new model. Hengjie's ceramic toilet S3 chose an exclusive cooperation model with JD.com of supplying at the lowest price and large - order exclusive sales. Within 28 hours of its launch on the promotion day, the sales volume exceeded 2,300 units, making it the "sales champion" among ceramic toilets in the entire industry. This booming sales volume also gives both parties more motivation to strive for the annual sales target of 300,000 units.
However, although the "large - single - machine" strategy seems easy in theory, it is by no means easy to implement in practice. The person in charge of JD.com's home appliances, home furnishings, and building materials business told 36Kr that only a platform with absolute advantages in self - operated supply - chain capabilities can really do this well.
"First of all, there must be relatively mature user insights and accumulated historical sales data. Otherwise, it will be difficult to gain the trust of brand owners in its ability to sell large orders. Secondly, there should be solid supply - chain capabilities, including warehousing, logistics, and distribution. If customized and exclusively - sold products need to be frequently sourced from the factory, it will be difficult to spread out the shipping costs. A fairly large - scale retail terminal network also needs to be established to ensure that brand products can efficiently reach the market and achieve large - scale market coverage," the person in charge further explained.
He revealed to 36Kr that with the in - depth development of the industry market and a better understanding of users, JD.com's proportion of self - operated business in building materials categories has been comprehensively improved, "which is very different from the initial situation where POP business was the mainstay."
This in - depth control model centered on self - operation also enables JD.com not only to be a good "seller" but also a good "product creator". Currently, based on its precise insights into user needs, JD.com has carried out in - depth special co - construction with multiple brand owners, jointly creating a number of popular smart home appliance products that precisely match and meet consumers' potential needs. Combined with the "large - order exclusive sales" sales model, it not only greatly reduces the uncertainty in R & D and production but also brings a definite explosion in sales volume and large - scale growth for brand owners.
The Haishibao S3 eye - care desk lamp is a typical example. In response to the pain points of traditional desk lamps such as limited lighting range and uneven brightness on the desktop, JD.com suggested that Haishibao integrate the "upper and lower dual - light source" technology of vertical large - scale street lamps into the desk lamp design and launch a T - shaped smart desk lamp suitable for desks of various sizes from 0.6 to 2 meters. Relying on the cost optimization brought by JD.com's JC centralized purchasing model, this product has an obvious price advantage. Its sales volume quickly exceeded 3,000 units within 2 months after its launch, and the positive review rate was nearly 100%.
The "last mile" of smart life
Is it enough for smart home appliances and home furnishings to have better prices and quality?
The results of a consumer survey conducted by China Home Appliance Network in 2024 showed that more than 72% of consumers would give up buying a smart toilet because of the trouble of removing the old and replacing it with a new one. How to provide users with a worry - free replacement service has become the "last mile" problem for smart home appliances and home furnishings to be popularized among the general public.
Observing this pain point in smart product consumption, JD.com has launched an integrated delivery and installation service for smart homes. For categories such as smart toilets and smart locks, delivery, old - item removal, installation, and waste removal can be completed in one visit. In some areas, the efficient shopping experience of "buy today, use tomorrow" has been achieved.
"The integrated delivery and installation service is very difficult," the person in charge pointed out to 36Kr. Compared with ordinary building materials products, the installation difficulty of smart products puts forward higher requirements for the "integrated delivery and installation" service. "The complexity of construction and installation far exceeds that of other categories, and corresponding installers need to be trained. The removal of old facilities is also very complicated. Even in some replacement scenarios, we only find that water and electricity need to be modified after removing the old ones."
In JD.com's view, achieving integrated delivery and installation is a difficult but correct thing to do. Especially in the current era of stock competition in the industry, the customer experience of separate delivery and installation is far inferior to that of integrated delivery and installation. "This will be a very important barrier ability, and it will also be JD.com's advantage because we will invest a considerable amount of energy and patience in self - operation."
As early as 2023, JD.com launched the "One - Family - One" plan for building materials, aiming to achieve the visions of "every Chinese family has a smart toilet" and "every Chinese family has a smart lock" with more high - quality and cost - effective products. The data from JD.com's Building Materials Super Category Day in August this year showed that the turnover of the "One - Family - One" JC series of building materials products increased by more than 200% month - on - month.
Meanwhile, in view of the characteristic that home appliance and home furnishing products need to be experienced "first - hand", JD.com focuses on both offline and online. The person in charge of the home furnishing category at JD.com Mall told 36Kr that thanks to its powerful supply - chain capabilities, the home furnishing category at JD.com Mall has a great cost - performance advantage in offline shopping malls. "A sofa that we sell for five or six thousand yuan would cost more than 10,000 yuan in other traditional shopping malls with the same configuration. When customers come to JD.com Mall to shop, they can clearly see the price, material, function, and other information of each product by simply scanning the QR code. It's absolutely transparent."
He added that traditional offline home furnishing shopping malls usually adopt the dealer - entry model and lack product variety. However, JD.com Mall is connected with the online JD.com main website. It solves the problem of product variety with its own supply - chain capabilities and is equipped with a team of stylists to provide consumers with a better offline experience service.
It is worth noting that in order to help consumers better renovate their home lives, JD.com has held spring and autumn home improvement festivals twice a year for 12 consecutive years. The preferential activities cover all categories of products such as furniture, building materials, kitchen and bathroom, and home appliances. Many categories have launched high - quality services such as price protection and integrated delivery and installation, greatly enhancing consumers' shopping experience.
During JD.com's Autumn Home Improvement Festival in August this year, smart home appliances and home furnishings became the undisputed growth stars. According to JD.com's data, during this autumn home improvement festival, the search volume for "smart door locks" increased by more than 600% year - on - year, the search volume for "smart multifunctional beds" increased by more than 700% year - on - year, and the search volumes for "smart sweeping robots" and "smart TVs" both increased by more than 100% year - on - year.
The hot sales of JD.com's home improvement festival are essentially a win - win situation for users, brands, and the platform. For consumers, good and cheap smart home appliances and home furnishings, as well as considerate services such as integrated delivery and installation, make a high - quality smart life within reach. For brand merchants in the industry, this is not only an excellent opportunity for sales growth but also an important springboard towards high - quality development. The direct benefits brought by the explosion in sales volume can be transformed into investment in R & D of new products and optimization of services, and the resulting positive cycle is continuously promoting the sustainable development of the industry.
"In the future, we will continue to cooperate deeply with excellent brands in the industry, give full play to our supply - chain capabilities, and enable better products to reach more consumers at lower prices and higher efficiency, so as to achieve the popularization of home appliances and home furnishings," said the person in charge of JD.com's home appliances, home furnishings, and building materials business. In this long - term battle for smart home appliances and home furnishings, JD.com has redefined a good consumption experience of smart home appliances and home furnishings, making brand manufacturers feel at ease to follow and consumers dare to buy without hesitation. Perhaps this is the most stable business in the era of stock competition.