The sound of raw materials "rising", the price of home appliances has risen significantly
Electronic products on sale in stores.
After the lively and leisurely Spring Festival, all walks of life have resumed work and production at full capacity, and the home appliance industry is no exception.
However, the raw material market for home appliances is as hot as the start of home appliance companies.
It is understood that since the beginning of this year, the prices of various raw materials, including copper and oil, have risen sharply. At present, most home appliance manufacturers are facing greater pressure of rising costs.
Since end consumers are more sensitive to price changes of home appliances, manufacturers are actively seeking a "balance point" between price and sales in the face of sales pressure.
In this regard, industry insiders pointed out that to solve this problem, home appliance companies need to further work hard on technological breakthroughs and product upgrades.
Text, picture/Guangzhou Daily all-media reporters Xu Xiaofang, Zhao Fangyuan, Zhang Lu
The rise in raw materials has obviously transmitted to the terminal
Since 2021, home appliance raw materials have "rised", and after the Spring Festival, the prices of many home appliance raw materials have ushered in new highs.
The data shows that the prices of a variety of important industrial raw materials, including copper and crude oil, have risen sharply. This price fluctuation will affect many industries such as plastic products, tires and household appliances.
Data shows that the prices of bulk raw materials such as copper, electrical steel, aluminum, and rare earths, which are major upstream raw materials for home appliances, have risen sharply.
After the Spring Festival, copper rose by 38%, plastics rose by 35%, aluminum rose by 37%, iron rose by 30%, glass rose by 30%, zinc alloy rose by 48%, and stainless steel rose by 45%... Related Information It shows that the cumulative increase since April 2020 has reached 30% to 60%.
Taking air conditioners as an example, the total cost of materials such as copper, aluminum, steel plate, and plastics is about 30%, and the cost pressure is obvious.
In this regard, industry insiders pointed out that the rapid increase in the prices of important raw materials in the home appliance industry will lead to a substantial increase in the cost of home appliances. Accordingly, home appliance companies must raise the prices of terminal products if they want to maintain profits.
On the issue of price adjustments, major companies have long taken corresponding measures.
Since January this year, many brands including Portal Lighting, Oaks Air Conditioning, Chigo Air Conditioning, Hisense, TCL and other brands have successively adjusted their prices.
TCL announced that it will adjust the prices of refrigerators, washing machines, and freezers from January 15th, with an expected increase of 5% to 15%; Hisense said that from January 10th, it will increase the sales prices of some products, and the adjusted products are mainly low-priced products. , The price adjustment rate is 10%.
On February 28, Midea’s Refrigerator Division issued the “Notice of Price Increase of Midea Refrigerators”, announcing that the price system for Midea’s refrigerator products would be increased by 10% to 15% starting from March 1.
From the perspective of the domestic appliance market, both online and offline prices rose in January.
According to AVC monitoring data, offline, in January this year, the average price of color TV sets was 4573 yuan, an increase of 22.3% year-on-year; the average price of air conditioners was 3937 yuan, an increase of 3.4% year-on-year; the average price of washing machines was affected by the structure of the drum. Driven by growth, a year-on-year increase of 10.9 percentage points; the overall average price of range hoods increased by 11% year-on-year.
Online, the average price of color TVs was 2,553 yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30.4%; the average price of the air-conditioning industry was 3,010 yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.1%; the average price of refrigerators maintained a double-digit growth; the average price of washing machines increased by 12.1 percentage points year-on-year, of which washer and dryer integrated The average price rose by 21.2% year-on-year, becoming the main driving force for the increase in average price.
While the average domestic sales price is rising, the average export price is also bullish.
Pei Dongmin, research director of Aoweiyun.com's White Goods Division, told reporters that since most foreign trade companies are pre-orders, from the current data, there are not many price increases for exported home appliances.
"However, according to our recent research, we found that foreign trade companies generally plan to increase prices for next orders, so our export orders are bullish." Pei Dongmin said that in the long run, the overall export price trend is going up as a whole, and it is about to enter a full-scale increase. Price stage.
Rising prices intensify sales pressure, the export market may show "volume increase but not profit increase"
In order to reduce cost pressure, some home appliance manufacturers have to choose to increase prices. However, relevant people said that home appliance companies will make some price adjustments every year based on costs and market sales. Such adjustments have risen and fallen throughout the year, and price adjustments are very important. normal.
However, end consumers are very sensitive to price changes, and if they follow the trend and increase prices, they are likely to be resisted by consumers.
In addition, there are more companies that are concerned about the market reaction after the price increase.
Statistics show that China's home appliance retail market has fallen year-on-year for two consecutive years in 2019 and 2020.
Especially for some small and medium-sized manufacturers, price increases may have a more obvious impact on sales, and their price adjustment pressures are also more prominent.
A kitchen appliance company said, “For price increases, we mainly depend on the market’s response. If large manufacturers take a step first and our small manufacturers keep up, market acceptance will be higher, but we are under greater pressure. ."
Not only is the domestic market facing pressure, there are also challenges in exporting home appliances.
On February 26, the reporter learned from the Shanghai Shipping Exchange that the latest China export container freight index showed that China’s export container freight index was 2059.52, a decrease of 0.6 from the previous period (February 19) of 2071.71. %.
Among them, the South Korean route, the Japanese route and the West U.S. route increased by 48.6%, 9.4% and 2.8% respectively.
Industry insiders told reporters that the current freight rate is still in a state of soaring, mainly due to the spread of foreign epidemics, more suspended routes, and tight containers.
Some analysts believe that the sharp increase in the price of raw materials is very detrimental to some factories and enterprises that rely solely on processing profits or sales profits.
From a nominal point of view, the sales figures are very high. In fact, most of the costs are offset by the increase in raw material prices, soaring ocean freight, falling exchange rates, and inflation. To a certain extent, this also reflects the low added value of my country’s export products and overall profit The ability to resist risks is low.
Min Fuxing, a person in the air-conditioning industry, believes that in this situation, the profits of foreign trade companies are indeed greatly affected.
"At present, many orders in the export market are pre-orders, especially many domestic brands with large export volumes, low unit prices, and relatively low export value-added, which will be greatly affected by the price increase of raw materials. "Increase profits but not increase' phenomenon." Min Fuxing said.
Analysis: Manufacturers seek a "balance point" between price and sales
Regarding whether home appliance companies will continue to pass on costs to consumers in the future, Liu Buchen, a senior observer in the home appliance industry, believes that “the price of raw materials will rise, but it does not mean that the whole machine will definitely rise.” He said that the price of the whole machine is not only affected by upstream raw materials, More need to refer to the actual pressure of market sales.
"Affected by various factors such as the epidemic situation and the real estate market, the sales of many home appliances have not recovered this year."
The cost pressure caused by rising raw material prices is not only absorbed by home appliance companies, but channels are also afraid to "make rash moves" on the issue of price adjustments.
The reporter learned that in order to cope with the impact and impact of the price increase of home appliance raw materials on consumers, major home appliance retailers are currently playing "discount cards", with "trade-in", "full reduction" and "special price snap-up" and "explosive direct purchases". Measures such as "cutting a thousand yuan" to attract customers.
When visiting the market, some merchants told reporters that the current purchase price has a clear upward trend.
"After the inventory is emptied, we may make adjustments based on the purchase price." A salesperson told reporters.
Some market views believe that under this year's market competition, the challenges and variability of operations will be further intensified for many home appliance companies and merchants.
Cost price, ex-factory price and retail price will remain the same most of the time, but for some leading companies, in order to grab more market share, they will launch some new, cost-effective brands and adopt retail prices close to them. Means of cost price promotion and market grab.