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家居“内卷”价格战：谁是赢家？

福禄装修家居
2025-08-19 15:25

Home Improvement Industry Analysis Amidst Real Estate Downturn Home Improvement Industry Analysis Amidst Real Estate Downturn

Real estate market downturn has dragged the home improvement industry into a quagmire, with老板失联, bankruptcy, and store closures becoming commonplace, affecting even well-known companies. According to Unibreak Terminal data, the number of home improvement companies filing for bankruptcy in 2024 and the first half of 2025 were 440 and 132 respectively, averaging about one bankruptcy every 1.36 days.

The industry's winter is far from over, and the "involution" wave has caused widespread unease. Many home improvement companies are going to extreme lengths to retain customers, sacrificing profit margins and engaging in fierce price wars.

Even head brands with significant scale advantages cannot consolidate their positions or achieve growth through the burn money model. The market has proven that price competition is not a long-term solution and is detrimental to the healthy development of the industry.

The wave of bankruptcies has forced us to re-examine our market strategies. With the essential nature of demand unchanged, why has the home improvement industry reached this point?

What Are the Causes?

Looking outward, it is undeniable that the weakening of the real estate industry is the main reason for the turmoil in the home improvement industry. The slowdown in new home sales and the decline in second-hand home transactions have led to a decrease in the volume of homes, making "renovation and partial transformation" the mainstream market, which has also shrunk in volume.

Data shows that from January to November 2024, many core indicators of the Chinese real estate market continued to decline, with the sales area of residential buildings, investment in real estate development, and new construction area all showing negative growth year-on-year.

The sales area of residential buildings decreased by 14.3% year-on-year to 8.6 billion square meters; investment in real estate development decreased by 10.4% year-on-year to 9.4 trillion yuan; and the new construction area decreased by 23.0% year-on-year to 6.7 billion square meters. These data indicate that the overall demand in the real estate market is constantly shrinking, directly affecting the development of the home improvement industry.

Traditional home improvement companies are overly dependent on the traffic dividend brought by upstream industries, and once they form an inertia development model, it is difficult for them to walk independently. Many companies did not seize the best period for transformation, refocusing their perspective on the existing market, leading to forced reform and difficult progress later on.

Who Are the Winners?

The home improvement industry has entered a so-called "shaking period," with price wars existing. However, in the context of demand疲软 and market contraction, "price competition" seems to be a short-term shortcut to stimulate sales, but in reality, it is like a钝刀子割肉, leading only to the home improvement industry from "high price and low sales" to "low price and low profit," with many companies still struggling to avoid exit and marginalization.

So, under the fierce price war, are consumers truly benefiting?

The answer is not necessarily.

According to the China Consumer Association, in terms of the amount of complaints in commodity categories, in 2024, the number of complaints about household electronic appliances was 213,779, accounting for 12.13% of the total, with a complaint ratio that increased by 0.23%, ranking first in the amount of complaints. The furniture category ranked eighth, with 33,822 complaints, an increase of 20.95% from 2023.

Despite the叠加 national subsidies, platform subsidies, and so-called merchant discounts, consumers have not received home products that are both good value and quality, let alone a good shopping experience.

For home improvement companies to survive in the long-term price war, there are only two paths: changing materials and channels in the supply chain; and closing stores and cutting after-sales in the marketing process.

With significant scale and supply chain advantages, home giants can make concessions while ensuring costs. However, for small and medium-sized enterprises, this means sacrificing certain product quality and service quality to make up for profit margins, and even giving up profits.

Under the premise of legal and compliant sourcing, the space for product cost reduction is limited. Many companies can only achieve cost reduction by giving up delivery experience. Correspondingly, the losses they may face, such as order cancellations and complaints, are even greater. In today's era of increasingly aware consumer sovereignty, such losses can be devastating to the company.

Where Is the Way Out?

Overcapacity, demand contraction, and weakening expectations... Has the home improvement industry reached a dead end? The answer is no.

In recent years, the "problem" of the home improvement industry lies in the fact that it has focused too much on growth and ignored the real needs of consumers. The entire industry has been in a state of impatience and recklessness, leading to chaos and tragic events one after another.

When in trouble, change is the way out. Currently, the "involution" in the industry has almost reached its peak, with large companies closing stores one after another, and small companies bearing the brunt. All these phenomena indicate that price competition only leads to a dead end.

The era of incremental growth has passed, but it does not mean that the essential nature of demand in the home improvement industry has changed. The renovation of second-hand houses, partial upgrades, and aging-appropriate transformations are all full of potential for growth in the existing market. The future direction of the industry's transformation must be from price competition to value competition.

While pursuing cost reduction and efficiency, home improvement companies must not only focus on short-term cost reduction but also pay attention to long-term sustainable development.

Compared to blind expansion, the more certain growth opportunity lies in concentrating resources to amplify the advantages of single products and do the service experience to the extreme. Companies must be clear: creating value for consumers is the ultimate goal, not serving dealers or relying on channel margins.

Taking the brands Linshi, Yuanshi Mu Yu, Ji Mu as examples, these leading brands have chosen the first national-scale home improvement service platform, Wan Shifu, as a strong backing, focusing on service quality, and always putting consumer experience first, ensuring that consumers across the country can achieve "what they buy is what they get" in the first time.

As the only recommended service platform by IKEA, Wan Shifu's IKEA NPS (Net Promoter Score) reached 92, far ahead of the 18.8 in the service industry. In March this year, Wan Shifu won the "Annual Best Installation Platform Partner" award from Linshi Home, becoming the only home service platform to win the award. Whether it is coverage, delivery timeliness, completion effect, or customer satisfaction, they all rank first.

Service delivery is the most intuitive and profound part of home consumption, and service quality is directly linked to brand reputation. To go far, companies cannot lose sight of the big picture.

Regardless of external changes, focusing on excellence and specializing in the long run is a common theme, regardless of the size of the company. In today's increasingly competitive market, it is advisable to keep a calm attitude,主动退出 the price war, maintain one's original intentions, return to rationality, find one's own path, and cultivate internal skills. The premise of creating value for users is to affirm one's own value.