Since 2018, the vacuum cleaner industry has flourished. That XX factory sells hundreds of thousands of units a year (single product sales of over 100 million yuan) is not something new. Sales of 50,000 to 60,000 units are a common thing.
“Mr. Wang, how are the sales of your cellphones?” “Just so so. the Koreans buy them all. I heard Mr. Li sold hundreds of thousands of units.” “I had someone develop a V10 modeling and the Koreans hurry to partner with me.” “Koreans complained that cross-border e-commerce runners robbed them of their business and wanted to exclusively sell my products. I am still considering it.”
Such dialogues are heard often in 2018. In 2019, people show more confidence in the cordless vacuum cleaner industry, striving for a place in the cordless segment.
However, dangers lurk behind this, which may destroy the cordless vacuum cleaner industry.
First, let’s look at a Google Trends search curve that has risen sharply since July 2015, and then abruptly fell in January 2016. What has happened during this period?
People from Shenzhen may know this is “hover board”, a piece of fun that went popular overseas as Justin Bieber and other celebrities posted in the foreign social network in 2015. For a time, it was too popular to be available.
The explosive sales drove part of small enterprises without quality control to enter the “hover board” market. In order to reduce costs, they applied inferior batteries, which led to safety accidents. This is the reason for the abrupt fall of sales.
I once wrote an article about 18650 batteries. The biggest risk of lithium batteries is the explosion. The use of inferior batteries resulted in major accidents and exhausted consumers’ trust. Amazon took down “hover board” products, and the US government also issued a ban on “hover board”. A promising industry rose to its peak in just a few months and then fell to the very bottom.
There are several reasons for the “hover board” related fire:
- The battery cell is not closed. Some makers use recycled batteries or even cement batteries.
- Defects in the design of the circuit board, no circuit protection of qualified design (overcharge, over discharge), risks on charging resulting from circuit board problem.
- There is no mandatory standard for the “hover board” making, which leads to innate safety problems in design.
- Many small workshops entered the industry and launched a large number of shoddy products.
As can be seen from the above, this product became popular overnight thanks to the social network, and then went down because of the product itself.
At present, cordless vacuum cleaner industry is growing, and quite a few rookie makers are marching into this field.
- These new arrivals fail to realize the hidden risk of lithium battery products, which will result in insufficient awareness of the safety and the subsequent problems in product design.
- Other companies have begun to use recycled batteries in order to grab orders at low prices.
- Since the cordless vacuum cleaner with lithium battery is in infancy, most SMEs do not have a dedicated electronic engineer. Most of the battery pack BMS (battery management system) relies on third-party solution companies, and they have no way to verify the solution. Once the BMS itself has problems, these companies cannot understand and solve them.
- As the cordless vacuum cleaner business grows, many small and medium-sized package factories have emerged. Many just simply assemble and have no ability of the quality control. Therefore, the battery pack problem can’t be solved from the source.
Despite the bad things, I personally feel optimistic about the cordless vacuum cleaner industry. I wish no maker use inferior battery to win an order. Previously, problems of vacuums come with a high return rate and compensation for customers. Now in case a cordless vacuum cleaner explodes, the entire vacuum cleaner industry will suffer a death strike.
Everyone walks and cherishes, in 2019, seizes the opportunity of the industry outbreak.
