With the ever-increasing pace of life and the increasing pressure of life economy, the desire to have a good quality of sleep has become an unattainable dream for the new generation of young people.

When sleep problems become a disease of the times, a new generation of young consumers will eventually be willing to pay for sleep. As a result, all kinds of sleep businesses are booming, whether it is the sleep home industry, the sleep health industry or the sleep service industry, it is foreseeable. The sleep economy has quietly risen.

As a member of the sleep economy, the mattress is also one of the important tools closely related to our sleep. With the development of the Internet and the advent of the era of smart homes throughout the house, mattresses are gradually moving from traditional to smart.

However, under the condition of generally low user awareness, despite the many opportunities, the challenges presented by the entire industry are also manifold. Can brands open up a mature commercialization path and open up consumers' minds?

Is smart mattress an IQ tax or a real demand?

Regarding "how to sleep more comfortably", humans have already begun to study the matter from a long time ago. In ancient Egypt around 4000 BC, humans learned to make beds with wood and at the same time lay thick beds on the bed. Mattress. Before 2000, people began to fill luxury bedding with hay, feathers, wool, etc. In the 16th and 17th centuries, people filled straw and fluff in a grid woven with rope and covered it with fabric. In the late 18th century, cast iron beds and cotton mattresses appeared one after another. By the early 1980s, spring mattresses began to take the world by storm.

This is not only the pursuit of human sleep quality, but also a long history of mattress development.

However, in the Chinese market, people are relatively late in understanding the concept of mattresses. In the 1860s, most Chinese families were more accustomed to sleeping on hard beds such as Tukang, wooden bed, and trampoline. With Simmons' "spring mattress" C-position debuted all over the world, my country ushered in the more revolutionary "spring mattress" era in sleep history.

Nowadays, after just 30 years of development, mattresses have become an indispensable household item in people's lives. And our country has also become a major producer of mattresses and a larger consumer market in the world.

With the continuous improvement of people’s living standards, the concept of healthy sleep has also been paid more More people will choose to upgrade ordinary mattresses to smart mattresses, but in terms of the current development of smart mattresses, is it a real demand for consumers or an IQ tax? And where is the smart mattress?

First of all, mattresses are a real demand for consumers. Whether it’s traditional mattresses or smart mattresses, as brands have a better understanding of user needs, the current mattresses have indeed been able to help sleep to some extent. Function.

The bigger difference between smart mattresses and traditional mattresses is that smart mattresses can be analyzed by recognizing human sleeping posture and other human body data, and automatically calculate the pressure distribution and height that are most suitable for users to sleep. By changing the height of the bed And softness, to provide users with better sleep quality.

In terms of demand, relevant data show that the average sleep duration of Chinese people in 2020 is only 6.69 hours, and 19.4% of people often suffer from insomnia. The proportion of people who sleep deeply is less than 24.9%, and the average length of deep sleep is only 1.79 hours. Among them, 58.5% of Chinese believe that they sleep lightly. A survey conducted by the Chinese Sleep Research Association five years ago showed that more than 300 million Chinese people have sleep disorders.

According to the "Analysis Report of China's Mattress Industry Market Outlook and Investment Strategic Planning" released by the Qianzhan Industry Research Institute, the market size of my country's mattress industry in 2019 is nearly 65.2 billion yuan. Regarding the new features of future mattress products, a survey conducted by the Prospective Industry Research Institute in 2020 shows that 38.3% of consumers hope that there will be mattresses that automatically adjust the support and have a better sleeping posture in the future; 27.2% of consumers hope that the mattress will be able to Automatically monitor the sleep cycle.

From the above data, the smart mattress market is promising. The empowerment of mattresses by technology has undoubtedly increased the selling points of mattresses. With the attraction of the blue ocean market, whether it is traditional mattress manufacturers, such as Xilinmen, or Internet companies, such as Xiaomi, or the crossover Gree, etc. They have launched their own smart mattresses to occupy a place in the mattress market.

According to data from the professional version of Tianyancha, there are nearly 2,500 sleep-related companies in my country whose names or business scopes include "sleep aid, insomnia, and sleep", and their corporate status is active, surviving, moving in, or moving out. From the perspective of industry distribution, 64% of sleep-related companies are located in wholesale and retail industries. In addition, 15% of sleep-related companies are located in scientific research and technical service industries.

So the question is, to what extent has the smart mattress as the protagonist of today developed?

In the early stage, smart mattresses lacked technological content and remained at the stage of sleep function, far from meeting the needs of modern young people for smart, convenient and healthy sleep.

Nowadays, with the continuous improvement of the level of science and technology, the level of artificial intelligence is getting higher and higher. In the wave of technological progress, more and more mattress manufacturers have begun to exert their imagination and empower the mattress with technology. Provide users with a more comfortable sleeping environment and intelligent services.

According to market observations, in the low-end market, smart mattresses are still in the early stages, but the price is relatively cheap; in the high-end market, the functions of smart mattresses are mostly reflected in two aspects of sleep monitoring and smart adjustment. Comparatively speaking, it is very, but its price is also quite high.

However, as more and more players enter this track, the chaos in the industry has become more serious. Let alone the issue of product homogeneity, because smart mattresses are an Internet product and are still in the early stages, homogeneity is inevitable.

In our country, after more than 30 years of rushing, the mattress market is still in an extensive development stage. The industry concentration is low, and there are many, small, scattered, and chaotic problems. Today, the same is true for smart mattresses.

In the final analysis, smart mattresses only add certain functions to the mattress. To some extent, some simple technologies are very easy to replicate. This is also the result of the rapid development of smart mattresses. More and more unscrupulous manufacturers are starting to not care about quality problems for the sake of their interests. They sell "non-smart" products under the slogan of intelligence. When there are problems with the products, the manufacturers also shirk their excuses for various reasons, and the after-sales service is extremely imperfect.

For smart mattresses, the formulation of industry standards is imminent, and the manufacturers of those big brands must also take the lead and lead the industry to develop in a healthy and sustainable way.

How do domestic brands break the circle?

The development of smart mattresses is very similar to that of traditional mattresses. To a large extent, they are dominated by foreign brands. This is also the shortcoming of most domestic enterprises. In terms of high-end brands, there is still a big gap between Chinese companies and international brands. The domestic high-end market is still occupied by international brands such as Simmons, Sealy, and Serta. The fierce competition in the middle and low-end markets directly leads to the emergence of my country’s mattress industry. The characteristics of "big industry, small company" means that in recent years, domestic brands have gradually been recognized by consumers under the wave of the new country.

There are about a thousand domestic mattress companies, but there are only more than 20 professional mattress manufacturers with an annual production capacity of more than 200,000. The four leading mattress brands Mousse, Suibao, Xilinmen, and Arran have a total market share. The rate is less than 8%.

Under the dual drive of smart home and sleep economy, smart mattresses have become a trend. How can brands expand their market share and maintain growth?

In April of this year, Sleep Number, a listed smart mattress company in the United States, released its quarterly financial report. The data showed that net sales reached US$568 million, an increase of 20% year-on-year. Gross profit this quarter also reached a record-breaking US$305 million, an increase of 16% over last year. The company's operating profit reached 76 million US dollars, an increase of 45% year-on-year, an increase of 220 basis points from last year, and the net profit reached 67 million US dollars.

The success of Sleep Number can be said to be the dawn of domestic smart sleep companies. This is also due to the mature acceptance of smart mattresses by American consumers.

In the Chinese market, because the entire industry is still in its immature stage, not to mention the minds of consumers, it is still in its infancy.

So the next question that brands face is how to open the minds of consumers, or how to make consumers more accept this product.

Products are a better "language" for brands to communicate with consumers, and good products require continuous investment in technology research and development. As mentioned earlier, most of the functions of smart mattresses are reflected in sleep monitoring and smart adjustment, but is this enough for users? The answer is not enough. And it was very embarrassing. The reason why Sleep Number is so popular is that its products are very in line with the needs of users, not only can test related indexes but also provide sleep solutions.

However, most domestic products only stay in the monitoring stage, and cannot provide users with a simple solution. This is the lack of technology research and development behind the brand. According to the data in 2018, foreign mattress brands such as Sealy, Jin Keer, and Temper have 6 R&D institutions, 5 and 1 R&D institute respectively. However, Chinese brands like Xilinmen, Arran, Mousse, and Mengbaihe in addition to Xilinmen has two R&D institutions, and the other three have only one R&D institution. In addition, many companies still start as OEMs and lack a certain awareness of product innovation. This is a potential crisis for the development of the company.

And service as the link between brands and consumers to establish long-term relationships is also a top priority. As a high-tech product, smart mattresses are different from traditional mattresses in that their systems and procedures are relatively complex, and require extremely high professional and timeliness after-sales. Once there is a problem, it needs to be repaired by professionals. At present, the development speed of smart mattress after-sales service is far behind the fast-running smart mattress industry.

Chinese brands have gone through a stage from price competition, to quality competition, and then to service competition. Now it has entered a higher-level brand culture competition. And companies should continue to enrich their brand culture with products and services, in order to establish a longer connection with consumers and create a better life for consumers.