More than 300 million Chinese are struggling with sleeping problems by the end of 2020. The majority (52.5%) of whom are post-90s and 95s, who either have to stay up late for work or who are distracted by a buzzing mobile phone.
Knowing the potential harm of not having a good sleep, these sleepless, yet, health-conscious young Chinese are also actively looking for remedies, bringing the so-called “sleep economy”.
According to a recent China Sleep Index Report, 62% of consumers who bought sleep aid products in 2019 were post-90s. Items from eye masks, earplugs, and footpads are among the most popular with these generations, as figure seen in CBNData report.
Currently, more people seem to believe a comfy mattress would be the fundamental solution, pushing up demands for products of this kind. Several mattress brands had made inroads into the top 10 best sales of Tmall’s Household Furniture category at this year’s Double 11 shopping festival, showing a powerful consumption of these items.
While the domestic mattress market has not yet turned into a competitive battlefield, with the top five national brands accounting for a market concentration ratio of no more than 20%. International high-end bedding manufacturers are showing their determination to help young Chinese to combat their sleepless nights and covet this lucrative sleep economy whilst it is in a boom.
Namely, Hästens, an ultra-luxury brand of mattresses that is hand-crafted in Sweden, landed on the Chinese e-commerce platform Tmall last December, launching its first official global online flagship store.
Meanwhile, it has stepped up efforts on offline stores, redesigning its store this April at Beijing Shin Kong Place (SKP), the world’s most profitable shopping mall. Soon after that, the brand also made its debut on fourth China’s International Import Expo this November. This expansion shows clear growth within this industry in China, with national and international brands looking to seize this opportunity.
Also ramping up in business, the British luxury mattress manufacturer Vispring and the American brand Kingsdown have pushed further into China. Both have been scaling up installations of physical stores in China’s first and second-tier cities in recent years. The series of actions, taken by the global brands, have shown their great desire to leverage the emerging “sleep economy”, which is expected to surpass 400 billion RMB ($62.6 billion) by the end of this year.
As the young generations are getting less sleep, it can be expected that demands for sleep products wound continue growing in popularity and so is interest in high-quality mattresses. The untapped market would give players more space than those mature ones to develop their own strategies, and to catch the attention of those restless young consumers. It remains to be seen who will ultimately cater to consumer demands, but this fertile industry will richly reward the company that can best find a solution and market it accordingly.
Read more:
