(Yicai Global) Jan. 13 -- Chinese home appliance giants Haier Group and Midea Group are moving into other sectors to find new revenue streams as China’s white goods market has yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels.

Haier and Media will explore new business channels this year, the two industry leaders said in their recent annual conferences. Qingdao, eastern Shandong province-based Haier has already branched into smart homes and the industrial internet while Midea has moved into business-to-business technologies, construction, robots and digital innovation.

China’s home appliance market has not recovered to the level it was three years ago, according to a research report by data provider AVC. Sales slumped 7.2 percent from January to November last year from the same period the previous year to CNY654.3 billion (USD97.1 billion).

Other household device makers are adopting a variety of strategies to boost sales, including upgrading their products, targeting smaller cities, improving supply chain efficiency and putting more emphasis on the customer-to-manufacturer business model, which connects factories with end-users to produce tailored products at a cheaper price, Yicai Global has learned.

The TV industry is undergoing a technological upgrade and screens are getting larger, Chu Jifa, director of the e-commerce marketing department at TV maker TCL Technology Group, told Yicai Global.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, consumers are paying more attention to changing their cleaning appliances regularly to maintain good hygiene, said Wu Zhiqiang, director of cleaning device giant Ecovacs Robotics’ e-commerce business.

And sales in smaller third- and fourth-tier towns is expected to surge as white goods makers target rural areas. Huizhou, southern Guangdong province-based TCL’s sales on e-commerce site JD.com to smaller towns are growing fast, Chu said.

Home appliance firms are also putting more emphasis on the Consumer-to-Manufacturer business pattern. Beijing-based JD.com makes tens of thousands of C2M products a year on average, a company insider said.

High-end products continue to do well, according to the AVC report. The sales growth of expensive household devices outstripped that of the whole market from January to November last year. And that of robot vacuum cleaners jumped 49.7 percent.

The price of raw materials should come down this year now that China has relaxed its pandemic prevention measures, easing pressure on firms and the home appliance market is expected to improve this year, analysts said.

Editors: Shi Yi, Kim Taylor