Leading the way overseas and breaking through the waves - the key to the global breakthrough of domestic vacuum cleaners
Compared to developed countries in Europe and America, China's clean home appliance industry started relatively late, but its development speed is astonishing and the market potential is enormous. Since joining the World Trade Organization, after more than 20 years of rapid development, China has built a large-scale vacuum cleaner industry cluster with advanced technology and complete categories. Product innovation is constantly changing, and in terms of design, performance, and functionality, it rivals or even surpasses foreign brands. Its market share and brand reputation continue to rise. According to data from the Global Trade Watch System (GTF), China's vacuum cleaner exports have consistently ranked first in the world for many years.
Scenario based customization
Accurately adapting to diverse global needs
In the context of the increasingly segmented global consumer market and the shift of user demand from "universal" to "scenario based", Chinese home appliance companies, with their keen market insight, have delved into the specific life scenarios of overseas consumers, opening up incremental space with differentiated products that are precisely adapted.
Recently, walking into the production workshop of Anhui Troll Import and Export Co., Ltd., the "beep beep" sound of the testing equipment and the "sizzle" sound of the packaging tape echoed one after another. Workers loaded one handheld wireless vacuum cleaner after another into customized packaging boxes. A batch of vacuum cleaners will be sent to the United States after passing on-site supervision by Suzhou Customs officers under the jurisdiction of Hefei Customs.
Our core logic is to 'incorporate products into daily life scenarios,' "said Chen Pu, the general manager of the company." We are not limited to the traditional thinking of 'one product dominates the world.' We have focused on deep exploration of segmented scenarios in our research and development. In the United States, where there are many carpets and large spaces, we have strengthened suction and equipped large dust cups to upgrade cleaning efficiency. For small households in Japan and South Korea, we have launched lightweight handheld models to facilitate one handed operation. Nowadays, overseas households are paying more and more attention to mite removal in bedding, and we have specially customized exclusive models with high-frequency tapping and ultraviolet sterilization. After the product was launched, customers gave feedback of 'precise adaptation+affordable price', and it soon became our star export product. That's right
With the development strategy of accurately adapting to overseas needs and breaking through through through scenarios, Suzhou home appliance companies continue to expand their overseas market and promote their products to gradually establish a foothold in the global market. In the first seven months of this year, the export of household appliances in Suzhou City was 53.36 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 54.6%, of which vacuum cleaners accounted for 19.9% of the total export value of household appliances.
To facilitate the smooth export of enterprise products, Suzhou Customs, under the jurisdiction of Hefei Customs, has established a dedicated assistance mechanism for small household appliance enterprises to accurately address their export pain points. In response to the needs of expanding into different markets, the customs always deliver the latest policies and guidelines in a timely manner. In the future, we will also develop a one click simplified version of our products for the elderly population. With the support of the customs, our new products have more confidence in going global, "said Chen Pu.
The overseas strategy of refining products in this segmented scenario is not an exception. More and more home appliance companies are shifting from "selling whatever they have" to "producing whatever the market needs". On August 10th, a batch of intelligent hand pushed wireless vacuum cleaners worth 1.35 million yuan were taken offline in the production workshop of Changzhou Xinqida Electric Appliance Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xinqida"), and were packed under the supervision of Changzhou Customs under Nanjing Customs, ready to be sent to Brazil.
In recent years, facing the vast smart home appliance market, Xinqida has innovatively upgraded its product technology and actively expanded its product application areas. Its products and services are highly favored by customers in countries and regions such as Europe, America, Brazil, and the Middle East, and have established a stable supply chain locally. European households have a prominent demand for high suction and deep decontamination; Hard flooring is predominant in Latin America, with a greater emphasis on the integration of dry and wet cleaning functions; The residential space in the Middle East is spacious and requires adaptation to diverse flooring materials to efficiently clean fine sand and dust.
Understanding the diversified demands of the global market, Xinqida has updated and upgraded its factory, adjusted product parameters, functional design, and power supply specifications according to local conditions, accurately adapted to diversified home scenarios worldwide, and achieved scale expansion, quality upgrades, and efficiency improvements. In the first seven months of this year, the company's export volume increased by 122% year-on-year.
When it comes to the good situation of vacuum cleaner exports, the general manager of the company, Qiu Riju, believes that it is partly due to market expansion planning, which predicts the capacity and prospects of the international market in advance; On the other hand, it comes from the effective use of customs policies by enterprises, which improves customs clearance efficiency and enhances the market competitiveness of products.
The rise of independent brands
From OEM overseas to brand deployment
In the early stages of industrial development, most domestic enterprises integrated into the global division of labor through OEM model, mainly undertaking the processing and manufacturing links. The recognition and competitiveness of independent brands in the international market were relatively weak. Nowadays, China's vacuum cleaner industry has long been at the forefront of global production capacity. More and more contract manufacturing companies that were once hidden behind the scenes have stepped into the spotlight of the world stage, relying on continuous technological innovation and fully utilizing their strong supply chain advantages to establish more recognizable and time efficient independent brands, and have achieved success in overseas markets.
According to customs statistics, by 2025, China's self owned brand vacuum cleaners with complete intellectual property rights have been exported to 188 countries and regions worldwide. The continuous optimization of export structure reflects the industrial trend of transitioning from "Made in China" to "Chinese Brands".
In the wave of industrial upgrading, Zhuimi Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhuimi Technology") has taken a different path and embarked on a characteristic development path of technological breakthroughs and empowering brands to go global.
Like many peers, Zhumi Technology's starting point is also OEM - undertaking orders for well-known brands of vacuum cleaners and floor cleaning robots, relying on mature industrial ecology and supply chain resources to expand the scale of enterprise production and operation. Unlike the traditional path of "first accumulating technology through OEM manufacturing, and then gradually developing and innovating", Zhuimi Technology, relying on its core advantage of self-developed high-speed digital motors, quickly launched its first wireless vacuum cleaner product while opening up a global layout and focusing on overseas markets. In just two years, it completed the transformation of its business structure, and its own brand gradually became the main engine of enterprise development.
The key support for this path comes from breakthroughs in motor technology. Electric motors, commonly known as motors, are the core power components of most household appliances, and their speed, efficiency, and other indicators directly determine the high performance of products such as vacuum cleaners and hair dryers. Before the establishment of the company, the founding team of Zhumi Technology had already invested two years in tackling high-speed digital motor technology. In 2017, Zhuimi Technology successfully developed a high-speed digital motor with a speed of 100000 revolutions per minute and achieved mass production, breaking the long-term technological monopoly of foreign brands in the high-end motor field and filling the core gap for the high-quality development of the industry chain.
Brand going global requires both hard power and the support of a soft environment. In order to assist enterprises in smoothly expanding their independent brands overseas and continuously expanding their international markets, Suzhou Customs, a subsidiary of Nanjing Customs, relies on the "Suzhou Customs Excellent Service" service brand to explore and promote the application of "Smart Enjoyment" export origin certificate AI to benefit enterprises, guide enterprises to sort out the origin policies of China ASEAN and other free trade agreements, and develop the best benefit plan for enterprise "projectization"; Continuously improving the export certificate of origin issuance mode of "one point intelligent visa review+multi-point visa+self-service printing at any location+24-hour convenient service of 'customs e-channel'", compressing the visa processing time to about half a day, helping enterprises enjoy benefits to achieve "all you can enjoy" and "all you should enjoy", further reducing import and export costs, and enhancing the competitiveness of enterprises in the international market.
In order to safeguard brand home appliance enterprises such as vacuum cleaners going global, Jinhua Customs under Hangzhou Customs has established a normalized standard tracking mechanism in response to the complex and ever-changing trade rules of the EU home appliance industry. It updates in real-time the entry standards of overseas markets such as CE safety certification, new battery regulations, CBAM carbon border adjustment tax, etc. It timely pushes new regulations interpretation, risk warning and typical cases for export enterprises, effectively avoiding trade risks such as goods being detained, returned, and notified due to policy information lag and insufficient understanding of standards. At the same time, Jinhua Customs focuses on core intellectual property rights such as appearance, structure, electronic control, and brand of household appliances, carries out "one-on-one" propaganda and practical interpretation of intellectual property customs protection filing policies, comprehensively promotes the application of the "Intellectual Property Customs Protection AI Filing Pass", guides enterprises to complete filing work, builds export intellectual property protection barriers in advance, and helps enterprises prevent infringement risks.
Global layout accelerates
Overseas delivery capability jumps
With the continuous improvement of the global recognition of independent brands, coupled with the dual driving force of the continuous increase in global demand for clean home appliances and the deep restructuring of the industrial chain, domestic clean home appliance enterprises are accelerating their upgrading from "product going global" and "brand going global" to "production capacity going global". Their overseas delivery capabilities and global supply chain resilience have significantly improved.
On August 12th, a batch of vacuum cleaners were loaded in an orderly manner in the workshop of Kahe Cleaning Technology (Changshu) Co., Ltd. and will soon be sent overseas. At present, the company has produced over 3000 cleaning products, covering a full range of cleaning equipment such as vacuum cleaners and commercial floor scrubbers. Among them, the vacuum cleaner, as its flagship product, has received unanimous praise from customers for its stable and reliable quality and efficient and comprehensive after-sales service system. Our group has established factories in multiple countries to meet different market demands. For example, in Vietnam, we conducted market research on local logistics networks, labor costs, policy incentives, etc. After comprehensive analysis of the local industrial chain cluster, we decided to invest in building factories and carry out localized research and development based on demand, focusing on products such as high-pressure cleaning machines. Currently, products in Vietnam are mainly delivered by local factories, and response speed and delivery capacity have been improved, "said Jiang Hongfang, the logistics manager of the company." In order to increase production capacity, we also supply some supporting cleaning equipment components to Vietnamese factories for assembly and production, further strengthening the resilience of the industrial chain
At the same time, favorable policies continue to exert force, helping to further accelerate the export of clean household appliances. With the further implementation and promotion of various free trade agreements such as China ASEAN, Changshu Customs under Nanjing Customs has established a list of key enterprises that can enjoy but not enjoy, conducted special training covering more than 200 enterprises, and normalized the implementation of the "Customs Director's Door to Door Policy". Focusing on the difficulties and pain points encountered in the operation process of enterprises, it actively organizes special policy lectures and door-to-door legal education.
Not only in Jiangsu, but also in Zhejiang, home appliance companies are accelerating the polishing of their global delivery capabilities. As a local enterprise deeply engaged in the manufacturing of kitchen appliances, Huayu Electric Appliances Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Huayu Electric Appliances") located in Cixi actively seized the global trend of clean home appliance consumption, accelerated cross category transformation and upgrading, and achieved a breakthrough in the export business of vacuum cleaners. In the first seven months of this year, our company exported vacuum cleaners worth over 32 million yuan, an increase of 3.1 times. We successfully opened up multiple overseas markets such as the United States, Russia, and Serbia, and the number of new overseas orders continued to rise, "said Li Jianwen, the head of foreign trade at Huayu Electric.
When it comes to the significant increase in the export of enterprise vacuum cleaners, Li Jianwen frankly stated that it is mainly due to the comprehensive leap of the enterprise's cross category overseas capabilities. We have been deeply involved in the manufacturing of small household appliances for many years, with a complete supply chain system, mature production processes, and strict quality control standards. Relying on our existing advantages in smart manufacturing of kitchen appliances, we have been able to quickly complete the research and development upgrade of vacuum cleaner products. "Li Jianwen introduced that the enterprise has improved product parameters in a targeted manner, adapted to different national voltage standards, safety access regulations, and household use scenarios, greatly enhancing product adaptability and market competitiveness.
At the same time, the transportation efficiency of China Europe freight trains continues to improve, providing strong support for us to smoothly explore the Russian market. The stability of cargo transportation has significantly increased, and the experience of the receiving party is good. We predict that we will receive customer return orders in the short term. "Li Jianwen said that the company continues to optimize its global delivery layout, integrate multiple cross-border logistics channels such as sea freight and China Europe freight trains, optimize the entire process of scheduling, warehousing, and shipping, significantly shorten the delivery cycle of overseas orders, and its performance stability has been highly recognized by overseas customers. It has successfully achieved a breakthrough from exporting single kitchen appliances to exporting clean household appliances across categories, driving explosive growth in export performance.
In order to better promote the development of Cixi vacuum cleaners, Cixi Customs under Ningbo Customs relies on the "Pro Clean Direct Train · Enterprise Needs Customs Response" mechanism to assist enterprise development, and regularly carries out policy guidance. At the same time, leveraging the advantages of the "Citong" technology and trade studio, dynamically updating key market vacuum cleaner technology regulations and access certification standards, targeted technology and trade risk warnings, improving the self inspection and self-control level of key production links in enterprises, and helping "Cixi Manufacturing" to go faster and further in the global market. In the first seven months of this year, the export value of vacuum cleaners from Ningbo Port was 4.695 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.9%.