The once-red-hot small-home-appliance track now looks unusually lonely, and even leading brands are struggling. On August 13, small-appliance listed firm Bear Electric reported its H1 2026 results, with net profit attributable to shareholders down 41.3% year on year. Around the same time, Supor, Newell, Biyi and ASD and other small-appliance makers also handed in reports of falling revenue and profit.
The market chill showed as early as two months ago during the 618 shopping festival. In livestreams, orders for once-frantic breakfast makers and air fryers clearly dropped. Near-new or once-used shoe washers, toothpaste squeezers, handheld garment steamers and the like flooded Xianyu, the secondhand platform.
As the sector cools, consumers' enthusiasm for good-looking gadgets is also fading. Xiao Lin, a Hangzhou office worker, was drawn to a lavender-colored dough mixer during 618. 'The host said it takes just five minutes to knead dough,' she recalled. At home she found the result unsatisfying and ended up kneading by hand. The second time it worked better, but cleanup was time-consuming. Now the mixer she bought two months ago and used twice sits deep in a kitchen cabinet, next to an air fryer bought last Double 11 and never used, and a blender bought the year before and used only three times.
This impulse-buy-then-idle pattern is common. Searching 'air fryer,' 'blender,' 'egg boiler,' 'breakfast maker' on Xianyu yields screen after screen of 'brand new, unopened' or 'used two or three times' resales at under half price. Data show overall small-appliance idle rate is 40%, blenders 78%, and air-fryer resales up 170% year on year. Over 60% of households use their 'internet-famous' kitchen gadgets fewer than five times a year.
In 2026, as national subsidies exit and trade-in subsidy scope narrows, all kitchen small appliances dropped out of the subsidy catalog. Bear Electric's H1 report explicitly attributed the profit drop to exiting the subsidy scope and insufficient market-demand growth. AVC data show H1 2026 kitchen small-appliance retail value fell 4.8% and volume 14.6% year on year. Consumers have grown more cautious, willing to pay more for truly useful products rather than blindly buying a pile of cheap internet hits.
Caution also shows in usage frequency. Many gadgets are destined to gather dust the moment they come home. During the pandemic, air fryers rode social media to rapidly mature the market, but after it ended, takeout and dining out recovered and usage fell sharply. Almost all small appliances face 'lack of high-frequency use scenarios.' Product problems are more troublesome: many internet-famous gadgets answer low-frequency needs deliberately manufactured by makers, with real usage far below expectations.
Small appliances have low barriers; market dividends attracted all kinds of crossover players, and many products are made by OEM factories with severe homogenization and intensifying price wars. Midea's finance director Zhong Zheng once said publicly that in 2022 Midea shut down or restructured over 900 small-appliance SKUs, with those businesses losing about 20 million yuan overall. Chairman Fang Hongbo also admitted the group made mistakes in its small-appliance layout.
