Report Analysis Part2— Supply and Demand Characteristics of Daily Laundry and Dyeing

The rapid growth of online platform stores
According to the data of washing and dyeing stores included in the online platform Meituan, the scale of online stores did not change much, all at the level of 130,000 in the April season of 2023 and 2024, which are the peak season of daily laundry and dyeing.
● By the third quarter of 2024, the size of online stores has grown rapidly to more than 170,000. However, the number of newly registered offline stores at this time did not exceed the number of newly registered offline stores in the same period in 2023. The growth of washing and dyeing stores mainly comes from the rapid expansion of stores in fourth - and fifth-tier cities. With the increase in capacity of online laundry factories and the help of a convenient logistics distribution system, service outlets in third-, fourth-, and fifth-tier cities continue to increase.
● As of October 2024, in first-tier cities, the proportion of transaction cooperation stores that only provide offline transactions and stores that provide door-to-door service is 7:3. In third-tier and below cities, the proportion of offline and online services is 3:7. In fifth-tier and below cities, the proportion is close to 2:8.

The main business of the online store
From the specific categories of the main business of the stores, the stores of washing and dyeing daily clothing which are included by Meituan are mainly shops where shoes and laundry are washed, accounting for nearly 3/4 (73.3%). Others are all professional stores, for example, tailoring (13.5%), shoe polishing and fixing (7.8%), and luxury care (3.8%). Clothes washing and shoe washing are always the main service type of the stores.
● Nowadays, the Internet is well developed so that more and more customers not only love to find a store online but also prefer to directly get the solutions to their requirements. For example, in the first half of 2024, the platform popularity of the term “shoe washing” increased by 41% year-on-year, and the search popularity of the more focused term “shoe washing (door-to-door service) ” increased by 88.9% year-on-year.
❑ For example, in terms of platform search popularity, “washing clothes” (63.8%) has a faster growth rate compared to “laundry” (14.1%). “Washing clothes” is divided into keywords like “washing down jacket” according to style. The growth rate of platform popularity reached 98.9% year-on-year.

Low season and peak season
The washing of daily clothes has a very obvious difference between the off-peak season. In China, generally from October to May of the next year, the demand for washing and care of autumn and winter clothes such as down jackets and wool coats is strong. In addition, before the traditional Chinese Spring Festival, it is also a time when the demand for large items such as curtains and sofa covers is strong. However, after May, there is little need for washing and care of such clothes.
Solutions

In order to alleviate the problem of fluctuations in demand during the off-peak season, more and more enterprises have vigorously developed shoe-washing businesses in recent years. They wash clothes in the peak season and wash shoes in the off-season because shoes are washed more often and demand is relatively easy to stimulate. Therefore, the “arbitrary washing of clothes and shoes” service came into being and was welcomed by online consumers. Platform trading data show that the online mainstream “arbitrary washing” accounted for nearly 50% of the industry orders during the peak season. In the off-season, the single online shoe-washing business orders account for nearly 60%, and then superposition the off-season “arbitrary washing of clothes and shoes”, which can smoothly spend the off-season for the laundry.

Brands development
In the process of developing online laundry and care services, many brands launched a variety of different combinations of “arbitrary washing” to reduce the threshold of consumer decision-making and maximize the scale effect of laundry and care factories. It not only saves consumers time and energy but also achieves the effective stimulation of incremental demand. In the first half of 2024, platform orders increased by 72% year-on-year.
Gender proportion

Online consumers of life washing and dyeing on the Meituan platform are mainly female (69.2%), which is twice that of male users. The proportion of offline traditional stores is basically the same. Women are better in terms of both the frequency of clothing purchases and the amount of clothing they purchase, and they are the main consumer groups in the washing and care industry.
Specifically, the customer groups of different washing and dyeing service types are slightly different in gender and age distribution.

❑ Winter clothing is dominated by down jackets, and the male-to-female ratio of search users is 3:7, which is basically consistent with the market, of which female search users under the age of 35 account for nearly half (48.6%). Among the users who search for shoe washing, 45% are male, and the gender ratio is much closer. Young consumers under the age of 30 accounted for more than half (55.4%). The demand for sports shoe washing by young male groups has supported the continuous expansion of the online shoe-washing business and injected new increments into the industry.
Conclusion
The second part of the “Report on Daily Clothing Washing and Dyeing Consumption (online) Trend” shows the supply and demand relationship between washing and care of different clothes and shoes from the aspects of off-peak season demand, keyword search, etc. Next time we will show you the third part of the report-- user decision.