According to CCTV reports, since March and April this year, due to the tight supply of chips, small home appliance production was once at a standstill, the original full capacity of the production line, was forced to reduce. With the diversification of consumer demand, "house economy" "lazy economy" gradually release dividends and other factors, small home appliance market size in the past two years, the rapid expansion of the industry development was a blowout trend.
A wide range of products, some personal care, health care class of small appliances are sought after, such as fascia gun, eye massager, beauty instrument. Product innovation, to bring consumers a new experience at the same time, behind the hidden dangers should not be ignored.
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With the function of medical devices, but according to the standard management of small household appliances
China Consumers Association Consumer Supervision Department Director Zhang Dezhi said, on the beauty of small household appliances industry is very representative of the household beauty instrument, due to the current state of the household beauty instrument belongs to the category of small household appliances, is not attributable to the class of medical devices, so the domestic products of the household beauty instrument is a small household appliances according to the national mandatory standard for supervision, the detection of household beauty instrument standards are also mainly for the safety indicators, the use of their The effect does not require long-term clinical verification.
Economic Daily - China Economic Net reporter found that not only the beauty instrument, many personal care, health care class of small household appliances have similar problems - these products follow the relevant industry standards for home appliances, but actually has a massage therapy, health monitoring, and many other previous need for medical equipment to achieve the function. Many small home appliances, direct contact with human skin, the role of the human skeleton, with the increase in functionality, its safety and the rigor of the labeling needs to be improved, the effectiveness of more difficult to have a rigorous verification process like medical devices.
Industry threshold is low personal care and health care category of small household electrical appliances quality is worrying
Due to the low cost of making small home appliances, many small and micro enterprises have joined this market. Data from the professional version of the eye of the sky check shows that at the end of 2020, there were about 1.02 million enterprises in China with the status of active, surviving, relocated, and relocated small home appliance-related enterprises, of which 23% of the relevant enterprises were individual businessmen. From the registered capital, 60% of the relevant enterprises registered capital of less than 2 million. A reporter in a shopping platform found a "monthly sales of 1000 +" electric gua sha physical therapy instrument, for example, the product claims that "4500MA lithium battery life, can be removed and washed, nine temperature heating, gua sha massage, one step". Upon inquiry, its manufacturer named "yongkang city X excellent electrical factory", the query enterprise type for individual business. The plant operator associated with the survival, in business enterprises, in addition to another individual business, there are two registered capital of 500,000, 600,000 companies, the number of participants totaled 7 people.
At present, China's market for personal care and health care category of small home appliances are endless, however, due to the extremely low threshold of the production enterprises, the more "powerful", the more worrying it is inevitable.
In January 2021, the State Administration of Market Supervision issued a national supervision and inspection of product quality circular shows that a variety of massage appliances, including foot baths, fascia guns and other product quality does not meet the standards, in the "protection against touching live parts" "continuous nuisance voltage" and so on. Failure on the test items, involving Ningbo Guanyi Electrical Appliance Technology Company Limited, Zhongshan City can not forget the electrical appliances Co. National supervision and sampling of product quality, 59 batches of massage appliance products produced by 59 enterprises in 6 provinces (cities), 19 batches of products failed, with a failure discovery rate as high as 32.2%. Unqualified items relate to the protection of touching and electrified parts, stability and mechanical hazards, structure and so on.
As the household beauty instrument products favored by beauty lovers, the effect and safety aspects are also to be considered. 2020, the Consumer Council of Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province selected 10 models of household beauty instruments with high attention and good sales volume from e-commerce platforms, including popular mid-end and high-end products, such as ReFa, Panasonic, YA-MAN, NuFACE, etc., and conducted subjective evaluation on their cleaning and importing effects. The subjective evaluation of the introduction effect found that the actual cleaning effect of half of the products was far from the advertised one, and six products had the problem of nickel exceeding the standard.
The healthy development of the industry urgently need to lead
The "cross-border" and "integration" between small appliances and medical devices is nothing new. Speaking of GE, Siemens, Philips, engaged in the medical industry may think of their medical imaging products, however, for the majority of consumers, these three companies may be more relevant to the oven, washing machine, refrigerator, shaver, electric toothbrush. Today, these three medical imaging giants have an absolute say in CT, MRI, ultrasound and other fields - historically, they relied on small home appliances to get them started.
In 1939, Philips invented the electric rotary shaver. 1926, Siemens Home Appliances launched the first "grill tube". 1907, GE full line of cooking appliances released.
It can be said that, from the history of many companies and today, it seems that the overlap and cross-border between the fields of large appliances, small appliances, professional medical equipment, home medical equipment ......, so much so that you can compile a book to meet the health of consumers and the history of convenient life of business development. Nowadays, domestic home appliance leaders such as Midea, Gree, etc., are also actively laying out medical devices and even the field of health, and the entry of technology companies such as KDDI and Huawei is adding new possibilities to this field.
According to the definition given by the U.S. FDA, a home medical device is a medical device designed for users in environments other than a professional medical facility.An FDA Design Considerations Guidance details the factors that need to be taken into account in the design of a home medical device, and makes a comprehensive prediction of possible hazards and risks, including an analysis of environmental factors such as temperature and other factors that can be analyzed for up to 10 points, and includes the design of possible problems that may arise according to the cognitive and emotional state of the user, and so on. In addition, it also includes the design that should be made according to the problems that may arise from the user's cognitive and emotional conditions.
Regarding the relationship between small home appliances for personal care and health care and the home medical equipment market, under the premise of guarding consumers' personal health and safety, it is worthwhile to hold an open mind to look at its flux. If the small home appliance market, the relevant departments and the head of the enterprise to strengthen the leadership, take the initiative to standardize the safety standards of medical devices, strengthen the product design considerations, in order to promote the more healthy and orderly development of this industry.
Source: China National Grid