By NUPIAO News Reporter
Now that the policy tailwinds have faded, viral small home appliances are officially waving goodbye to their golden era of breakneck growth.
On August 13, Bear Electric released its 2026 semi-annual report. According to the financial data, the company recorded operating revenue of 2.349 billion yuan during the reporting period, a year-on-year decline of 7.34%. Net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company stood at 120 million yuan, tumbling 41.30% from the same period last year. Deducted non-recurring gains and losses, net profit also fell by 41.59%, with the profit decline far outpacing the revenue drop.
When asked about the profit slide, the company pointed to several culprits in its earnings report. For starters, small appliances were pulled out of the national subsidy program, and with the global economy looking murky, market demand simply lacks momentum. According to AVC (All View Cloud) full-channel tracking data, retail sales of kitchen small appliances across all channels in China hit 30.26 billion yuan in the first half of 2026, down 4.8% year-on-year.
Then there’s the geopolitical mess — conflicts have pushed up crude oil prices, which in turn drove up costs for key raw materials, energy, and logistics. To make matters worse, the RMB’s exchange rate against the US dollar fluctuated during the reporting period, generating exchange losses that inflated the company’s financial expenses compared to last year.
On top of that, intensifying market competition dragged down the gross margin of its controlled subsidiary Roman Intelligent. Although Bear Electric’s net operating cash flow for H1 reached 204 million yuan, up 43.32% year-on-year, that wasn’t enough to offset the pressure piling up on the profit side.
To tackle these headwinds, Bear Electric said it has reshuffled its product mix and recalibrated its marketing spend. The company has poured more marketing dollars into mid-to-high price point products, its competitive core categories, and items that tap into the health-and-self-care trend, all while optimizing its product portfolio. At the same time, it’s doubling down on overseas expansion, proactively pruning some higher-risk ODM clients abroad to reduce operational exposure, and aggressively courting emerging overseas markets and new sales channels — including a push into the overseas maternal and infant small appliance segment.
As for Roman Intelligent, on the revenue front, the subsidiary is charging ahead with a key-account strategy and international outreach, forging tighter business synergies with core partners and fine-tuning its customer base. It’s also expanding into global markets by exhibiting at international trade shows, boosting regional market penetration, and locking down order conversion capabilities. Internally, Roman Intelligent has rolled out cost-cutting and efficiency-boosting measures, stepped up R&D investment in core technologies, and is iterating on its flagship product lines.
Public records show that Guangdong Roman Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. is a company focused on R&D and manufacturing of personal care small appliances. In July 2024, Bear Electric shelled out 154 million yuan to acquire a 61.78% controlling stake, consolidating it into its financial statements — a move designed to shore up its personal care segment and tap into overseas OEM resources.
In terms of business structure, Roman Intelligent’s ODM/OEM overseas contract manufacturing accounts for roughly 80% of its revenue, with its own brands contributing only about 20%. Its OEM clients include well-known overseas home appliance brands like Philips, Panasonic, and YA-MAN.
But for Bear Electric, the domestic market remains the bread and butter. Squeezed by the broader consumer environment, domestic demand has gone soft. Traditional kettle, cooking pot, and electric heating categories are feeling the heat, with several older product lines posting declines across the board. Domestic sales generated 1.93 billion yuan in revenue, down 9.12% year-on-year.
Its overseas business, which includes own-brand exports, brought in 419 million yuan during the period — a modest 1.82% uptick year-on-year. But with intensifying competition abroad and currency swings, gross margins in the export segment took a hit, dragging down overall performance.
Public records indicate that Bear Electric went public on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2019, building its brand on aesthetically pleasing, compact creative small appliances. With products like health pots, electric stew pots, and electric cookers, it carved out a niche among younger consumers. In its early days, the company rode the e-commerce wave to rapid growth, and during the home-everything boom, both its stock price and earnings went parabolic.
In 2020, riding the stay-at-home economy, the stock hit an all-time high of 165.9 yuan per share, corresponding to a total market cap of 25.3 billion yuan. As of the A-share market close on August 13, Bear Electric’s stock was trading at 34.16 yuan, giving it a market cap of 5.323 billion yuan — down nearly 80% from its historic peak.
The company’s 2026 semi-annual report shows that among its main product lines, only living small appliances held steady — kitchen small appliances, personal care small appliances, and maternal and infant small appliances all posted year-on-year revenue declines.
Digging into the numbers: kitchen small appliances, the company’s biggest revenue driver, brought in 1.515 billion yuan this period, accounting for 64.50% of total revenue, down 9.47% year-on-year. Personal care small appliances generated 287 million yuan, or 12.22% of revenue, slipping 11.28% — a decline steeper than the overall average, and that segment includes Roman Intelligent’s business. Maternal and infant small appliances contributed 112 million yuan, or 4.77% of revenue, plunging 22.88% year-on-year — the steepest drop of any category.
The industry landscape has fundamentally shifted. The market now shows a clear pattern of shrinking volumes and rising prices. Household small appliance penetration is nearing saturation, replacement cycles are stretching longer, and the overall market has entered a zero-sum game.
But Bear Electric also has its own set of operational weaknesses. The company’s revenue is heavily tied to e-commerce platforms, and with online traffic competition getting fiercer by the day, the cost of livestreaming and platform promotions remains stubbornly high. As revenue contracts, marketing expenses are hard to trim in sync, with selling costs steadily eating into profit margins. While the company has started streamlining inefficient SKUs and pushing products upmarket, the adjustment is still in its painful transition phase — the payoff from the upgrade hasn’t fully materialized yet.
For the capital markets, the creative small appliance concept that was once all the rage has cooled off considerably. The industry has shifted from competing on scale to competing on product strength. Whether Bear Electric can break free from the traffic wars and restore profitability through product upgrades remains very much an open question.
