China’s Sleep Economy Expected to Reach 1 Trillion RMB by 2030
China’s sleep economy is booming. According to Chinese Sleep Research Institute (中国睡眠研究会), there are over 300M people in China with sleeping issues. Based on Ali Health’s (阿里健康) report, among users searching the term ‘insomnia’, 60% of them are post-90s and post-00s.
Of course where there’s a problem – there’s a market for solutions, especially when consumers want to treat the symptoms and not the root of the problem. What do I mean by that? Well there is a saying in China that people are using the most expensive eye cream while staying up late.
According to media outlet Global E-businessmen, China’s sleep economy has surpassed 400 billion RMB. It is expected that by 2030, its scale will be over 1 trillion RMB. The sleep economy can be classified into three categories: hardware (such as bedding and machines), software (such as sleeping apps) and medicine (health and supplement). Other than these traditional products and services, in China there is also a lulling business. This is a service where you pay someone to talk to you until you fall asleep.
Let’s take a look at the different segments:
Sleep Economy Segment 1: Hardware & Bedding
Simple bedding is no longer enough, people want the latest technology that will enable the optimum sleep. Whenever you open a Taobao bedding store or visit offline stores, you will find that many brands are introducing their “black technology” to customers. This includes features such as “artificial intelligence”, “anti-microbial” or “protect your spine”.
In the Chinese bedding market, there is no one dominating the market. Well-performing brands are SLEEMON (喜临门), Healthcare (梦百合), Suibao (穗宝) and Kuka Home (顾家). Among them, SLEEMON is the top one and on last year’s Double 11, it ranked NO.1 in its category on Tmall. There are a few international brands that are popular in the market, such as MUJI, IKEA, ZARA HOME and Sheridan.
Other than bedding, people are also seeking help from other hardware products such as eye masks and earplugs. Steam eye mask is a big winner as it can heat up by exposing to the air and keep warm for 15 minutes. I have tried it and the temperature was very comfortable for eyes and for falling asleep. The product maintains a double digit growth in its sales volume online.
Sleep Economy Segment 2: Sleeping Apps
The cheapest way to try and resolve sleeping issues is to download apps. For example white noise apps with various sounds such as stove fire, sea waves and rain to calm people down and help them to fall asleep quickly. Many of these apps can even monitor users’ sleeping performance.
A popular sleeping app in China is called Snail Sleep (蜗牛睡眠). It is estimated that the average time that a user in Shanghai used the app was 45.7 hours a month. Ways for those apps to monetize are either by charging users for specific sound or selling beddings and related sleeping products on the app.
You can tell China’s sleep economy is really growing because top Chinese podcast platform Ximalaya FM also has a sleep section. Users can choose from hundreds of sounds to make their own custom white noise sounds. Some of them are common noises such as wind in trees or waves, while there are also lots of unique ones such as farmer’s market, Guangzhou night market, and Tianjin train station. To each their own!
However, user data privacy is a key issue that hinders those apps’ development. Snail Sleep once got warned because of collecting and using users’ personal information illegally.
Sleep Economy Segment 3: Supplements & Aromatherapy
Melatonin has become a familiar term among Chinese people, especially among post-90s and post-00s. During last year’s Double 11, the number of people from these two groups who bought melatonin was 4x the number that bought it in 2019.
One of trendy GenZ focused Chinese supplement brand Buff X’s core products is its Buff X Sleep featuring the supplement GABA.
Accompanied with these supplements are sleeping spray, aromatherapy and essential oils. According to Tmall Global, from January to August in 2019, the number of post-90s purchasing international sleeping related products grew 118%, which covered 62% of the total consumer amount.
Lulling Experts’ Income Reaches Over 10k RMB A Month
If all the methods that we have mentioned don’t work for you, no worry, there is a service you may have never tried. It’s called lulling experts, meaning a person talking to you in a soothing voice until you fall asleep.
It is very similar to the job that we mentioned in our previous article: virtual boyfriend. They work in the same way. You can search for such services on Taobao and there are options for you to choose, such as chatting/talking for half an hour, for two hours, for a month etc. Those experts are often classified into 4 levels. If you choose the highest level, half-an-hour talk may cost you 150 RMB, and if you want the service to continue for a month, then it will be over 30k RMB.
But the grey area of this service is also getting noticed and some of the platforms and stores have been published for stepping over the line.
A cheaper option are podcast platforms like Ximlaya that we mentioned above that have audio live streaming. Many of them have sleep live streams which are similar to the lulling experts, but just not as personalized.
Maybe the best way to cure insomnia is to do exercise for at least half an hour a day or to quit playing on mobile phones before bed. What do you think?
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