Sleep health industry prospects

In the long term, it is a trillion-level blue ocean track with strong certainty. In the mid-term, it will experience a bubble clearing period of 1-3 years. In the short-term, there are only structural opportunities in subdivided vertical fields, and the window period for general growth in the entire industry has closed.

I had tea with a founder of a smart sleep-aid lamp in Hangzhou a while ago. He said that last year's Double 11, the "aromatherapy + red light sleep-aid" concept popularized by the anchor, sold 12 million yuan in a single month, and the cash flow on the account was just in line with the total revenue of the previous three years. He turned around and rented a larger one. His office has hired 20 operators, and as a result, the chargeback rate in Q1 this year has soared to 32%. Users complained that "after using it for half a month, I still can't sleep until 3 o'clock." There are still 800,000 yuan of goods in the warehouse, and he himself has to take melatonin recently to fall asleep.

This is almost a microcosm of the entire C-side sleep aid market. The optimists are counting on fundamentals: Data from the Chinese Sleep Research Association shows that more than 300 million people have sleep disorders, and the incidence of insomnia among people aged 25 to 40 is close to 40%. However, the current penetration rate of domestic sleep-related products is less than 5%, and there is at least ten times the room for growth compared to the European and American markets. As long as the "sleep anxiety" of young people is addressed, they can get a share of the cake. But several doctors I know at sleep centers in tertiary hospitals don’t see it that way at all. Their exact words are: “90% of Internet celebrity sleep-aid products on the market now, whether they are gummies, sprays or sleep devices worth hundreds of dollars, are essentially selling psychological placebos. They have not even done basic clinical controlled trials. Do you dare to say that they can improve insomnia? ”

This kind of disagreement is a normal phenomenon in the early stages of industry development. If you go around the e-commerce platform, you will know that the C-side sleep aid market is now ridiculously complicated: the price of melatonin gummies ranges from 9.9 yuan for three bottles to more than 300 yuan for imported models. The promotional slogans range from "falling asleep" to "no dependence". Last year, three brands that mainly sell sleep aid sprays were fined hundreds of thousands for falsely promoting "treating insomnia". To be honest, nine out of ten people who are now rushing into the C-end to sell ordinary sleep-aid consumer products are here to make quick money. The threshold of this track is too low. You can find a foundry to put a sign and shoot a few anxious short videos to sell online. It is no different from the Internet celebrity milk tea shops in previous years. Sooner or later the bubble will burst.

Interestingly, in contrast to the involution and chaos on the C side, there are almost no people grabbing sleep services for the B side. I came into contact with a team that makes digital sleep intervention in the past two months. They don't sell products on the consumer side. They specialize in CBT-I (cognitive behavioral therapy, currently clinically recognized as the first-line non-drug treatment for insomnia) digital system for psychiatric outpatient clinics and community hospitals. They also provide sleep monitoring hardware for nursing homes. They didn't burn much money last year, and their revenue exceeded 40 million. They just received a 20 million round A round, and they didn't have to pay anyone else's free shipping price of 9.9 yuan. There is also the deep sleep room launched by Atour two years ago, which is 150 to 200 yuan more expensive than the ordinary room type. It is equipped with a memory foam mattress, sleep-aid aromatherapy and sleep monitoring equipment. The occupancy rate is 20% higher than the ordinary room type all year round. Now it has been sold to more than 2,000 stores across the country. Hotels are willing to foot the bill and users are willing to pay, but no one is competing with them to compete for this track.

Of course, there are also other voices in the industry who believe that household consumer products will be the biggest increase in the future. After all, no one wants to go to the hospital for a polysomnography that costs hundreds of dollars a time when they have insomnia. If a bracelet worth a few hundred dollars can accurately measure sleep cycles and provide personalized intervention plans, its popularity will definitely increase. But here’s the point of controversy: Most of the current civilian sleep monitoring equipment relies on heart rate and body movement to estimate sleep stages. Compared with the hospital’s gold standard monitoring, the accuracy is up to 70%. The industry has not yet reached a unified statement on whether it has clinical reference value. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration also adjusted the classification of “sleep monitoring equipment” among the three types of medical devices, which means that the threshold for casually promoting one’s products to “monitor sleep and treat insomnia” will become higher and higher in the future.

In fact, if you really want to stay on this track for a long time, you don't have to worry about whether it is to B or to C. I have seen a small team that does a solid job, focusing on the narrowest segment of sleep intervention for women in the third trimester of pregnancy. They produce specialized pregnancy pillows and supporting breathing guidance courses. They can make tens of millions in revenue a year, and there are no competitors at all. On the contrary, most of those who came up and said they wanted to be "the number one brand in the sleep industry" ended up burning money in exchange for traffic.

To put it bluntly, the track of sleep health must be long and steep. After all, everyone’s pace of life will only get faster and faster, and the requirements for sleep quality will only get higher and higher. But whether you can mine it really depends on whether you want to make quick money by taking advantage of the hot spots, or whether you are really willing to settle down to do clinical verification and improve user value. Otherwise, the money will go in and the goods will be lost. In the end, it will be the boss himself who suffers from insomnia first, which is quite ironic.