The French market of technical consumer goods (TGC) has started the first part of the year with a positive trend. According to GfK Temax data, the most of the sector category closed the first quarter with a growth of value. The good news is that major and small domestic appliances are among the driving category, while consumer electronic and photography registered a fall. Among January and March, the whole TCG sector recorded an increase of 1.2%, reaching a total turnover of 8.4 billion euro.
Major domestic appliances totalized almost 1.4 billion euro and closed the quarter with an increase of 0.2%. This category is slightly growing with an increase of the average selling price. The Built-In market signed a good performance on the beginning of the year. Refrigerators, wine cabinets and hoods show positive trends, while the tumbledryers are in sharp decline. Cooking penalizes the market on the first quarter, because the Built in hobs record lower performance and cookers confirms their decline.
As regard small domestic appliances (SDA), instead, GfK recorded a quite good trend, despite a low volume growth but with a strong rise in average price. This rise in average price over total SDA is driven by several premium offers growing very strongly: handstick vacuum cleaners, full-automatic coffee machines, robotic vacuum cleaners, steam cleaners, hair stylers, foodprocessors. Personal care is growing again after difficult 2018 trends, not only driven by hair stylers, but also thanks to a double-digit growth on dental care.
On the contrary, a bad performance has been marked by consumer electronics, that recorded a value decrease of 5.3%: the soundbars market is stable in volume in Q1 whereas the new features integrated ( voice for example ) does not save the value. The beginning of the year confirms the bad trend of the bluetooth speaker market with -8% in volume, but manages to preserve the value and no longer relies only on the entry-level products.
