China Cleaning Appliance Retail Sales Edge Down in Q1
Robot vacuums and conventional vacuums declined while wet cleaners grew.
News date:
China's cleaning-appliance market was almost flat in the first quarter of 2026, with retail sales slipping 0.2% year on year, according to AVC figures published on May 21. The headline masked a clearer split between the largest floorcare categories.
Robot-vacuum sales fell about 10%, while conventional vacuums declined approximately 12%. Wet floor cleaners grew around 3%, although that increase came with weaker pricing. AVC reported that the average price of wet floor cleaners fell 11%, while products below CNY 2,000 took a larger share of online sales.
The review linked the difficult comparison to the strong prior-year base, earlier replacement purchases and changes in subsidy coverage. Smaller categories, including fabric cleaners, window-cleaning robots and mite-removal appliances, continued to grow, showing a different pattern from the two declining vacuum categories.
The figures measure retail activity in China during January–March. They offer a starting point for the year's market timeline, before the 618 promotion report and first-half market review. The small overall decline therefore should not be read as the same result for every cleaning product, nor as a measure of manufacturers' export sales.