Striding progress

Smart bathroom sales have shown explosive growth in March, according to data from major online shopping platforms, such as JD and Tmall. Intelligent toilet seat sales witnessed a nearly sixfold increase.

The pandemic will bring about profound changes in Chinese society, says Lin Xiaofa, chair of major domestic sanitaryware maker Jomoo, which is headquartered in Fujian province.

Jomoo's new intelligent toilet drew in more than 6 million viewers during a livestreaming event on March 9.

Last year, the company's intelligent toilet-seat sales rose by 60 percent over 2018.

Arrow, another major domestic sanitary brand, based in Guangdong province, has integrated music into its products, to cater to the increasingly diversified needs of the younger generation.

The idea is to offer the most comfortable and relaxing experience for users, says Zhou Zhiwei, a senior officer with Arrow.

Seeing today's advanced sanitary equipment, it's hard for young customers to imagine how crude products were back in the late 1980s.

The factory was "very labor-intensive", as Wang recalls, and the market was very underdeveloped. "We could only make plain ceramic toilets and wash basins with a rough design then," Wang says.

Since 2000, domestic demand has also been on the rise, as "people's lives have improved", Wang says, pushing major domestic brands to upgrade and offer better solutions for the increasing public need.

Major domestic brands, including Huida, Arrow, Jomoo and Hegii, have broadened their product ranges to cover other products for bathroom decoration, and now they are "on a par with international brands, in terms of technology", Wang says.

Last year, sales of major domestic sanitaryware producers stood at about 35 billion yuan, accounting for about 15 percent of the domestic market share, according to the report on the ceramic sanitaryware market.

There's much room for growth, it says.