The China Home Expo recognizes that the home building materials industry is undergoing a profound transformation. Practitioners widely feel that business is getting harder—customers are more discerning, prices more transparent, traffic more expensive, and margins thinner than ever. This is not a cyclical downturn but a structural leap for the industry: the home sector is moving from selling materials to selling lifestyles.

Looking back at the industry's development since China's reform and opening up, it has undergone two major transitions. The first stage was selling materials. From the 1980s to around 2000, as housing commercialization took off, the customer's core demand was simply "do you have it." Whoever had the goods, the most stores, and the most abundant supply won the game—channels reigned supreme. The second stage was selling solutions. From 2000 to 2020, during the golden era of real estate, customers were no longer satisfied with having materials; they wanted attractive interiors. Whole-home customization, integrated home decoration, and design proposals became mainstream, making design and service capabilities the core competitive advantages.

Today, the industry is entering its third stage. Customers want more than an attractive home—they want a home that is truly good to live in. Is the air clean? Is the water pure? Is the temperature comfortable? Is energy consumption high? Are the appliances easy to maintain? Will anyone respond when something goes wrong? These living-experience considerations are becoming the deciding factors in purchase decisions. This is the third leap: from selling solutions to selling lifestyles.

Selling a lifestyle is not about selling any single product, but about selling a complete living experience. Customers are not buying tiles, air conditioners, or water purifiers; they are buying the state of living every day in a healthy, comfortable, intelligent, low-carbon home. Concretely, this encompasses four dimensions. From single products to systems: replacing individual appliances with integrated solutions such as five-constant (temperature, humidity, oxygen, cleanliness, and quiet) climate systems, whole-home intelligence, water treatment, and green-energy storage, so that devices work in concert to create a comfortable experience. From transactions to services: replacing one-off deals with full-lifecycle services spanning design, delivery, and maintenance. From features to value: shifting the emphasis from how good the specs are to what difference they make in daily life—cleaner air means children get sick less; more stable temperatures mean greater comfort for the elderly; lower energy consumption saves money and protects the environment. From one-time to ongoing: system operation data, energy data, and carbon data keep generating value, while routine maintenance, system upgrades, and scenario updates keep generating service revenue.

These four shifts mean the industry's business model is being rebuilt. The source of profit is moving from product price differentials to system services and long-term operations, and the competitive moat is shifting from channel scale to system integration and service capability. Companies that complete this leap will enter a whole new growth space; those that cannot will keep struggling in the red ocean of selling materials and solutions.

The leap cannot be achieved by any single company alone; it depends on a complete industrial ecosystem. Platform companies such as the Earth Commune · AI Dual-Carbon Smart Link Platform are building this infrastructure: for renovation companies and dealers, they provide replicable green-living system solutions covering five-constant climate, intelligence, water treatment, and green electricity, with standardized design, quotation, construction, and acceptance processes, so partners can plug in and immediately take on "lifestyle-selling" business; for designers, they offer AI design tools and product libraries that elevate practitioners from drafting drawings to human-centered living system consultants; for suppliers, they connect directly to real project demand, bypassing layers of distribution and getting closer to customer feedback; and for construction and service teams, they ensure traceable delivery quality through standardized craftsmanship and digital management.

The China Home Expo believes that the industry took two decades to move from selling materials to selling solutions; moving from selling solutions to selling lifestyles may take only five to ten years. The window will not stay open forever—companies that complete the leap from "product delivery" to "experience operations" first will be the ones to claim a favorable position in the new blue ocean.

Source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7678968222488953344/?channel=&source=news