In World Sleep Day on March 21, this annual event brings awareness of sleep issues in China. Tmall health data shows that the sleep economy comprised of sleep aid products, instruments, and melatonin sales ranked in the forefront of all product types.
On March 21, China's B2C online retail platform Tmall (天猫) operated by Alibaba released a sleep report regarding the sleep quality of the young generation and discovered that the number of male survey users tend to be 8% higher than female users, among whom only has 17% of people experiencing high-quality sleep.
Besides traditional hardware and bedding, Tmall has revealed new markets focusing on supplements such as melatonin and instruments. More specifically, it disclosed that the sales of sleep instruments achieved a growth of 914% year-on year, with melatonin as one of the most popular sleep products had an annual turnover year-on-year growth of 40%.
The Chinese Sleep Research Institute shows that there are more than 300 million people in China with sleeping issues, ranging from insomnia and short sleep duration. Tmall's health report specifies that 60% of people described themselves who struggled from insomnia are post-90s and post-00s, reflecting severe sleep issues in the young Chinese generation.
From a national survey, the average sleep duration is 7.5 hours and only 22% of users can sleep for more than 8 hours. At present, there are more than 2,700 Chinese enterprises focusing on sleep products and over 70% of them were established within the past five years. Besides, there are more than 400 enterprises registered and established every single year. The growing number of Chinese companies in this field has indicated a fast-expanding sleep market.
From 2016 to 2020, the overall market size of China's sleep economy has grown from CNY 261.63 billion to CNY 377.86 billion, an increase of over 44%. It is expected that China's sleep economy will surpass over CNY 1 trillion by 2030.