咖啡机被中产买爆，“国产第一”的格米莱却慌了The coffee machine has been sold out by the middle class, but the "number one domestic" Gree is panicking

Gree has taken advantage of the coffee craze to rush into the first domestic coffee machine market, but there are marketing concerns that prioritize research and development over hidden dangers.

There are multiple rolls in the coffee track, needless to say.

Luckin, Kudi Manner、 Lucky coffee, smashed one cup after another at 9.9 yuan, turning coffee from a "petty bourgeois drink" into a "life-saving drink for working people".

Each company is competing in supply chain, turnover rate, and cost, engaging in co branding, distributing coupons, and building a sense of presence, without stopping for a moment. Even Starbucks was run on and almost sold out, almost turning into a 'honey snow'.

It's a mess.

But who would have thought that in this red sea, a Shunde enterprise selling coffee machines would quietly make a fortune.

He is the "leading domestic coffee machine" GML é.

In 2024, its revenue will approach 500 million and its net profit will be 40 million. By the first three quarters of 2025, the gross profit margin has reached 44.1%. What is this concept? The average gross profit margin of the small home appliance sector in the third quarter of 2025 is just over 30%.

It can be said that the popularity of coffee machines is due to the increasingly stubborn middle class.

When drinking coffee, you have to choose the flavor and origin of the beans, adjust the roasting degree yourself, and even feel that the temperature difference of the extraction water is not right. Takeout can no longer meet this picky demand.

A Beijing white-collar bear calculated an account for AI blue media, saying, "Even if you drink a 9.9 cup every day and spend over 3000 yuan a year, it's better to buy a coffee machine and make it yourself. The cost is low, the quality is good, and the playability is high

Besides, if a "coffee corner" is set up at home, the petty bourgeois temperament will be fully utilized.

With the help of this' middle-class toy ', Gemley has solidly enjoyed the dividends of the coffee track.

Nowadays, everyone has gone to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for IPO. If successful, it will become the "first domestic coffee machine stock".

The coffee seller fought to the death in front, while the coffee machine seller went to the market first.

Is it interesting? That's so interesting.

But that doesn't mean safety either, because the pursuers are already on their way.

Grimley's' Breaking Password '

The coffee machine market has been dominated by foreign brands led by Delong for decades. Why did Gemile come out?

Simply put, the secret to its popularity is to pack tens of thousands of commercial configurations behind the coffee shop counter into a home computer and sell it for a price you can't imagine.

The starting point is a number: 58 millimeters.

Before 2012, almost all household coffee machines on the market used a 51mm extraction system. This configuration is sufficient, capable of producing coffee with a thin layer of oil floating on top, which is already much better than instant noodles.

No one in the industry thinks there is a problem. After all, commercial use is commercial use, household use is household use, and well water does not interfere with river water.

Grimley doesn't believe in this evil.

It integrates a commercial grade 58mm handle and boiling head into a household machine. What does a difference of 7 millimeters mean? A larger bowl area for powder extraction, more uniform extraction, thicker oil, and a direct expansion of flavor levels.

But this also means that the entire heating system, pressure control, and body structure have to be overturned and rebuilt. So, no one has done this before, and no one dares to do it.

Grimley did it.

From then on, "58mm" became a hard label for Gree Home Appliances. The entry-level model priced at over a thousand yuan comes with this system, while the advanced model priced at over three thousand yuan is equipped with PID precision temperature control and dual pump design. These two features are usually only available for machines priced at five or six thousand yuan from imported brands.

To put it simply, Gemley broke down the threshold of "professionalism" and gave everyone a painless admission ticket.

A coffee enthusiast named Jin Shuang told AI Blue Media Hui, "Their family is already making commercial machines, and they can definitely do it for home use

The product stood still, and Gemile immediately did one thing: crazy marketing.

How crazy is it? Read the prospectus. In 2024, its sales and marketing expenses amounted to 94.85 million yuan, with a sales expense ratio of 21.95%. In other words, for every 100 yuan it collects, 21 yuan goes towards marketing.

Are you familiar with this set of tactics? The old path of new consumer brands: first do not hesitate to invest in building brand awareness, and then promote the brand first.

The formation is also spacious enough. In 2024, it launched the "I am a Barista" challenge, with over 50 million views on the topic. The brand cooperation covers a large number of coffee bloggers and KOCs, with simple and direct content: 'Crazy! The coffee machine makes Star Dad unable to earn me a penny'. In 2025, Tiktok and Xiaohongshu brand topics will have a cumulative browsing volume of nearly 500 million, ranking first among domestic coffee machine brands.

In addition, appearance is also a part of marketing.

Milk white and owl shaped, it is a beautiful piece of furniture when placed at home. In the grass planting post of "Coffee Corner" on Xiaohongshu, its appearance rate is extremely high.

With this combination of punches, the logic of online sales has been completely implemented.

In 2023, Gree's online revenue accounted for 41.4%, rising to 54.4% in 2024 and further climbing to 58.3% in the first three quarters of 2025. Online has become the absolute main channel for GML. Semi automatic coffee machines have been among the top five in terms of sales on Tmall, JD, Tiktok and other platforms for a long time.

Thus, a Shunde brand managed to carve out its place on the table dominated by foreign investment.

But squeezing onto the card table is easy, sitting firmly at the table is another matter.

The chair that ranks first domestically is unstable to sit on

Nowadays, the moat of Gemile is disappearing.

You should know that once a business makes money, it will definitely be targeted.

According to data from iMedia Consulting, the Chinese coffee machine market is currently experiencing rapid growth. The market size in 2023 is 2.41 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.69%, and has jumped to 10.73 billion yuan by 2025. It is expected to increase to 17.547 billion yuan by 2030.

The track got hot, and everyone rushed in. The card played by Gemley with the "commercialization of technology at home" back then is also being caught up one by one.

58mm boiling head, now almost every person has one. Baicui comes standard across the entire series, including the Baibaitu BAE-M2 and 02S. The Huijia KD-310 has always been marketed with a 58mm professional controller, even including the "Little White Coffee Pro" released by Little Bear in 2025.

PID temperature control and dual pump design are also declining. Previously, configurations that were only offered for 3000 yuan are now being used for 2000 yuan or even 100 yuan.

Grimley's "unique weapon" of the past has become a standard in the industry.

The positioning of 'buying the most playable professional equipment with the least amount of money' is still intriguing. But when everyone says so and every family is doing it, 'professionalism' is no longer a moat.

Moreover, domestic brands are collectively pushing upwards. In the TOP10 coffee machine market on Tmall in 2025, six domestic brands will be included.

Foreign investment Delong firmly holds the top spot with a share of 20.4%, while Gemile ranks second with a share of 7.5%, with a gap of over 12 percentage points.

Although Gemile ranks at the forefront of domestic production, looking back, they are all pursuers. Behind us, Yum! Brands has already caught up to 7.2%, only 0.3 percentage points away. Moving forward, Little Bear, Philips, and Bai Cui held on tightly, with only one or two points apart from each other.

According to the recent hot selling list of Taobao coffee machines by AI Blue Media, in the mainstream price range of 3500-5000 yuan, Gree has been surpassed by domestic brands Haishi and Yum! Brands, and its ranking has dropped to fourth place.

It can be seen that this "domestically produced first" chair is not sitting steadily by Gemile.

What makes people sweat even more is that its way of holding its position is still the same trick - burning money for marketing.

In 2023, its marketing and promotional expenses amounted to 41.21 million yuan; In 2024, it will reach 74.48 million yuan, an increase of 80% in one year; In the first three quarters of 2025, the expenses reached 67.01 million yuan, which has exceeded the full year of 2023. The sales expense ratio has consistently remained above 20%.

The money was smashed hard enough, and the effect was indeed significant. The proportion of online channel revenue has increased from 41.4% to 58.3%.

But the problem is that the more money is burned, the more efficient it is in acquiring customers. Traffic is becoming increasingly expensive, and for every additional customer willing to pay, the cost for the brand is higher than the previous year.

What's even more troublesome is that this strategy of burning money to attract new players itself has hidden dangers.

Coffee machines are durable goods with extremely low repurchase rates. Selling one unit makes it difficult to sell a second one to the same person in the short term. Growth can only rely on a steady stream of new customers.

A large part of the new customers brought in by Ke Ge Mi Lei through grass planting posts are novices who follow the trend. You should know that the learning cost of semi-automatic coffee machines is not low. If the grinding scale is not adjusted correctly, the coffee produced will either be bitter to the point of frowning or as thin as water; After finishing a cup, you still need to wash the boiling head, steam the steam pipe, and clean the countertop.

Many people give up after a few twists and turns, and the machine directly hangs on the idle fish.

The problem lies here: if a machine is listed as second-hand, the next person who originally wanted to buy a new machine may turn around and search for second-hand ones.

After all, the price of "99 New" on Xianyu is only 60% off, and potential customers are thus blocked.

Gree's money is pouring heavily into the marketing side, while the research and development side is shrinking.

Its research and development expenses have decreased from 20.66 million yuan in 2023 to 16.85 million yuan in the first three quarters of 2025. The R&D expense ratio has decreased from 6.71% to 4.02%, and then to 3.75%, even lower than the average level of 5% -7% in the home appliance industry.

In other words, for every 100 yuan it collects, over 21 yuan goes towards marketing and less than 4 yuan is left for research and development.

In its prospectus, it also admitted that the industry's technological iteration is rapid, and if it fails to keep up with product innovation in a timely manner, it may face the risk of market share erosion.

Regarding this, Jiang Han, a senior researcher at Pangu Think Tank, told AI Blue Media that "excessive reliance on marketing and neglect of research and development may lead to brand image being built more on 'traffic' and 'promotion' rather than 'technology' and 'quality'." In his opinion, if Gemile cannot continue to invest in research and development, it will be difficult to support the gold content of 'domestic first' in the long run.

The predicament of Gree is very clear: the technological barriers of the past are being gradually flattened, and the pursuers behind are getting closer and closer. Its most handy weapon is still to spend money on traffic, not on research and development.

Marketing can create scale, but it cannot create a moat.

When traffic becomes increasingly expensive, competitors become more numerous, and users become more discerning, relying solely on "making more people see" cannot sustain the future of a listed company.

Grimley needs a more powerful answer than '58 millimeters'.

This article is from the WeChat official account "AI Blue Media", 36 krypton is authorized to release.