Can Chinese Shoe Industry Break Through The Prediction Of "2012"?

　　在世界制鞋行業里有這樣一句話：世界鞋業訂單的80％掌握在華人手里，世界成品鞋60％的訂單由華人工廠制造。中國也因而被稱為世界鞋業第一生產大國、第一消費大國、第一出口大國。

However, such titles are no longer giving people much glory, because the spectacular scenery and prosperity have been increasingly unable to cover the dull pain of China's manufacturing -- low end products, small profits, inferior position in the global value chain division of labor, no pricing power, vicious competition, and serious pollution caused by extensive overproduction.

In the shoe industry, a popular saying is that 2010 is the "2012" of China's footwear industry.

Is this a alarmist voice or a frightening reality?

    　　“大國”危機

As a labor-intensive industry, shoemaking industry is like "migratory birds". Its development and pfer are affected and restricted by many factors such as land resources, labor cost, raw material supply, environmental protection and sales market.

Because of this, the focus of the global footwear industry is constantly shifting along with these factors: early in Italy, Spain, Portugal and other countries; in the 60s and 70s of last century, in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Hongkong and other places, the 80 generation of the last century and the beginning of 90s moved to the coastal areas of the Chinese mainland until today.

With cheap land and labor costs, abundant industrial resources and perfect investment environment, by 1996, China has become the main exporter of footwear in the world, and has shown the industrial cluster development.

In general, there are four major industrial clusters:

The first is the Guangdong footwear base, represented by Guangzhou, Dongguan, Shenzhen and Huidong, which mainly produces high and medium class shoes. The two is the Zhejiang footwear industry base represented by Wenzhou, Taizhou, Wenling and other places, mainly in the production of medium and low grade shoes; the three is the western footwear industry base represented by Chengdu and Chongqing, mainly producing women's shoes; four is the production base of shoes and shoes, represented by "Wei,", "Shi Shi", "Pu Tian" and other places, mainly producing sports shoes.

In the following 10 years, the development of China's shoemaking industry is progressed by leaps and bounds. Every year, the development of China's footwear industry is growing by 10%~20%. According to statistics, the annual output of Chinese shoes exceeds 10 billion pairs in the world's annual output of 15 billion pairs of shoes.

Among them, in 2008, exports amounted to 8 billion 120 million pairs, amounting to $28 billion 800 million, domestic consumption reached about 2000000000 pairs, and footwear retail sales amounted to 300 billion yuan.

As officials of the United Nations Industrial Division say, for a long time, it is difficult to find a better country for shoes development than China.

Now, however, behind this prosperity is hidden crisis.

The crisis had alarmed three years ago.

In October 24, 2007, like Yuyuan, Huajian and Xing Heng, Chang Deng footwear industry, a symbol enterprise of Dongguan footwear industry, suddenly changed its job, and ended its course in the footwear industry at a cost of more than 4000 yuan.

This scene took place two months before the real implementation of the new labor contract law 06 days.

In September of next year, the financial crisis triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis began to sweep across the globe.

At this point, China, known as the "world factory", has obviously felt chill. The shoe-making enterprises dominated by low-cost production are in a panic.

Li Peng, secretary-general of the Asian Footwear Association, said in an interview that the competition pressure faced by Guangdong shoe enterprises was at least 10 times that of 90s.

That year, "thousands of shoe enterprises in Dongguan went bankrupt" and "2/3 of Wenzhou's enterprises became the missing persons of shoes capital" and so on.

You know, there are thousands of shoe leather enterprises in these places, and hundreds of thousands of workers are producing shoes here and there.

On the issue of China's footwear industry, economist Ai Feng concluded: first, the production volume is large, but the product grade is low, the technology content is low, the added value is low, and the export can only be sold at a low price.

The two is heavy manufacturing, but the R & D capability is low.

The three is strong production, but poor marketing.

The whole industry lacks unified coordination, and the export market is too centralized.

In order to compete for export market, local enterprises are competing against each other to reduce prices.

The four is heavy products, but brand building is weak.

Most enterprise brand awareness is very weak, some companies want to do brand but lack of strength, some enterprises have the strength but are not willing to do more energy and financial investment in the brand building.

Insiders pointed out that the fundamental problem of Chinese footwear industry and the whole manufacturing industry lies in the absence of brand names.

According to the business side, there are mainly four types of shoe factories in China: one is the pure OEM enterprise; the other is the brand agent abroad, the other is the independent brand, and the other is all kinds of businesses.

Among them, the four types are mostly in the first category.

This has led to the following series of problems:

1. the absence of pricing power.

The Chinese footwear industry, which is mainly based on OEM, is still at the low end of the value chain system of the world footwear industry. It seems to have a huge production scale just like being strangled by its throat, but it can only make clothes for others, help others to win huge profits, and earn only tens of yuan or even a few yuan for each pair of processing fees.

According to the data, a pair of Jordan shoes, which cost more than 100 dollars in the international market, pay only less than 2 dollars to the Chinese workers who produce these shoes.

In addition, because the growth of the order quantity of enterprises is far less than the growth of production capacity, the vicious competition among enterprises and the price war are great.

Therefore, although China's footwear industry has a monopoly output, it has lost its pricing power bit by bit.

2. the pain of cost.

Because there is no pricing power, the profits of the enterprises have already been very low, plus the superposition of the factors such as the price of raw materials, the appreciation of the renminbi, the reduction of export tax rebates, and the increase of labor costs, the profit margins of many enterprises have been further squeezed.

At present, the shortage of migrant workers has become a headaches for shoe enterprises.

"Wages are open to 1500-2500, or dissatisfied workers.

Some companies even have hundreds of thousands of cash to dig into other businesses, and such competition is a bit deformed.

Chen Yinghong, general manager of Fujian Luochi shoes industry, revealed.

3. trade friction.

Cost control has become a sword of Damour and Christopher hanging on the head of shoe companies.

In order to save costs, many shoe companies began to use cheap materials, resulting in product quality failed to meet the standards of importing countries, thus causing a series of trade barriers.

According to the Ministry of Commerce statistics, in the first quarter of 2008, a total of 8 countries and regions launched 17 cases of anti-dumping and countervailing investigations against Chinese products, involving an amount of $1 billion 910 million.

Chinese shoe enterprises have been caught in a vicious circle of "low price - inferior quality - exit".

Obviously, the mode of production that relied on cheap labor to make profits has been hard to sustain today.