The Domestic Shoe Industry Has Suddenly Risen And Contradictions Remain Outstanding.

October 19th, global

Our country has a long history of shoemaking. As the top three commodities for export, China's footwear exports account for 30% to 40% of the total output.

Problems remain:

At present, 85% of China's footwear exports are still low and medium priced, with a low price, usually between $10-30, and many even less than $10.

For example, the average shoe price per shoe burned in September 2004 in Spain was only 5 euros. As the world's largest shoemaking country, more than 7200 shoe making enterprises in China have already formed five major footwear production centers in Guangdong, Fujian, Wenzhou, Chengdu and Chongqing.

There are as many as 2000 shoe factories in Dongguan, Guangdong and its surrounding areas.

From China's footwear production base, we can see that manufacturers blindly expand production, many private small factories have expanded production lines are very serious.

The output of shoes in China is still increasing by 3 to 5 times higher than that of consumption. The contradiction between oversupply and demand is still outstanding.

At present, most of the shoes exported to China are processed by raw materials, most of which are made for some enterprises such as China, Taiwan, Hongkong and Korea.

Although some domestic brands have reached the intermediate or even higher level in the international market, they have not been recognized by the outside world.

In our country that produces 6 billion pairs of shoes a year, there is no platform for shoe industry to communicate with international counterparts in shoe technology, shoes fashion and shoes brand.

The advanced equipment and excellent product quality of our shoemaking enterprises make many international brands set China as their own brand shoe processing workshop, and have few opportunities to communicate with counterparts at home and abroad.

In addition, the well-known footwear industry in Wenzhou has experienced a shortage of skilled workers in recent years.

At present, Wenzhou lacks a large number of skilled personnel, especially high and intermediate technology talents.

Since last year, the time span and severity of the shortage of migrant workers have been more prominent than in previous years.

According to statistics, in 2004, the demand for labor market in Zhejiang was about 1 million 340 thousand, and the number of job seekers was about 881 thousand, with a gap of 459 thousand and a gap of 34.25%.

The lack of high-tech personnel has led many small and medium-sized enterprises to barely live on the premise of not developing new varieties, and some small family businesses are forced to close down.

That is due to the rapid expansion of the footwear industry in recent years, resulting in disorderly competition among many small and medium-sized enterprises, coupled with the demand for skilled skilled workers in the footwear industry, the shortage of high skilled talents, and the government's introduction of a series of measures to help farmers, prompting many farmers to return to the land, resulting in a shrinking labor supply.

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China's shoe industry has excess production capacity and a large number of export enterprises. Quite a number of shoemaking enterprises have short-sighted behavior.

On the one hand, enterprises do not pay much attention to scientific research, development and design. They often process or imitate each other and plagiarize. They seldom invest the necessary funds to research and develop products, and devote little time and energy to the series of market research and analysis.

This situation results in problems such as poor information in the international market, lagging behind in product design, single color variety and poor comfort, resulting in low export grades and low prices.

The middle and low market has also faced competition from emerging footwear producers such as Vietnam, and footwear exports have been seriously threatened.

In this regard, some export enterprises do not practise their internal strength, but instead adopt price cuts.

Some new export enterprises take the low price strategy as the guide for squeezing into the international market. In addition, the "foreign bidding" reduces the price and makes the price of shoes unable to improve.

At the Canton Fair, Chinese enterprises are killing each other and vicious competition, and the appearance of foreign businessmen's profits is not uncommon.

On the other hand, due to the small scale of enterprises and the lack of product development and quality, China's shoes will not be able to get rid of the low price line in the international market for a long time.

Although China is a big country in the footwear industry, it is not a powerful country.

There is also a big gap between Chinese shoemaking enterprises and world famous shoe enterprises.

First, there is a lack of world-class footwear designers.

At present, there are quite a few people engaged in leather shoes design in China, but most of the designers are from the front-line staff, after short term training, they come to design posts. In recent years, a group of students have received university education and are still young in design posts.

Moreover, it does not attach enough importance to the styling and functional design of leather shoes, so it is difficult to form a world-class footwear design fashion center in China at present.

In this industry that pays attention to fashion, personality and beauty, if there is no strong design talent with innovative ability, it will become a bottleneck for Chinese shoe enterprises to become stronger.

Second, lack of managerial talent.

China's shoemaking enterprises have been developing rapidly for more than 20 years after reform and opening up, and the scale of enterprises is also expanding. However, the corresponding high-quality footwear management personnel have not kept pace with the same time. The overall design personnel and management personnel are of low quality, and can not adapt themselves to becoming the world's shoemaking power people. Third, scientific research and education are lagging behind.

The higher education of footwear industry started relatively late in China, which is one of the reasons for the lack of talents and managerial talents in the footwear industry. At the same time, the development of high-grade shoe materials can not keep pace with the development of the international situation, to a certain extent, affects the improvement of the quality of domestic leather shoes. Fourth, there is a lack of internationally known brand names.

I think the number of well-known brands is a measure of the strength of the industry to a certain extent.

At present, the shoe industry in China lacks what is known as an internationally famous brand, and the creation of an international brand requires time, experience, capital and planning. Because of this, it is more important to focus on building internationally renowned footwear brands.

At present, the buyers of shoe products in China's shoe making industry need a small proportion of their own brands, and export products are mostly produced by OEM.

For example, most of the footwear products produced in China are sold in low-grade shoe stores in the United States. Although the shadow of Chinese shoes can be found in the middle and high-end shoe stores in the United States, the price is obviously lower than those of Italy, Spain, Brazil and other countries, and all the Chinese made leather shoes do not have their own brands, and they all use foreign trademarks and brands.