What Is The Competitiveness Of China'S Footwear Industry?

The word "competition" is no longer unfamiliar to us. As Kaysen and Turner emphasize, "competition is a good thing in this regard, because it replaced the artificial control of powerful enterprise managers with the inhuman market regulation, and replaced the government bureaucracy's human control."

Strong competitiveness is the basic way for an enterprise to survive and gain profits.

All walks of life are facing challenges. So what is the current development and competitiveness of China's footwear industry?

Where is the road?

The present situation and existing problems of China's footwear industry in the global footwear industry, China's footwear industry can be seen suddenly.

In a short span of more than 10 years, China has jumped to become the world's largest footwear producer and exporter. Especially after China's accession to the WTO, China's footwear industry is showing a strong momentum of development.

However, with the narrowing of the distance between globalization and competition, the footwear industry should also start new thinking.

China has a long history of shoemaking. Footwear, the top three commodities in China's export earnings, accounts for 30% to 40% of total exports. It is the country with the largest export volume of shoes, and it is showing an increasing trend every year.

In 2003, China exported 1 billion 40 million pairs of leather shoes and exported US $5 billion 360 million, an increase of 8% and 11% respectively over the previous year.

Among them, the United States is still the largest export market for leather shoes in China, accounting for 60.6% of the total export volume.

According to the latest data from the General Administration of customs, the total export volume of shoes in China from 2004 to September was 3 billion 697 million 290 thousand pairs, and the total export volume reached 9 billion 179 million 429 thousand US dollars, representing an increase of 20.1% and 18.1% respectively compared with the same period last year.

From the product level, according to the China National Business Information Center, the market survey in the first half of this year shows that 85% of China's footwear exports are still low and medium priced, and the price is relatively low, usually between 10-30 US dollars, many even less than 10 U. S. dollars.

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, the backlog of leather shoes has reached 300 million pairs.

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.

At the same time, it is easy to find out the structure of China's export footwear. Currently, most of the shoes exported to China are processed by raw materials. Most of them 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. There are few opportunities to communicate with counterparts at home and abroad, and little is known about the popular consultation and brand management in the industry.

It is even more difficult for Chinese shoe making industry to train professional buyers of shoes and create fashion culture for Chinese shoes.

Moreover, the proportion of high-end shoes and private brands of export shoes is very small, and the export products are mostly carried out in the way of 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.

At the same time, the average unit price of leather shoes exported in China has not risen but declined in the past three years.

Some shoes of the same grade are lower than those of the country of origin in the foreign market, some of which are 30% lower than the average export price of Vietnamese leather shoes in neighboring countries.

Under the impact of the rapid rise of international oil prices in 2004, the cost of the footwear industry was significantly increased at the end of the year when the manpower resources were obviously insufficient.

At present, the price of each pair of shoes has risen from 11-12 yuan to 13-17 yuan, and now the cost price of each pair of shoes is increased by 15%.

This makes many small and medium shoe enterprises unable to eat.

After experiencing the Spanish burning shoes, Russia's inspection of Moscow's "Amy pull" market, and the Nigeria government's release of a list of prohibited imports, we clearly realized that the shoe industry in China carried the burden of "low price shoes".

As we all know, in May 1, 2004, the European Union completed the fifth and largest expansion in history.

The eastern enlargement will have 450 million consumers, and the market will exceed the total sum of the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Such a large and potential market means opportunities for any of the world's trading partners, and the expanded EU will be China's largest trading partner.

The eastern expansion of the EU, for Chinese footwear enterprises, is a favorable opportunity to open up the European footwear market, and is also a huge challenge.

Hi, first of all, China's footwear exporters can enter a huge market with 450 million consumers.

Secondly, after the EU enlargement, the reduction of tariff level will also be of great benefit to the expansion of our footwear exports to the European Union.

After the eastward expansion of the European Union, the tariffs of the new accession countries will be greatly reduced, which will help to reduce the paction costs of our enterprises and the new accession countries.

Third, after the eastward expansion of the European Union, with the rapid increase of the income of the 10 newly joined countries, the increase of the labor cost of their products may be faster than that of China, and the price competitiveness of our products will be maintained.

But there is joy and sorrow.

The most important impact of the EU enlargement on the export of China's footwear industry is anti-dumping.

Before the accession to the league, the 10 countries in central and Eastern Europe had more relaxed anti-dumping measures against China.

But after the accession of these countries, the EU's stringent anti-dumping rules and measures will automatically apply to the new member states, which will cause a certain blow to the export of China's shoes products.

Moreover, the technical standards of imported products will be improved after the unified market, and Chinese enterprises are more likely to meet or even exceed the old ones. After joining the alliance, the original lower standards will be replaced by the EU's "strict or even harsh" standards of safety, environmental protection and hygiene.

To this end, China's footwear export enterprises will pay more efforts, the original cost advantage will also be reduced.

At the same time, a series of technical barriers to trade will become a bottleneck restricting the export of footwear in China for a long time.

Of course, this may only be part of the shoe industry in China. What causes this situation? What are the main problems existing in China's footwear industry?

First of all, at present, China's footwear 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.

Secondly, 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.

To improve the competitiveness of China's footwear industry, we should review the past experiences and lessons, and look forward to the future development. How can our footwear industry improve its competitiveness to meet and meet current and future development?

There is no big prospect for China's footwear industry to expand in quantity.

The question before us is: how to cultivate our own brand, improve the brand content, design content and technical content of our footwear products, and how to improve the competitiveness of Chinese shoes beyond the price advantage?

First of all, in order to avoid the mistakes of South Korea and get rid of the current difficulties, China's footwear industry must create its own brand.

The road to create a brand is long and arduous, but at present, this is an unavoidable problem for Chinese shoe industry.

Represented by the United States "Adidas" and "Nike", its advantages lie in the famous international brand influence and the ability to control the global market.

Followed by the British "Clark", the Danish "ECCO" and other enterprises, they are known for their exquisite manufacturing capabilities and manufacturing processes.

The third category is represented by the footwear industry in Italy and France. Their advantages are world-class design masters and innovative capabilities.

Standing in China and watching the world, how can China's shoes make brand advantages and create its own brand?

First, we should improve the management system of modern enterprises, practice basic management skills, and cultivate a group of high-quality enterprises.