Southeast Asia Is Not A Paradise For Chinese Shoe Companies To Pfer.

Recently, the world's largest sports brand Nike asked some Chinese shoe making and chemical enterprises (such as Wan bang and Feng Tai) to move their production base to India. The international footwear giants such as Clacks, Reebok, K-Swiss, Bakers and so on also increased their production lines in Vietnam and Indonesia. There were also more than 100 shoe factories in Southeast Asia.

A leaf falls and knows the autumn.

Is the world's shoe manufacturing base shifting to Southeast Asia?

Is China's shoe industry losing its competitive edge?

With these questions, reporters visited some industry experts.

Wang Ying, Secretary General of the footwear industry branch of the China Light Industry Crafts Import and Export Association, is still a leader in the world. At present, most of the world's shoemaking countries are concentrated in China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand, Europe, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Brazil of South America.

There are 5 to 6 shoe makers in the world and nearly 10 million employees in the footwear industry.

China is the largest shoe producing country in the world, producing over 10 billion pairs of shoes in 2007, accounting for 2/3 of global production.

India is the second largest footwear producing country with an annual output of about 2 billion pairs.

Brazil is the third largest shoe producing country with an annual output of about 700 million pairs.

Vietnam produces about 600 million pairs annually, ranking fourth.

Italy has 200 million pairs, and Spain and Portugal have about 100 million pairs.

China is still the world's largest exporter of shoes. In 2007, it exported 8 billion 800 million pairs of shoes, total export value of US $25 billion 300 million, and exports accounted for more than 60% of the global market share.

In the EU market, Chinese shoes accounted for 39.9% of the market share, Vietnam shoes accounted for 15.4%, Romania shoes accounted for 10.5%, India shoes accounted for 6.3%, and Indonesian shoes accounted for 4.5%.

In Russia, the market share of Chinese shoes accounted for 69.9%, Italy accounted for 8.5%, Vietnam accounted for 3.6%, Germany accounted for 2.4%, and Ukraine accounted for 1.5%.

In Japan, the market share of Chinese shoes accounted for 70.2%, Italy accounted for 8.8%, Vietnam accounted for 4.2%, Indonesia accounted for 3.1%, and Kampuchea accounted for 2.7%.

In the United States, Chinese shoes account for 72.5% of the market share, 5.8% for Italy, 5% for Vietnam, 4.7% for Brazil and 2.5% for Indonesia.

"In China, there are hundreds of enterprises that produce 20 thousand pairs of shoes every day, and there are more than 1000 enterprises that can produce 10 thousand pairs of shoes.

For a long time, the status of China's footwear exporters is unshakable.

If China stops footwear exports, no second countries can replace it.

Wang Ying said.

The competitive advantage "as labor wages, land, environmental protection costs continue to rise and RMB exchange rate, tax rebate, processing trade and other policy environment tightening, in 2007, the Pearl River Delta part of the shoe enterprises did emigrate, of which about 25% moved to Vietnam, India and other Asian countries and regions.

Recently, there are many shoe manufacturers running in Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Kampuchea and other places, but most bosses seem helpless and helpless because Southeast Asia is not a low-cost paradise that people imagine.

Asian Footwear Association Secretary General Li Peng said with emotion.

Labor costs are also rising.

According to the latest survey by the Asian Footwear Association, the cost of labor in Vietnam is currently $3.14 / day, slightly lower than India's $3.5 / day and 5 USD / day in Dongguan, China.

But Vietnam's wages continue to grow at an annual rate of 15%. In 2006, the Vietnamese government had raised the minimum wage standard for foreign factories in the country by 25%, and in 2007 increased 12% on that basis. In January this year, the Hanoi region raised another 13%.

The minimum wage in Thailand is 200 baht, about 45 yuan per day, which is equivalent to that of China. However, foreign enterprises in Thailand reflect that "Thailand workers are working very slowly, and one Chinese worker is two or three Thailand workers".

Strikes continued.

Li Peng said, "many workers in India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and Kampuchea are religious believers and have some interference in production"; "Vietnamese people" pay much attention to family life, do not want to work overtime, and do not give much money. "

More serious is the strike.

Vietnamese laws expressly stipulate that no one has the right to intervene to prevent a strike unless it leads to a public crisis.

More than 150 strikes took place in Vietnam in 2006, involving about 160 thousand people. In 2007, 541 strikes took place, involving about 350 thousand people, involving 24 provinces and municipalities.

There have been 10 strikes in southern Vietnam this year and are on the rise.

In January 8th, there were 3 workers' strike incidents in the Shun Shun export processing zone in Hu Zhiming. In January 16th, there were workers' strikes in Korea Companies, Australian companies, 2 Japanese companies and 1 Vietnamese companies in one day.

A recent large-scale strike took place at a shoe factory in Nike. At least 15 thousand people took part in the strike to express their dissatisfaction with the soaring prices in Vietnam.

The supporting ability of industry is backward.

Zhang Huarong, President of Huajian Footwear Group, said that a shoe factory in Dongguan would be able to complete the preparation of shoe making equipment, raw materials and workers in less than a week. 100% of the raw materials of the medium and low end could be bought in Dongguan.

To build a shoe factory in India and Vietnam, we must prepare tens of millions of dollars in capital, and most of them will be invested in supporting industrial facilities.

In 2004, Huajian set up two production lines in Vietnam, with an average wage of only 3/5 in China, but the industry was inconvenient. The raw materials and accessories needed to be shipped from Dongguan.

Peter Majani, chairman of the shoe industry dealers and Retailers Association in China, said that the Korean footwear industry began to grow rapidly in the early 70s of last century, and grew into the third largest export industry in 80s. The export volume of 1990 reached a record high of 4 billion 300 million dollars.

At the end of the 80s, the famous brands of world footwear industry began to pfer to other countries for production.

In 2002, exports dropped to $580 million, and the number of employees decreased by 80% compared with 1990.

The direct cause of the decline of the Korean footwear industry is the rapid rise in labor costs. The root cause is that Korea has been overly dependent on OEM since 70s, and has long neglected its self brand creation, overseas promotion capabilities and professional personnel training.

In the decades since the first batch of shoes exported in 1962, South Korea has not succeeded in creating a famous brand, nor has it set up a special sales promotion company.

By the middle and late 80s, several brands had been set up to try to enter the US market, but it was too late.

Chinese shoe enterprises should fully learn the lessons of Korean shoe industry and accelerate the pformation of their business models.

China's shoe enterprises urgently need three pformation, first of all, from export to domestic sales.

China has a population of 1 billion 300 million, the largest consumer of footwear, and the largest consumer growth potential.

The price and quality of domestic orders are much easier than export, and the risk is also narrowing. They also have an advantage in the operation of management funds.

In the face of tight external environment, shoe enterprises should strive to develop in the mainland market and change the fate of being eliminated by industry reshuffle from expanding the domestic market.

Second, pformation from hand to foot economy to headquarters economy.

That is to say, "be head over head, leave your mind in the East and move your body to the Midwest".

With the help of preferential conditions offered by the central and western regions in attracting investment, the shoe factories are moved to the various industrial parks in the mainland, thus solving the pressure of enterprise survival caused by multiple factors such as manpower and capital, allowing enterprises to return from the edge of "death", extend or create new living space.

However, high-end links such as R & D, marketing, customer resources and after-sales service remain at the coastal headquarters.

Finally, the pformation from raw material business to brand business.

When the market is booming, the shoe companies do not fulfill the division of labor to the shoe industry completely, but only assume the most basic product supply function.

As for many functions such as channel development, brand building, marketing support, after-sale service and so on, most shoe enterprises are pferred to agents.

Now the market competition is more and more intense, the backward brands are covetous, and the bargaining power of the channel traders is getting stronger and stronger. The market is likely to fall short. The shoe companies must speed up the pformation, set up the market service team and distribute the service to the local market, provide enough advertising to mold the brand, improve the agent's regional management and management mechanism, face the rigorous market development plan, the feasible regional support measures, take into account the global and local brand value added strategy, and fulfill the functions of a mature market operator.