Pressure On China's Foreign Trade Enterprises Needs Transformation And Upgrading

Speaking of hiring, Shao Longhe, the general manager of the company, smiled a little reluctantly.

Shao Longhe's Zhejiang Huafu group is an import and export business. Its main export products include Spin , clothing And so on. He told reporters that every year after the end of the year, the company's labor costs will rise by 15%-20%. However, wages have risen and recruitment season has arrived. At present, the company still has a 30% labor gap.

Shao Longhe disclosed that the average wage of the ordinary workers of the company today is about 3500 yuan (RMB), which has far exceeded the level of 800-1500 yuan in Southeast Asian countries such as Kampuchea and Vietnam, or even higher than that in Eastern Europe.

Cheap labor and low RMB exchange rate have been the two prominent advantages of China's foreign trade. However, in recent years, more and more expensive labor force, constantly appreciating renminbi and competition from emerging market countries with lower factor prices have made many Chinese enterprises engaged in labor-intensive products import and export business shouting "pressure mountain".

Reporters in the visit found that under the double pressure, more and more foreign trade enterprises have stepped out of the road of transformation and upgrading. Some enterprises choose to conform to the trend and promote industrial transfer.

He Weihong, President of Limited by Share Ltd, Zhejiang Orient Group, said that the company is gradually setting up offshore warehouses in the target market such as the United States, which will save the time ahead of the export business. At the same time, production bases and offices will be set up in Southeast Asian countries with cheaper labor and land and so on, so that the production of goods will be shifted back to obtain new production advantages.

"Now that the days of" walking on the cross legged legs "are easy to do foreign trade is over, and there is a way out for hard transformation. He Weihong disclosed that the clothing factory established by the company in 2013 in Phnom Penh, Kampuchea, completed 5 million pieces of clothing in the year, and its sales volume reached about 9000000 dollars. That year, it realized profits and is now expanding. Next, it plans to set up a printing and dyeing plant in Vietnam and set up offices in Burma and Bangladesh. "In the next few years, we intend to transfer more than half of our capacity to Southeast Asia."

In addition to "sailing smoothly", the implementation of brand strategy is also increasingly valued by Chinese enterprises.

For a long time, the lack of well-known brands has always been an "unbearable weight" for Chinese enterprises in the process of internationalization. Crisis and pressure forced many Chinese enterprises to strengthen brand building and upgrade to the high-end industrial chain.

"Our plan is to consolidate the low profit margins of OEM (OEM), and strive to do well in ODM (original design and manufacture) and develop OBM. The three roads should be combined to give the old industry new vitality. Tan Yaxian, President of Guangzhou textile industry and trade group, told the China News Service reporter.

The effectiveness of this initiative is beginning to show. In 2013, when the international economic situation was low, the export volume of the group exceeded 1 billion 500 million US dollars, up by 22% over the same period last year.

In addition to promoting independent brands to go out, acquiring international brands is also one of the important ways for Chinese enterprises to enter the international marketing channel and open up new development space.

In 2012, Huafu group bought a Finland clothing brand FinnKarelia, which has a history of more than 60 years and has more than 1500 stores in Europe. In Shao Longhe's view, FinnKarelia's customer base is more loyal, its sales network is mature, and export clothing can directly enter the European sales terminal, which is more convenient than opening stores abroad, and is easier for overseas consumers to accept.

It is worth noting that the acquisition of such a well-known brand, the company spent only a few hundred thousand dollars, from 9 competitors successfully won. "Our attitude towards this brand is protection rather than annexation, which has won the trust of Finland." Shao Longhe told reporters.

According to the introduction, some customers failed to recognize the "Chinese boss" at the beginning of the brand change, but now they have stabilized. "Brand management requires patience. We believe that this road can go through and will persist for a long time. Shao Longhe said.

The main business group of silk textile and garment company has opened another cooperation route. In 2013, after a French strategy consulting firms pulled together, Wan Shi Li launched a strategic cooperation with Mark Rosie, a silk company with a history of more than 120 years.

According to the agreement, the "French made" high-end scarf brand launched by Wan Shi Li group will be commissioned by Mark Rosie, and the whole process from raw material procurement, design to manufacturing will be completed in France.

Ma Tingfang, general manager of the company, said that cooperation with french mature enterprises can improve design and research capabilities, better grasp international fashion, and shorten the gap with international brands. "We can no longer compete on price and quantity. We must win by quality and take the high-end line."

In addition, while consolidating the market share of the US, Europe and Japan, it has also become a new choice for enterprises to expand the emerging markets such as Eastern Europe and South America.

"The challenges facing foreign trade are indeed greater than before, but we are constantly upgrading and upgrading with the attitude of" taking a quick step ". Shao Longhe said.

　　 Related news: M society needs new thinking of clothing operation

Kenichi Ohmae, a famous Japanese scholar, takes the development course of Japan in the past 20 years as the object of study, and puts forward a judgement of the type of social development, that is, the middle-income class with the largest number of people, except for a small number of people who can squeeze into a few high-income classes, most of them fall into low or middle income. Thus, the society is like a "M" word, which is called M society.

According to Kenichi Ohmae's statistics, Japan has a population of 80% last year and has become a middle and low income class. In the view of Zhang Qing, the founder of the key road, China's entire social structure has not yet formed an olive type. It has gradually presented the M type. The originally weak middle class is sinking down, and the M society is getting closer and closer to us.

Consumers in the M society began to move in two directions, and then the consumer market shifted to two directions of luxury and saving. In the money saving mode, consumers try to find cheap and high-quality products as far as possible. Because one of the classes in the M society wants to get high quality, but economic pressure makes them prefer low priced products. This is the fundamental reason why fast fashion brands are popular in recent years, both in the European and American markets and in the Chinese market. Whether it's H&M's. Designer Affiliate, celebrity endorsement and limited edition, or the market of the basic components of UNIQLO and the light weight of hi-tech fabrics, their products are in line with the consumer demand of M society consumers.

For China's clothing brands, when the whole industry is caught in the stock crisis and stagnation deadlock, it is a simple way to break the stalemate through mergers and acquisitions, but this is obviously not a way to solve the contradiction fundamentally. The confrontation between local brands and foreign brands is not how much resources are lost, but how resources are used. Many brands such as ESPRIT, Giordano and so on have developed to super large volume in those years. But in recent years, they have fallen off quickly. The reason is that the product innovation has not changed, and the brand style has changed, so that they may lose the market. UNIQLO was also quickly disappearing by ZARA and GAP, but now it relies on technological innovation's brand original power to rise again, becoming the third fastest fashion brand.

China's sporting goods industry is facing a severe inventory crisis in recent years. Anta has just released its 2013 earnings report, and its sales revenue has declined compared with 2012. On the contrary, the professional sporting goods brand represented by Decathlon began to encroach on the market of local sporting goods brand in the two or three line market. Decathlon represents the real sports fashion, cheap and professional, which can satisfy the entry-level products of running, cycling, swimming, fitness, mountaineering, skiing and so on. On the contrary, China's sporting goods enterprises have been selling dog meat for leisure for many years. Products are not competitive, and homogenization is a serious problem.

In the past two years, the enterprises are actively cleaning up the inventory problem of the clothing industry, but the problem of inventory is still the problem of "brand original power". Develop products that are suitable for the market, appear at the right time at the right time, and the products are favored by consumers. Only by solving these problems that belong to the nature of business can we really solve the so-called "inventory" problem.