Huadu Leather Industry Faces Unprecedented Impact

Leather and leather industry has always been an important pillar of Huadu District's economy.

However, in recent years, with the development of e-commerce and the rising cost of labor, Huadu District, a traditional labor-intensive manufacturing industry, has fallen into a big dilemma.

Recently, Yifu Lin, Professor of the National Development Research Institute of Peking University and chief economist of World Bank, went to Huadu District, and suggested that most of the leather and leather enterprises in the region could not pfer to Africa.

Making money next month or closing down today

Speaking of Huadu Shiling Town, many people will not be strangers.

This small Southern Town, which was unknown in the 70s of last century, relies on leather and leather production.

Taking Shiling as a gathering place, there are more than 8000 leather and leather production enterprises in Huadu District, more than 18000 business businesses, about 300000 employees, and more than 700 million leather products each year, with an annual output value of over 20 billion yuan.

70% of its products are exported to all parts of the world, occupying more than 55% of the national luggage market, occupying over 70% of the popular box Market in Europe and the United States.

Shilin Town, Huadu District, deserves to become the "leather capital of China".

However, with the development of the times, under the influence of the financial crisis, the development of electricity providers and the increase of labor costs, the leather industry in Huadu District has been impacted unprecedentedly.

Although Shiling also has all kinds of leather factories and small workshops, they are all small, and they may still make money today, and they will go bankrupt next month.

In the eyes of an industry, today's Shilin leather and leather enterprises are very small in compression capacity. "Fengshui turns around" happens almost every day. "Even if it looks like a big factory now, if you don't have an order, it may take one or two months to start again."

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Data from Shilin Town labor and social security service center showed that in the first half of this year, the whole town handled 334 cases of labour disputes, an increase of 6% over the previous year, involving 2069 people, involving an amount of 10 million 240 thousand yuan.

Among them, the boss absconded with wages in 30 cases, an increase of about 42% over the same period, involving about 527 people, involving an amount of about 3 million 220 thousand yuan.

Related people said that most of these labour disputes were generated in leather leather industry. "Some bosses asked their employees to sing K for drinks the first day, and they fled in second days."

This confirms it from another aspect.

Instability of development.

The leather industry must move to Africa?

"The industry is still in the low end stage, and the economic development is not enough, and the industrial culture is not strong."

Shiling Town Party committee secretary Huang Sujuan once evaluated the existing problems of Shiling leather goods industry.

How to revitalize Huadu leather leather industry? Almost all governments and enterprises agree that "we must make the brand bigger and create the industrial culture."

But this is obviously not easy.

Yifu Lin, Professor of the National Development Research Institute of Peking University and chief economist of World Bank, went to Huadu to investigate the overall development status of Shiling leather goods city.

How can we get the train of big data? "We are trying to make brand, but lack of leveraging funds", "labor costs continue to rise, how to survive and how to upgrade our enterprises?"

At the forum, many local entrepreneurs complained.

In this regard, Yifu Lin believes that Shiling has more than 10000 enterprises, if the ten thousand enterprises are making brands, it is no brand.

Most of these enterprises do not have the ability to make brands at present. They can only exert their existing capabilities and go out and move to countries with low wage costs.

Where should we go? Yifu Lin thinks that enterprises can move together to Africa.

"At present, the level of development in Africa is equivalent to the level of China in the 80s of last century, and local wages will not rise at least ten years.

The obvious advantage it can offer is the "labor cost depression". The leather and leather enterprises that are unable to make the brand can use the existing capital, technology and other capabilities to pfer them to Africa as a production base and then enter other countries.

Yifu Lin said that shifting to low wage countries is not only the leather and leather enterprises of Shiling, but also the inevitable trend for Guangdong and China's labor-intensive industries.

For the local side, this will help to increase the opportunities for industrial pformation and upgrading and "change the cage for birds"; and for enterprises, it will be another opportunity for survival. Big enterprises can continue to grow bigger and small and medium-sized enterprises have the chance to grow bigger.