Is The Footwear Industry In Wenling Really Old?

Talking about the traditional industries in Wenling footwear industry Definitely the best. After years of rapid development, these years, Wenling Shoe enterprises As if entering the slack period, the order is difficult to receive, the profit is thin, and has fallen into the impression that "the quality is not high". In particular, in the past two years, Wenling shoes have been walking on the export market with "balance beam", which makes people think that the footwear industry in Wenling has become "old". But this is not the case. Many shoe companies in Wenling still have vigorous vitality.

From Africa to Japan, from small shops to exclusive stores.

Market competition for shoemaking industry

"Export situation is not good this year, export orders are much less." "Customers are afraid to place big orders. The export enterprises in Wenling should be prepared for" cold resistance ". This is what some entrepreneurs and reporters said in Wenling this year. For this year's export situation, everyone is in a state of apprehension. Indeed, the export volume of Wenling's foreign trade decreased by 1.52% in the first three quarters of this year. As the main export force of Wenling, the export volume of Wenling shoes increased by only 1.92%.

However, such a situation did not appear in the Taizhou Shoe Co., Ltd., located in Dashi. The production workshop of the shoemaking industry is still in full swing, and orders have been placed in the summer of next year. During this period, the land continued to issue seventy thousand or eighty thousand pairs of Japanese customers. Gym shoes 。 What makes a shoemaking industry able to swim upstream? Reporters walked into this business.

Standardized production, European customers thumb up

Ye Guowei, chairman of the shoe industry, has not yet seen the first time the reporter arrived at the production workshop.

There is no confusion in the shoes industry, and the production workshop of the shoe industry is orderly. "Our orders account for more than a half of the customers in Europe, America and Japan, and their requirements for the production environment are quite high, which also urges us to standardize the production workshop." Ruan Zheng, general manager of the enterprise, said that the first shoe industry was the first batch of enterprises approved by Taizhou city's safety production standardization construction. Last year, they spent more than 20 yuan and set up new shelves in the workshop. "Before, the goods were stacked up rather untidy, and some even blocked the fire passage. There was no small safety hazard. Now, all goods are arranged neatly on the shelves, not only safer, but also the whole workshop is cleaner. "

In recent years, a lot of money has been invested in equipment renovation. "This is a newly built punching machine. The old equipment is not only inefficient, but also has low safety factor, and the belt is exposed. The new equipment is not only safe, but also producing much faster. " Ruan Zhengcai took the reporter to visit the production workshop, pointing to the newly changed equipment. "This automatic pattern machine is also available. When you are sewing the car, you can automatically finish the drawing if you enter the pattern." The workers who sat in front of the equipment took the program board and quickly input the required line pattern. After pressing the key, the automatic pattern machine quickly reflected the pattern on the cloth with the rapid click.

"At that time, we bought 6 automatic pattern machines at a time, and the efficiency of one can catch up with four or five old equipment, and the details of needle distance and turning arc are very precise." Ruan Zheng said that they also bought 10 automatic tangent machines, which can help reduce 30% of the labor.

After standardized and upgraded workshop, customers have been affirmed. "Before the European customers came to our workshop to visit, they also thumbs up." Ruan Zhengcai told reporters.

Enter the African market and compete with others at low prices

While many companies are worried about foreign trade orders, the shoe industry has not so much trouble. "At least this year's order is still very good, the task has been overfulfilled, and many orders can not be processed because of time. From 15 to 21 last month, we received four batches of customers. Ruan Zheng said.

The reason for this achievement is that Ye Guowei, chairman of the board, is mainly due to the competitiveness brought by the continuous improvement of the market in the layout market.

"When we first started playing sports shoes, the main market is not in Japan, Europe and the United States and other countries and regions, but in the pursuit of low prices in South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and other regions." Ye Guowei said.

Although the shoe industry was established in 1997, the real focus on sports shoes is after 2000. At that time, the sports shoes industry chain in Fujian has been formed and is well-known in the market. Some of the shoe companies in Dashi began to make their way in the sports shoes market.

Ye Guowei told reporters that the shoes have just begun to enter Africa, the main market is in Nigeria, Uganda and other countries, the shoe quality is not high, as long as the price is low. "At that time our shoes were sold to people selling shoes in Africa, similar to selling to the wholesale market, and the grades of shoes were low."

"Many people regard Africa as an emerging market, but in fact, in 2000, the competition for Wenling shoes in Africa was fierce." Ye Guowei said, because the main competition in the price, so in the quality and design and other aspects of the request is lower, the threshold is low, many shoe factories in Wenling have begun to enter the African market, making the African market more and more difficult to do, the smaller the profit.

Selling into South African supermarkets, product development has matured.

In the African market, the four or five year old shoe industry has seized the opportunity of sending to the market in an accident, and shifted the focus of the market to the South African market. Ye Guowei said, "don't think that the South African market is just paying attention to prices like other African countries, and their demands are higher than those in the Middle East and other markets."

Also in the South African market, Ye Guowei sold his shoes from ordinary stores to supermarkets. Shoes sold into supermarkets are different from those of ordinary shops. It is in communication with customers and continuous adjustment of enterprises that the shoe industry has taken a new step.

"Generally, after we have received the order, we design the design and wait for the customer to pass the production. After that, we have put forward the requirements for our R & D capability." Ye Guowei said that in order to maintain a cooperative relationship with the supermarket, the casual shoes have been constantly updated in their materials and styles, and their research and development capabilities have also improved. "Although we have always attached great importance to shoe samples since the production of sports shoes, these shoes were rarely developed by ourselves at the beginning, but basically they were purchased from Fujian and other places, and then they were modeled on production. But this is not feasible at this time. We must be able to develop new shoes.

As a result, the shoe industry began to try its own research and development. "At the beginning, customers provided color matching maps, and we developed our own styles. Later, R & D technology became more and more mature. When the shoes enter the supermarket, the unit price also increases with each other. The original pair can only be sold for 1 US dollars ~2 US dollars, and it can sell US $2 ~3 dollars when exported to South Africa. Today, our company has a professional R & D team composed of more than 20 people. Every year, 600 ~800 shoe samples are selected for customers to choose from.

Franchised stores grow olive branches, and the market forces enterprises to grow.

If the cooperation with South African customers brings maturity of the R & D capability of a shoe-making industry, then the cooperation with customers such as Southeast Asia brings a higher level of quality.

"The price of shoes exported to Southeast Asia is higher than that in South Africa, because they are more particular about the material, production process and details of shoes." In 2008, the shoemaking industry attracted customers from Southeast Asia with its price advantage, and there was also a new change -- from supermarkets to franchised stores.

"Stores have very specific requirements for the quality and details of their products. For example, we used to brush 1 millimeters or 2 millimeters when we brushed glue, but they couldn't do it. They must be very meticulous. Therefore, when we are in production, we can only quickly correct them according to their requirements. Because customers are more concerned about the physical properties of shoes, the shoe industry has also built a testing center in the factory. After testing its own standards, they dare to send out products.

"Before the testing center, all the shoes were sampled by the customer, and we were all in a panic at that time. We were afraid that there would be problems in the inspection." Ye Guowei said, "once the shipment was delivered, the temperature of the container was high, causing the shoes to be opened, and the customers were sampled."

With its own testing center, such a situation has rarely happened and customer satisfaction has been greatly improved. "We just started buying the tensile testing equipment. Later, the more equipment we buy, the more wearable, aging, color fastness, folding resistance and many other properties we can detect independently." Ye Guowei said, "now we are used to testing every batch of shoes and raw materials."

In the year when the testing center was built and the quality of shoes improved, the shoemaking industry successfully entered the European market. "Last year, orders in Europe and the United States accounted for about 30%, which has been mentioned more than 50% this year, and we have also developed the Japanese market in the past two years." Speaking of the Japanese market, Ye Guowei felt that this is another story that forced the market to progress. "Japanese customers are more fastidious than Southeast Asian customers. Before we cooperate with them, the other side will visit our factory almost every month, and list all the aspects of material quality, production environment, production process, and item arrangement, so that we can improve it. After a year of investigation, we began to place orders for us, from the initial ten thousand or twenty thousand pairs to the current number of hundreds of thousands a year, and their cooperation brought about not only the growth of orders, but also the improvement of product quality.

Ye Guowei summed up the shoe industry for so many years and said: "the market forces the growth process of enterprises. This is a cycle, the market demand is raised, the production requirements of enterprises have been improved, and the improvement of production quality has brought more demanding market and more orders to enterprises.