Adidas Announces Closure Of Chinese Factories

In December 9th, Adidas announced that it would open Speedfactory in Germany, using intelligent robots to make sports shoes.

And not long ago, at the investor conference,

The decision will gradually reduce production capacity in China and pfer manufacturing plants to Southeast Asia - Vietnam, Kampuchea, Burma and other countries.

This is not the first time multinational companies have announced closing factories or reducing production capacity in China.

Before and after August this year, Dhikav, a food giant, announced that the Shanghai plant would be shut down to optimize supply chains.

This is one of the 7 production bases in China, mainly producing biscuits.

At the peak of 2014, annual output can reach 30 thousand tons.

By the end of August this year, only 1 of the 4 production lines had been shut down.

The production line is also shrinking in Nestle's coffee factory in Dongguan.

Starting from the 1 month of this year, hundreds of tons of coffee valued at tens of millions of dollars were sent to the waste incineration power plant to destroy.

It is understood that some of the destroyed coffee has a shelf life of nearly half a year.

The reason for Nestle's official response is to destroy stock to keep the product fresh.

But from 2013, the start-up time of the factory has been continuously compressed.

Why do we buy and buy more and more holidays and reduce consumption? The fact that foreign capital closes factories and reduces production capacity in China is becoming more and more common. We sort out a few factors, which may be the reason why they have moved away from China.

China's manufacturing industry costs rise

Among all the costs, the labor cost is the most significant.

According to the data of the National Bureau of statistics, from 2008 to 2013, the growth rate of above scale industries (which refers to industrial enterprises or state owned industrial enterprises whose annual main income is greater than 2000 million yuan) is two digit growth rate of 11.4%, which is more than twice the growth rate of labor productivity (per capita added value) in the same period.

This figure has been verified by foreign institutions: according to the economist, the average annual wage growth of Chinese manufacturing workers has increased by 12% since 2001.

Why is the increase so fast? Because the initial stage of reform and opening up,

Low wages and poor social welfare.

With the awakening of workers' rights and interests and the enhancement of the state's protection of workers, the wage increase is relatively large.

Last year, 4 months and months, Yuyuan shoe factory, which was the foundry of Nike, Adidas, Puma and other brand footwear products, stopped working because of workers' social security disputes.

The storm ended with the shoe factory paying social insurance and provident fund and raising worker subsidies.

In addition, because of the aging of the population, the development of the third industry has brought more and more related career opportunities, and the number and proportion of young people willing to work in manufacturing factories have been reduced.

Many manufacturing factories complain that it is more difficult to recruit workers in China than in Southeast Asia.

In addition to labor costs, raw material prices and land prices have risen.

In addition, in recent years, the preferential policies for foreign investment have been reduced, and the country's environmental policy has been tightened gradually. The rising costs have made China's attractiveness as a "world factory" less attractive.

Back to developed countries, get rid of the "made in China" word of mouth.

For sports brands like Adidas and Nike, the products produced by Chinese factories are not only for the local market, but also for a large part of the products sold around the world.

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Unlike Nestle, Yi Zi and other food companies, these two have been doing well in the Chinese market in recent years, especially Nike.

In the 2015 fiscal year, Nike's sales in China increased by 30% over the same period last year, while Adidas's sales in China increased by 10% in the fiscal year 2014 to 1 billion 810 million euros.

Shoes made by Adidas 3D printing technology, Adidas shoes made from 3D printing technology.

In addition to returning to its German stronghold, Adidas announced that it would set up a new factory in Detroit, USA in 2017.

This coincides with Nike's move.

When Obama visited Nike factory in the 5 month of this year, Nike said it plans to provide more than 10000 jobs in the United States, including manufacturing posts, technology research and development engineers and so on.

In fact, Nike has been continuously stripping off non core businesses. In the 2012-2014 years, the number of Nike's global agency factories has decreased by 14%. It has spent more energy on technology, research and development, materials and so on to grasp future market demand.

In addition, the gap between manufacturing costs and China in developed countries is decreasing.

According to a 7 month report from Boston consulting company this year, because of the decline in energy prices, the average cost of manufacturing in the United States is very close to China's production cost, which is only 5% higher than that of China.

In this case, back to the production of our country, we can get rid of the word-of-mouth of "made in China" and the "sweatshops" that have been accused from time to time.

Reduce the amount of labor, more automated production.

Like Speedfactory in Germany, Adidas's planned new factory in the United States also uses robots and automated production methods.

This will reduce the amount of labor and produce no high labor costs.

They are also closer to their technology and development centers. Returning to developed countries may be more conducive to the implementation of robotics and automated mass production.

While returning to Germany to open Speedfactory, Adidas announced that it will cooperate with Johnson automation, engineering enterprise Manz, robotics development company KSL Keilmann, and a number of scientific research institutions.

In the new mode of production, only about 10 people will participate in the pre test stage, and then fully automated production.

They plan to make the machine sew all the vamp and make the elastic sole with the new Speedfactory.

Not only Adidas but also Nike has been upgrading technology since 2012, planning to increase machine production and reduce workers' participation.

In 2012, they introduced a technology called Flyknit, which can greatly reduce the participation of labor force in the production of sports shoes: only manual sewing of shoe upper and sole interlayer is needed.

However, the technology of machine tailoring and sewing has not been fully promoted.

I-Generator, a consultant at a business consulting firm who worked for Adidas and Nike, said: "the footwear industry in the past was labor-intensive, and there were several parts of each shoe that need to be sewn by hand.

In the future, reducing workers' participation is the ultimate goal of shoemaking industry. "

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Not only

In the clothing industry, Gap (Gap) and J.Crew's OEM, TAL Group, are also developing robots and automated production.

Changes in production patterns, companies should respond to personalized and customized trends.

In sports brands, personalization and customization have become a trend in the future.

Nike, Adidas, New Balance, and other brands have launched customized services, consumers can choose their own shoes, patterns, colors and even materials. Their sportswear is also gradually opening up, and more and more varieties allow consumers to design "unique products".

Do you want your sneakers more comfortable? Apart from the personalized appearance, Adidas and Nike are planning to customize sneakers for different consumers.

In the past, only stars and celebrities could enjoy customized "privileges".

If we want to promote customized services, this is obviously another way of production that is different from pipelined systems.

Personalized demand will reduce the production volume of each inventory unit (SKU).

More than 74% of Adidas's sales now come from new products launched in 1 years.

Traditional labor-intensive factories are no longer suited to such a rapidly changing market demand.

Countries and regions with lower labor costs

In addition to those above, it is purely for the purpose of finding lower labor costs.

This is like 1970s, when Nike's shoe factories moved from Japan to Korea and Taiwan, and the 1980 year was gradually pferred to mainland China.

The cost sensitive footwear and clothing industries have always been moving to areas where labour costs are relatively low.

Now, after the cost of production in China has increased, some of them have moved to Southeast Asia, and some have moved to African countries such as Ethiopia.

Huajian is an OEM shoemaker of Jiu Xi (Nine West) and Guess.

The company started a factory of about 3500 people around Ethiopia in January 2012.

The monthly wages of workers here are around 40 dollars, less than 1/10 of the average wage of Chinese workers.

The Hongkong joint garment company mentioned above decided to expand its operations in Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Malaysia.

They are shifting their trousers orders from China to Malaysia, but maintaining the production of more complex shirts in Chinese factories.

In fact, the shift of middle and low end manufacturing industry has long started.

Around 2012, Indonesia surpassed China as Adidas's largest producer in the world.

According to the economist, the average labor cost in China's manufacturing sector is 2014 US dollars per hour in the year of 3.27, two higher than Vietnam, and 1/4 higher than that in Malaysia.

But it is worth noting that the rise in labor costs does not mean closing factories is the right choice.

All these factors will affect the decision of the company, but anyway, we hope to see the upgrading of technology made in China, the upgrading of word of mouth, and the upgrading of voice.