Zipper Giant YKK Has Also Joined The Speed Competition Of Fast Fashion Brands.

You may have an impression, as we mentioned in the previous report.

Brands have launched another round of speed races.

The whole industry has been upgrading from product development to supply chain reaction.

This naturally makes the production efficiency of the upstream and downstream industries chain upgrade.

For example, zipper enterprises.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, zipper giant YKK has also joined the wave of acceleration.

The company introduced and started a new production management system to make the process time of the zipper production change from one day to one hour.

At present, China, Shanghai, Vietnam and some branches in Asia have replaced the equipment, and its flagship factory in Toyama, Heibu City, Japan will soon carry out related equipment renewal.

However, even if such equipment is replaced, YKK can only focus on the traditional clothing processing enterprises.

These enterprises are the largest source of income for YKK.

In order to compete with the fast fashion brands that have already changed the industry pattern, they also need to increase the speed of supply, but they still can't do it.

Or Zara can be renewed around four weeks or even two weeks.

"Fast fashion"

The order will need to be delivered within one month after the order is issued, and we can not catch up with them now to meet the delivery requirements.

YKK chairman Hiroaki Otani told reporters during the interview.

YKK's zipper has always competed with the industry in terms of quality advantages.

According to several media reports, its current market share is at least 50%.

The contributors of these shares are the traditional garment enterprises with long production cycle and pursuit of fine workmanship.

But as more and more enterprises in the industry become more fashionable, it is hard to say whether YKK can continue to maintain such a market position, especially when the zipper suppliers of fast fashion brands, those small factories from China, are expanding their positions rapidly because of the growth of their customers.

These small factories in China are generally small and focus on producing one or more three basic zippers.

Such a small and fine scale ensures the speed of production and delivery.

In contrast, YKK has a wide variety of products, and factories even have industrial zippers specialized manufacturing workshops.

This determines to a certain extent that it is difficult for YKK to compete in the production of basic zippers in the unit time.

What worries YKK is that the quality of these small factories is improving because of the improvement of production proficiency.

This makes some traditional garment processing enterprises pursuing quality also begin to switch to these small factories.

This is directly reflected in the performance of YKK.

YKK group zipper business in recent fiscal year sales amounted to 8 billion 800 million yen (about 531 million yuan).

This led to the announcement of the 2013 YKK Group Chairman Tadahiro Yoshida's goal of achieving zipper Sales of 10 billion yen in fiscal year 2017 (that is, the year ended March 2018).

You know, the zipper sales volume of YKK has reached 7 billion 500 million yen level. According to the growth expectation, it is not very difficult to achieve 2 billion 500 million yen growth in four years.

Now, the realization date of the 10 billion yen target has been extended to the end of the next fiscal year, that is, March 2019.

It is hard to say whether YKK can fulfill the above sales target. I am afraid even YKK himself has a question mark.

This may be why it has taken a series of measures to reduce costs at the same time in order to achieve better profitability. The firmware Department of zipper business has contributed more than 40% of revenue to YKK group and 80% of its profits.

On the one hand, YKK will increase investment in existing small decorative parts production facilities.

In the past, the decorative parts of YKK were processed in designated branch factories and pported to another designated factory, which ensured professionalism. However, unnecessary waste of time, material and manpower was generated due to pportation, warehousing and loading and unloading.

In the future, less complex parts will be processed and shipped in a factory.

On the other hand, YKK has also put artificial intelligence robots in the workshop.

By using robots, factory energy consumption can be reduced in addition to improving production efficiency and safety.

YKK is also a plan for saving money.

It will increase support for plant technology research and development.

According to the plan, the number of YKK R & D centers will soon increase from 6 to 9, and R & D personnel will also rise from 810 to 1060.

More interesting reports, please pay attention to the world clothing shoes and hats net.