After The Outbreak: The Domestic Clothing Consumer Market Has Not Yet Fully Recovered The Cancellation Of Overseas Orders.

Today, the domestic clothing consumption market has not yet fully recovered. The outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic abroad has hit the overseas consumer market, and domestic trade and foreign trade are in the process of uncertainty. Not only enterprises but also many individual operators are being tested. Reporters visited two major clothing bases in Shenzhen: the South Oil clothing wholesale market and the Sungang foreign trade clothing market, and saw and heard different "stories".

Closure: the frustration of a clothing store owner

Chen Wen finally decided to close her clothing store and prepare to sue the owner of the court, hoping to get her two month deposit that she paid for her rental shop, though she did not think much of it. When reporters interviewed her in early March, she also said she hoped to persist. Eventually, the continued downturn of orders, coupled with the owners unwilling to provide more rent relief, she no longer have the capital to sustain.

Chen Wen's clothing store is located in lixiu clothing culture street, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, and its other name may be more familiar with the clothing industry: South oil wholesale clothing market. There are more than 10 old factories in the wholesale market, the lower floors of most factories are common clothing stores, while the middle and high floors are the chains of the clothing industry chain, such as studio, clothing design studio, live broadcast space, and even some garment factories.

Two years ago, Chen Wen put down the pavement at the corner of the two floor of a building, which costs about 30 thousand yuan a month. Although the location of the shop is not good, the rent is the highest level she can afford. I thought that after years of struggle in the clothing industry, I finally owned my own shop and realized my boss's dream. But reality is far more brutal than imagination. Chen Wen is mainly engaged in the wholesale of high-end women's clothing. Customers are mainly women's clothing stores in Hunan and Jiangxi, and occasionally meet overseas customers. But in 2019, her shop barely managed to make ends meet. When she learned from her colleagues that she was making more money in exports, she decided to shift her focus to Southeast Asia. She even invited clients to come to the store to talk about it even a few years ago.

January and February were the peak seasons in the shops, because spring clothes in Shenzhen occupy a place in China. Clothing owners everywhere will come to the store to book the new spring in advance, but the new crown has changed all her plans. Since February, the whole building is basically closed. There is no domestic order and no income. Overseas customers who had hoped for it were also delayed.

In mid March, the reporter once again came to the South Oil clothing wholesale market. Compared with the emptiness at the beginning of the month, the current passenger flow has returned to seven or eight of the previous day. But most of the people in the market are couriers, who keep packing and shipping. There is still a big gap between the people who shop and shop in the past. Like Chen Wen's non Street shop, it is a long time not to see a guest.

When the reporter interviewed in the store, he met a clothing wholesaler from Vietnam. He said that although Vietnam's clothing industry has cost advantages, it has developed rapidly in recent years, but he has been receiving goods in Shenzhen in recent years, because Shenzhen's design is relatively new and its fabrics are also high-grade. But these days he did not worry about the order, because he had a little uncertainty about the impact of the spread of the epidemic on the economy.

Chen Wen said, wholesale clothing has a strong seasonal character, after the spring season, will be linked to a few months of the off-season. She originally hoped that the rent relief would take a breath, but eventually the landlord gave her only one month's rent free. Chen Wen said, like her, there are a few people who are preparing to close their stores, whether they are domestic or exported. Many people still wait and see, hoping to stay in the autumn season. But Chen Wen said that many people didn't close their doors because they paid half a year's rent in advance, and even if they didn't do it, they would not come back.

Foreign trade is not easy to sell domestically.

Referring to Shenzhen's foreign trade clothing market, Sungang's foreign trade clothing market also plays an important role. Although many foreign trade garments are no longer in charge of foreign trade clothing, they can also see the prosperity of foreign trade clothing at that time.

"In fact, the garments sold in some foreign trade clothing stores, which are known as original or single orders, mostly come from garment factories that undertake foreign brand orders, and enter the domestic market due to more defective materials or some defective products. However, foreign brands' overseas orders will be controlled in a very small amount. "Miss Chen, who has been selling foreign trade clothes for many years in Sungang's foreign trade clothing market, is moving goods," she told reporters. Recently, several major clothing export enterprises have taken the initiative to contact, hoping to turn some surplus goods into domestic market.

Huang Hui (alias) is engaged in the clothing textile trade profession, she is talking with Miss Chen, she tells the reporter, many factories both do the foreign trade list, also makes the domestic single. Most of the European and American customers of their clothing trade companies have suspended or cancelled orders. "Now that overseas has become a new center of the epidemic, the export of goods is seriously hampered, and the demand for local clothing consumption market is sluggish, and orders decline significantly. Especially now that the consumption market in Europe and the United States is in the doldrums, customers have become cautious and have cancelled or postponed orders from March to June. Huang said, "70% of the European and American customers have this situation. The company is planning to hold some online docking meetings to see if we can ship more."

Huang Hui told reporters that he knew some factory owners who worked for brands such as UNIQLO and so on. Now the factories in Japan may be better than those in the European and American markets, but Japanese customers, including UNIQLO, are afraid to place orders in the autumn and winter. According to Japan's Ministry of finance trade statistics, imports from Chinese clothing and subsidiary products also decreased by 65.7% in February. In Shenzhen, many large shopping centers, UNIQLO and other brands also did not see large-scale promotional activities.

In fact, in the 2008 financial crisis, some cities were once forced to export foreign trade to domestic sales. In March 25th of this year, the Ningbo Municipal People's government signed a strategic cooperation agreement with more than 15000 enterprises. Around the target of supporting enterprises to expand orders, steady production capacity, steady employment, and push outward oriented production capacity to turn to the domestic demand market, more than a total of Ningbo enterprises will participate in the activities in the coming year, which will lead local enterprises to sell more than 80 billion yuan in annual sales volume, so as to achieve the goal of turning foreign trade into domestic demand. The order is over 20 billion yuan.

It seems that we can see the pressure of foreign trade clothing operators everywhere.

"Even if there are goods, we dare not take more. Now the domestic epidemic has just eased, and there are not many people to shop. Now we are dealing with the inventory at low prices." Miss Chen told reporters, "now from foreign trade to domestic sales is not like 2008, product quality is better, we need to face more pressure." Reporters saw in the clothing market, more than half of the shops have resumed business, but there are still many foreign trade clothing stores in the closed state. A businessman told reporters that because the clothing market was transformed from the old warehouse, the store rent was not too high, so barely able to "stick to".

Many shop operators interviewed hope that the "May 1" holiday can give the market, at least the recovery of the domestic demand market will bring a qualitative leap.