Operating Observation Of Rudong Textile Industry: The Force Of Counter Current

Invisible market

"Home textile is not ideal for high-end products."

Like other textile enterprises, Nantong Xizhilang Textile Co., Ltd. felt helpless when it came to the market downturn. General manager Zhou Bin said that last year's performance fell by 34% year on year.

Jacquard is a kind of large pattern weave made by jacquard machine. There are single flower, double flower, four flower or more of the same pattern in the whole fabric, and the number of warp cycles is from hundreds to thousands. "Things are good things, but when products are developed, customers may not be able to take them." Zhou Bin said that for home textiles, high-end has no absolute advantage, the situation is stronger than people.

To provide supporting products for "Dieshiqiao" is subject to the market and back-end customers, which is the basic context of the development of many home textile enterprises in Rudong. The story of Xi zhilang also follows this clue, but it has its own "Fan Wai".

In Guangdong, the company has been working for many years to provide fabrics for local handicraft factories to make decorative products for export to Europe and America. From the production of raw materials, customer groups and sales methods, this part of the product is almost completely different from jacquard cloth, such as two different fruits produced on a grafted tree.

The raw material of this kind of cloth is chemical filament. "It can be used for packaging gift boxes, making silk flowers or other decorations, although the grade is not high, but the use is relatively cold." Zhou Bin said that this is a rather invisible market, in which there are few real participants. He doesn't even think it's a market.

In a sense, he has witnessed the growth of this invisible market. Many years ago, when the factory was still producing white cloth, it delivered goods to Keqiao, Zhejiang Province, where he met a businessman who was engaged in the production of flip flop fabrics. "He was a college student from a famous university. He was just starting at that time. He rode a motorcycle to see here and there." Zhou Bin recalled with great interest, "at that time, we had a kind of cloth dyed with gold, and he was quite hot in the eye, saying that it would be better to make Christmas ornaments."

At the same time, Zhou Bin also saw business opportunities, and quickly organized personnel to visit Guangdong to see how big the market is. "I went to talk to the local arts and crafts factory and slowly got a foothold there."

The main characteristics of the invisible market are small scale, stable demand and high monopoly. Zhou Bin said that all over the country, such handicraft factories are relatively concentrated in Dongguan, Yiwu, Zhejiang and Tianjin, while there are only one or twenty companies that supply handicrafts cloth all over the country, of which only three are engaged in production and the rest are middlemen. The biggest one is the enterprise founded by the college student.

"At the beginning, the fabrics of different houses had different shades of the same color. Later, we established a unified standard. For example, red No.1 and red No.2 are the same. You don't even need to discuss what color you make. I use your color number, and the standard will be formed over time. "

However, the viability of those Arts and crafts factories is not strong, but because of the terminal demand always exists, after a batch of factories collapsed, a new batch grew up quickly. In view of this, cloth enterprises choose to settle accounts with them in cash, which reduces a lot of risks.

The invisible market weakens competition and calms down the ups and downs. Zhou Bin said that the circle has not been joined by new suppliers for many years. First, most people do not know that there is such a market; second, supply and demand are relatively balanced, and it is difficult for others to get involved. In recent years, Xizhilang company's annual sales of craft cloth are stable at 70 million yuan.

After painting

"You see, these rows of spindles are the list to be driven in the near future. Our order has been placed in three months. " In an interview with Jiangsu Rongxu Textile Co., Ltd., Zhou Liangliang, the director of the factory, made a fresh impression.

August, 2019. Although the epidemic situation did not come until half a year later, the textile market has been declining due to Sino US trade friction. Among the many textile enterprises visited by the reporter, Rongxu textile is a "different type". It does not need to reduce the production capacity, nor does it have to use all solutions to win orders. It just needs to open up full power and full load production.

Rongxu textile is engaged in the development and production of yarn dyed fabrics. Its main products are jacquard fabric, elastic fabric, Oxford textile and so on. It is exported to Europe, America, Japan, South Korea and some Southeast Asian countries. The company was founded in 2013, only four years later, its annual sales exceeded 100 million yuan, becoming a stable supplier of Prada, LV and other high-end brands and H & M, UNIQLO and other well-known brands.

Xu enlin, chairman of the board, has no origin in textile industry. Without the management experience of textile industry and the general rules of the industry, Rong Xu spent his first year in turmoil. But Xu refused to gain experience by learning from other textile enterprises. He does not want to copy any of the usual practices of others, and believes that "borrowing" itself is an act that enterprises must abandon.

Most of the workers recruited by Xu enlin came from other textile enterprises that had closed down. He asked the workers not to continue the practices of their former employers. In his view, since the structural contradictions in the textile industry have emerged, it is difficult to lead to success even if the existing experience does not lead to failure. The company has a brand-new way of management.

"You can't look more than three colors on a shirt." Usually, there are only two or three colors for a single yarn dyed fabric. Zhou Liangliang said that the company's eight color weft selecting dobby can weave eight colors on the same cloth. There are only a few enterprises that can make such products in the whole country.

Despite the huge investment in importing 98 top equipment from Japan and using ERP management system early, it is strange that the company still maintains a high labor cost. Zhou Liang, the owner of the textile industry, believes that the production of automation can not adhere to.

The annual salary system is unique. A colleague once entrusted Japanese engineers to inspect why the workshop production efficiency of Rongxu is so high and the product quality is so stable. Both companies have the same loom model. After debugging by workers, under the condition of full speed start-up, the good product rate of Rongxu is as high as 99.9%, but it can't be done in other places.

Xu enlin said that the degree of automation is the development trend of the industry. Correspondingly, the lower the labor cost, the better. This is the habit of many textile enterprises. Many enterprises have given up technical personnel, and some factories have not even one skilled worker. But he can use higher levels in the mind of workers to create value. As the inspection of this process, the company employs as many as 20 people, and the per capita monthly labor cost is about 10000 yuan. "If we cut the manpower by half, there is no problem in operation." Zhou Liangliang said that the boss always refused.

Xu enlin does not think that low cost must have an absolute advantage. In his enterprise, behind the high cost, is a higher level of profit margin. The cost is transformed into high production efficiency and product quality through the personalized management system which is out of the industry's common template, and generates wealth continuously.

The vigilance to habits can be traced back to an English class in college. "If you are now a blank sheet of paper, you can master the standard pronunciation, but it has been affected by middle school, so it will be difficult to correct it." Xu enlin, as a teacher in the south, is not impressed by the standard sentence.

Ben Li Dao Sheng

Clothing, food, housing and transportation are the basic living needs of people. Qian xialan, chairman of Rudong Yilan Textile Co., Ltd., never felt that dry textile had no future. But in 2016, Qian xialan, 34, had to ask herself two questions.

The answer is that enterprises can not continue to do so. The profit margin is close to negative, so it is meaningless to continue. The second is "whether or not to change professions", and the answer is No. Although the textile business is difficult to do, it is as if every other mountain. Instead of spending energy in the new business, it is better to settle down and do the work at hand.

This is a process of tracing the origin of xialan. In the past ten years, like many grass-roots textile enterprises, Yilan company specializes in the production of white fabrics, from red hot to cold, still maintaining a kind of production inertia. "People always think that the goods are so difficult to sell and the workers are so hard to find. They think that this is the end of the line. But why it is, very few people think about it and change it. "

She figured out that the mistake of many business decision makers, including herself, is that they want the market to revolve around products rather than vice versa. Knowing that white cloth is not easy to sell, as soon as the machine starts, it still weaves thousands of meters. "What do you not weave? Take a look at it again and endure it again. This is the mentality of many bosses. "

Qian xialan decided to give up grey fabric and transform to yarn dyed fabric. Although it is difficult to start, once on track, the enterprise will recover its vitality. Naturally, there is competition in the field of fabrics, but Qian xialan feels comfortable.

"Where the home textile products can only be extended to meet the demand of people in the market." Qian xialan said that in addition to the development of thermal insulation, antibacterial, dehumidification and other functional fabrics, the company also involved in the production of sofa cushions, baby products, sleeping bags, furniture decoration sets and other finished products. "Young people are happy to embrace the" naked sleep era ". We have a water washed cotton sleeping bag with strong sweat absorption and skin affinity, and it sells well."

She believes that there is no absolute low-end and high-end products. Only under the premise of meeting the demand, it is meaningful to distinguish product levels. In order to better open up sales channels, Qian xialan took the lead in opening Factory Direct stores in Dieshiqiao among many textile enterprises, which made it convenient for customers to intuitively feel the products and observe the demand of the frontier market, especially the consumption habits of young groups.

If we grasp the demand, we will grasp the people's heart. This is true for customers and consumers, as well as for workers.

Xia LAN has not been recruiting foreign workers for a long time. The company has about 60 front-line workers, with an average age of about 40 years old. In recent years, the original workers have not been lost, and there are still people who come here in admiration. The company's full-time workers can enjoy a monthly salary of seven or eight thousand yuan, and other employees can enjoy a monthly salary of seven or eight thousand yuan.

Qian xialan said that with the changes of the times, the employment psychology of the new generation of workers has changed. In addition to the need for rich wages and benefits, more need to get a sense of belonging in the enterprise. Of course, the reason why many workers are regarded as tools is that they are not sticky

To cultivate this sense of belonging, the key is to guide employees to participate in management. Lanyi will hold regular business development meetings for employees without regular training. Employees can express their opinions on production and operation at any time, and these opinions will be fed back in time. "I prefer to see employees as' partners' of the company rather than their positioning."

Qian xialan said that the spiritual level of identity seems very mysterious, but it is also very realistic. If only the boss makes the decision and the workers implement it, both parties do not know the other party's ideas, it will reduce the efficiency and lose the competitive opportunity. Under the "partner" mode, when the factory needs to produce a new product, the thinking of workers will quickly keep up with it, and the treatment of each process will be closer to the design requirements.

"Many enterprises think that money can solve all problems, but workers are not machines after all. As a person, besides money, there must be other things to value. "