The Breakthrough Of Wenzhou Shoe Leather Industry Leads The Digital Transformation, Intelligent Innovation And Development

At the beginning of the year, CCTV's Focus Interview reported how Kangnai Group successfully broke the circle of traditional manufacturing industry and led the digital transformation, which epitomized the intelligent innovation and development of Wenzhou's traditional shoemaking industry.

Wenzhou's shoe leather industry has more than 4900 shoemaking enterprises, with an industrial output value of more than 100 billion yuan, becoming the second largest industrial cluster of 100 billion yuan after electricity. In recent years, with the change of the global industrial pattern, the shoemaking industry chain in coastal areas represented by Jinjiang has matured. On the other hand, Southeast Asian countries have joined the competition. Wenzhou's gold lettered signboard of "China's Shoe City" is becoming weaker and weaker. In the face of "internal and external problems", more and more shoe enterprises like Kangnai focus on the user demand side as a breakthrough, promote the combination of manufacturing and digitalization, and the supply side reform of manufacturing and service, and explore and walk out the high-quality development path.

Intelligent manufacturing transformation

Break the low-end lock

In Kangnai New Green Intelligent Factory, the number keeps jumping on the information centralized control platform. The centralized control platform collects the data of the order center and sends tasks to each automation equipment, and records and tracks the production data in real time during the process. Under this one-stop flexible intelligent manufacturing mode, Kangnai meets the requirements of a small unit and flexible manufacturing mode with multiple varieties, small batch and fast delivery time of domestic products, opens up the efficient connection between the consumer client and the R&D end, and realizes the seamless connection from order, supply chain, R&D to manufacturing chain through digital opening of large-scale customization.

In recent years, more and more shoe enterprises like Kangnai continue to innovate technology, transform to digital, expand R&D platforms, and gradually build technology, design, and environmental protection as core competitiveness of enterprises. The output value of shoe leather industry has exceeded 100 billion yuan. For example, Lucheng, which has the highest concentration of footwear industry, has gathered more than 2000 footwear related enterprises, and a number of high-energy platforms, such as Shoes Art Town, Shoes Designer (Engineer) Collaborative Innovation Center, Wenzhou Shoes and Leather Industry Research Institute, have settled in succession, helping enterprises transform to intelligent manufacturing.

As the industry leader, Juyi Group has invested 780 million yuan in the past few years to build an intelligent manufacturing industrial park, which has 18 advanced production lines. Using 3D scanning, 3D printing, automatic packaging assembly line and other equipment and technology, it integrates production, sales, research and development design, AI data-driven logistics and other links, improving the enterprise's production efficiency by 30%.

While guiding leading enterprises through intelligent transformation, the industrial chain will be derived from industrial follow-up services, benchmarking the footwear industry clusters in Markay, Italy, Quanzhou, Fujian and other places with high quality, fully promoting the construction of high-energy footwear industry platform, the cultivation of footwear enterprises in echelon, the development of key supporting industries, and accelerating the realization of coordinated procurement, manufacturing, innovation Cooperate to improve and further improve the independent and controllable ability of the shoe industry chain.

Strong brand enterprise

Polish and make gold lettered signboard

If "intelligent manufacturing" has greatly improved Kangnai's manufacturing hard power, then the brand has greatly improved the soft power of enterprise competition, which is another core competitiveness of Kangnai.

Once upon a time, Wenzhou was the main OEM processing base for foreign well-known brands, but there were few enterprises that really created brands. This processing model with fast money and low risk was difficult to sustain as the real economy entered the "era of meager profits". In the face of factor constraints and downward economic pressure, more shoe enterprises are striding forward on the road of creating their own brands.

Bonnai is a shoe enterprise mainly engaged in pure OEM and OEM, and there is no famous brand. Export growth mainly depends on quantity, and the overall profit margin is not high. In recent years, Bonnai Shoes has gone "national trend" and created its own brand "Bonnai" and "Tommy Rabbit", highlighting creative design. Its classic low top, popular high top, muffin sole and suede series are increasingly rich in product lines and reputation.

At present, among the Chinese famous brands and Chinese well-known trademarks obtained by Wenzhou, Aokang Shoes, Red Dragonfly Shoes, Yierkang Shoes, Juyi Group, Desai Group, Banner Shoes, Woodpecker Shoes and other shoe brands have been selected as "2023 China's leading brand in leather industry consumption". A large number of Wenzhou brand shoe stores are located in high-end malls in large and medium-sized cities in China.

It is undeniable that some enterprises with good growth at present have only local advantages or even individual advantages, and have not yet formed regional scale advantages. More and more Wenzhou shoe enterprises realize that only by building regional brands can they better form industrial clusters, create better atmosphere and vitality, introduce talents and train talents, and finally form a virtuous circle of sustainable development ecosystem. At present, Wenzhou has established a shoe leather industry alliance. Through capital introduction and resource integration, it has comprehensively optimized the industrial chain and accelerated the leap of China's Shoe City to the World's Shoe City.

Marketing iteration

Realize nationwide sales and global sales

For a long time, heavy manufacturing and light circulation have become a major weakness in Wenzhou shoe leather industry. As early as the first year of live broadcast in 2016, Kangnai opened a new path of "live broadcast+interactive e-commerce", becoming the first brand in the footwear industry to subvert traditional marketing methods and test live broadcast marketing. In recent years, the Wenzhou Douyin e-commerce live broadcast base invested and operated by Kangnai has assisted merchants to settle in one-stop live broadcast with goods through professional footwear category operators, talent teams, etc, Since its official operation for more than a year, the monthly transaction volume has reached 200 million yuan.

"The fragrance of wine is not deep in the alley". How to transform new retail, iterate and upgrade the marketing model, and achieve precision marketing has become an important direction for many footwear Wenzhou merchants to explore the blue ocean of the market.

According to incomplete statistics, at present, more than 60% of shoe enterprises in Wenzhou have put forward the plan of "Internet+channel transformation", but the real transformation is not very successful. "Many enterprises in Wenzhou lack long-term and complete planning in e-commerce operations, and some just use online sales as a means to deal with the backlog of inventory in the short term." Wang Xiaoyi, assistant president of the Global Zhejiang Business Research Institute of Zhejiang University, is indispensable for policy guidance on how to help enterprises build marketing platforms and realize the dual cycle of domestic and foreign markets.

How to make Wenzhou shoes better go global? In the future, Wenzhou will rely on the national market procurement trade mode pilot to strengthen exchanges, cooperation and resource docking with Paris, Milan and other international fashion origins. At the same time, we will accelerate the construction of projects such as the live broadcast base of the Douyin shoes and boots industry, launch a batch of new business enterprises such as digital trade and cross-border e-commerce, launch the online red broadcast festival of shoes and boots, and the shoes and boots stocking and selection fair, expand the new mode of direct sales of good goods from the source of manufacturing, and accelerate the formation of a one-stop marketing comprehensive service cluster that is linked online and offline, "sold nationwide and sold globally".

Design enabling

Go to both ends of "curve"

Design innovation is undoubtedly the key to enhance the recognition and competitiveness of how to adapt the shoe industry with serious homogenization to the needs of personalization.

Long ago, Kangnai designed, developed and launched the business comfort series of "both business and comfort". In recent years, it has repeatedly designed "business shoes that can run", and designed and developed "high-heeled shoes that are not tired of walking" for women to wear high-heeled shoes. In recent years, it has also invested in the construction of the Provincial 152 Project Huanmao Port Project, which focuses on shoe materials and design, provides designers with the support of the latest shoe materials and supporting resources, attracts more excellent design talents from all over the world to Wenzhou, and creates more possibilities with design.

Lack of design ability is another weak point of the shoe leather industry. Lucheng District alone has gathered more than 2000 shoe enterprises, of which a considerable number of enterprises lack the ability of original design and earn small profits only by OEM.

In order to attract more design talents, Wenzhou City and the China Leather Association jointly hosted the "Red Boot Award" China International Footwear Design Competition, through which a group of excellent talents in original shoe design were selected to promote the development of Wenzhou shoe industry. At the same time, we will build a number of shoe leather fashion colleges, centers and bases, guide enterprises to increase design innovation, cultivate and introduce a number of high-end design leaders in the fashion industry, drive the cultivation of a number of local fashion design teams, and form a fast development of the shoe leather industry led by design innovation.

(Source: Zhejiang Daily)