According to the Voice of China’s “News and Newspaper Digest”, my country’s textile and apparel exports fell by 2.91% year-on-year in the first half of the year, the first time in recent years that there was negative year-on-year growth. The market is forcing companies to transform and upgrade as quickly as possible.
In the factory workshop in Shekou, Shenzhen, workers making clothing are busy. Zhai Xiaoping, honorary president of the Shenzhen Garment Association, said that although the factory is still producing, the processing volume has been greatly reduced.
Zhai Xiaoping: “In the past, our general output was around 400 pieces a day, but now it may be only 200 pieces.”
What has been reduced is not only the daily production volume, but also the number of garment factories and the number of workers, so that profits have shrunk by at least 30%.
Zhai Xiaoping: “At that time, if calculated based on gross profit, there should be a profit of 20-30%. Now the profit is only single digits, and the single digits are still decimals.”
According to statistics, in the first half of 2015, my country’s textile and apparel export prices fell by 1.45%, and export quantities fell by 1.48%. The market is forcing apparel companies to generate higher profits from the source of production.
Zhang Qinghui, vice chairman of the China Fashion Designers Association: “The export market has shrunk due to rising labor costs and rising production factor costs. We are losing our original competitiveness in some low-end markets.”
As a representative of my country’s labor-intensive industries, the textile industry is in urgent need of transformation and upgrading. Yuan Lei, director of the Industrial Operation Research Office of the Institute of Industrial Economics, Academy of Social Sciences:
Yuan Lei: “The first is technological upgrading, because although the textile industry is a traditional industry, it actually has very high technical content in many fields. For example, some outdoor products, medical textiles, etc., are currently in China. It cannot be produced. If a technological breakthrough can be achieved, the added value of the product will be greatly improved; secondly, in terms of brand, textile and clothing exports are fundamentally a brand issue, but China’s current brand is relatively weak; The third is market channels. How to establish a network to enter mainstream foreign sales channels is also an urgent need to establish capabilities.”