Jiangdu: A Pair Of Shoes Out Of The Road Of Development

In July 27th, Jiangsu Jiangdu City, which is building "shoe capital of eastern China", has always been the hometown of shoe industry.

Hard pioneering history

Mention the footwear industry in Jiangdu and start from 90s.

At that time, it was still in the era of planned economy. The shoemaker in Jiangdu still had no market and could not sell independently, mainly for Shanghai's two leather shoes factories, Baodi and Ho Ming, and leather shoes. Jiangdu shoemaking enterprises were equivalent to the production workshop of the two leather shoes factories in Shanghai. They had neither the right to purchase raw materials nor their own sales channels, and completely lost their autonomy.

After the public ownership was changed to private ownership in 90s, many large businesses in Jiangdu were disbanded, and the development of leather shoes industry mostly appeared in the form of private small workshops.

These small workshops adopt the way of "shop in front of the factory", which is used to sell shoes and shoes in the front.

As the saying goes, "peers are friends", these private small workshops are relatively closed to their peers for their own economic interests. They are self distracting, scattered and scattered, and can not become a big climate.

In November 1995, the "Suzhong Trade City", which was mainly made of leather and other shoes and sold and made of leather shoes, was built and put into operation.

At the beginning of business city construction, with Wenzhou shoes, Fujian shoes, Guangdong shoes in great pressure, Jiangdu shoes suffered a lot of competition, many shoe factories have fallen in succession.

However, as time goes on, we can see the great opportunities brought by the "Suzhong Trade City" to the leather shoes industry in Jiangdu.

It turned out that before the trade market was built, many traders sold leather. In the middle, they had to peel off a layer of profits, and the prices of shoes and raw materials remained high.

After the construction of the commercial city, many tanning manufacturers took a fancy to this market and came to set up direct sales outlets, so that the prices of shoes and raw materials fell steadily.

Second, the Jiangdu shoemaking workers moved the production base to the commercial city. The "shop before the factory" reduced the intermediate links, and further reduced the production and marketing expenses.

In addition, the trade city is not only a trading market, but also an information center. The information from all sides is gathered here. The ever-changing shoe samples appear here, so that Jiangdu leather shoes businessmen can see clearly.

With the passage of time, the size of the shoes produced by Jiangdu shoemaker has grown larger, and has changed from the vast majority of private small workshops to the emergence of many shoemaking enterprises.

This is undoubtedly a great step forward.

In 2004, the Jiangdu leather shoes Association was established. In the face of the dilemma of leather shoes in Jiangdu, and the "outside people do not know Jiangdu has shoes", the Jiangdu leather shoes Association has made a lot of efforts.

First of all, since 2005, the Jiangdu leather shoes Association has led the leather shoes manufacturer to participate in the China International Footwear Industry Expo for four consecutive years. The purpose is to publicize the Jiangdu shoes for the world, and the most important thing is to let Jiangdu shoemaking enterprises open their eyes to the world.

Secondly, from 2006 to 2007, the association has been applying to the China Leather Association to build China's "East shoe capital".

In this effort, Jiangdu now has 800 to 900 manufacturers of shoes and 30 thousand and 500 people in shoe making.

"Now our shoe standard is in the middle class, there is hardly any place in the country without the shoes we produced in Jiangdu (except Guangzhou and Hainan)", director Wang Kailin of the Jiangdu leather industry association secretariat happily told reporters.

Promoting sustainable development

Without the hard pioneering history of the footwear industry in Jiangdu, Jiangdu will not develop step by step.

In the past few decades, the footwear industry in Jiangdu has gone through the stages from "loan production" to "OEM" and then to "brand creation".

The leap of each stage is accompanied by the development of the footwear industry in Jiangdu.

Before 90s, "borrowing card production" is the first stage of the development of footwear industry in Jiangdu.

At that time, Jiangdu shoemaker mainly for Shanghai two leather shoes manufacturer Baodi and he Ming produces leather shoes, Jiangdu shoes factory's "borrow card production" starts from here.

At that time, the shoe factories in Jiangdu were like the production workshop of the two Shanghai leather shoes factories. They had no autonomy. They could neither choose raw materials freely, nor could they be responsible for sales links. They made money entirely by selling their labor force, so the development was slow.

This kind of "lending card production" obviously has no future.

By the late 90s, the footwear industry in Jiangdu had entered the stage of "OEM" after climbing.

At that time, Shandong and other provinces created their own brands but did not have their own production bases, so they aimed at Jiangdu's huge shoemaking base.

Shandong leather shoes operators choose to produce OEM in Jiangdu is not without consideration.

First of all, shoe making in Jiangdu is cheap and low cost.

Secondly, Jiangdu shoemaker's shoe making skills are exquisite, quality and quantity guaranteed.

Finally, the long-term credibility of Jiangdu shoemaker has won their trust.

So Jiangdu began to produce leather shoes, and then put it on the Shandong brand.

This stage has taken a big step forward than the production of licensed brand: Jiangdu shoemaker already has certain autonomy, they can choose raw materials independently, or sell leather shoes by themselves, so the cost saving or profit making links have increased at once, and Jiangdu leather shoes have begun to develop.

The third stage of "brand creation" is accompanied by the rise of brand awareness of Jiangdu shoemaker.

At that time, with the expansion of the scale of shoemaking factories in Jiangdu, shoemaker companies gradually discovered that OEM was able to earn money. However, compared with those who had OEM brand shoes operators, they did the most work, but most of the money was earned by operators. The shoes they had originally produced could be sold to operators for 50 yuan. After being labeled with some brands, they might sell 200 to 300 yuan, or even more.

The clever Jiangdu shoemaker began to wonder: why can't we create brands ourselves?

Just since 2000, the Jiangdu industry and Commerce Bureau started with brand building, launched a trademark service Seminar on a regular basis, held a trademark lecture, and publicised the brand awareness and legal consciousness to the owners. Therefore, Jiangdu people gradually realized the importance of the brand and began to create their own leather shoes brand.

At present, there are many famous brands in Jiangdu's leather shoes industry, such as Kaysen, the source of magic, Lao de Lao, Liang Fei and so on.

There are more than 200 brand names of leather shoes in Jiangdu, including 2 well-known trademarks in China (Kaysen and Mei Zhiyuan).

The 84 leather shoes manufacturers in the city already have 40 brand names and quality marks above the municipal level, including 7 famous brand products such as "get the labor", "the" "singhi", and 6 famous brand products in Yangzhou, 1 newly awarded Yangzhou quality award enterprises, 3 products become national inspection free products.

Under the guidance of the dragon head, more and more shoe making enterprises have built up their own brands.

Jiangdu shoe makers used to OEM for others. Now a lot of shoemaker are running to the Jiangdu shoe brand.

According to Chen Lianghai, chairman of rathan Shoes Co., Ltd., at present, other people OEM for their company account for about 30% of the total shoe-making volume of the company.

Brilliant achievements

Arduous pioneering and sustainable development have created the brilliant achievements of Jiangdu footwear industry.

Since the construction of Suzhong commerce and Trade Center in 1995, it has not only been the largest leather shoes production and marketing center in the whole province, but also has become the distributor center of leather shoes in the whole country, not only to the leather shoes distributors of Zhejiang and Shanghai, but also to Xinjiang, Tibet, Chengdu, Kunming and so on.

At present, the "East China shoe capital", which Jiangdu is striving to build, will take the Jiangdu Leather Industry Association as its leader and the Sino Soviet trade center as the base, and take the Suzhong Shoe Industrial Park as the main base. It will strive to invest 1 billion yuan in 3 to 5 years to build eight centers, such as production, trading, storage and pportation, exhibition, information, R & D, training and monitoring, and 60 large-scale enterprises in shoe industry, 100 million pairs of shoes per year and 5 billion yuan annually.

In recent years, with the establishment of the national high quality leather shoes production demonstration zone and the establishment of the provincial leather and rubber products quality supervision and inspection center in Jiangdu, Jiangdu leather industry has ushered in new opportunities.

At present, the city has 976 leather and leather shoes market operators, and 759 leather shoes processing enterprises. Among them, the annual output of 300 thousand pairs of leather shoes manufacturers is 20, the annual production of 500 thousand pairs of leather shoes production enterprises is 10, the annual production of 1 million pairs of leather shoes is above 5 manufacturers, more than 30 enterprises have independent brand and a more sound marketing network.

Among the many leather enterprises, there are 572 trademarks, including 2 well-known trademarks in China, 3 famous trademarks in Jiangsu, 6 famous trademarks in Yangzhou, 7 famous brand enterprises in Jiangsu, 4 famous brand enterprises in Yangzhou, 1 enterprises in Yangzhou quality management enterprises, 2 in quality credit products enterprises in Yangzhou City, 7 Enterprises in the international advanced standards, and 7 enterprises in metrological qualification confirmation.

According to statistics, there are about 35 thousand employees in the leather industry of Jiangdu City. In 2009, the output value of the leather industry was 4 billion 200 million yuan, the profit was 210 million yuan, and the taxes and fees were paid 260 million yuan.