Wenzhou Shoe Enterprises Follow Suit "Manual Customization" &Nbsp, Technology Becomes Difficult.

A pair of hand-made shoes nearly 30 thousand yuan. The news on Sina micro-blog has attracted a lot of attention recently. Most of the hand-made shoes at high prices come from the international big shoe companies, but now they are produced by themselves. Wenzhou 。 " Manual customization Can it become Medium and small shoe enterprises Effective path of spanformation?

SALE

A leather shoes brand called NILIDA has recently made many shoe companies at home and abroad take a fancy look. Its hand-made customized pair of leather shoes is sold at a maximum price of 28 thousand and 800 yuan. The founder of this brand is the owner of a small shoe factory in Wenzhou. 4 years ago, the shoe factory, like most shoe factories in Wenzhou, sold only one hundred or two hundred yuan for a pair of leather shoes.

"My old shoe factory is called Kangtai shoe industry. Now I am making a hand made shoe instead of a registered company in Hongkong." Italy Nord Shoes Co., Ltd. boss Gu Jianze told reporters. Nord shoes is Gu Jianze's registered company in Hongkong, and NILIDA is the brand name of hand made shoes.

Information from Wenzhou shoe leather industry association shows that a few years ago, Kangtai footwear industry was a very ordinary shoe factory in the four thousand or five thousand shoe factories in Wenzhou. In 2010, in the voice of increasingly difficult business in the footwear industry, Gu Jian she was "turning around", because the hand-made high-end leather shoes stood out and became the focus of attention of the industry.

Hand made shoes are out of stock.

"Today, we have a total of seven or eight customers to request door-to-door measurement, ready for customization." More than four o'clock last Wednesday afternoon, summed up Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou and other city stores business volume, Gu Jianze relieved to reveal. With the increasing popularity of NILIDA, the company's personal business is increasing. "We rely mainly on old customers and word of mouth."

In the last two months, the overall sales volume of NILIDA has also increased significantly, almost daily out of stock. "In the past two months, the company has begun to make profits." Gu Jianze revealed. It is understood that this is the first time that NILIDA has been profitable since its introduction to the market in the summer of 2009.

However, it seems unlikely that Gu will be able to get more profits from the expansion of production capacity. At present, its custom made workshop has been running at full capacity, and orders can only be postponed. Reporters at the custom shoe workshop located in Wenzhou Vocational and Technical College saw that in a neat workshop, more than 30 workers were operating in a tight and orderly way. "We can only produce more than 30 pairs of shoes a day, and workers work for 10 hours. Overtime will affect the quality of workers due to fatigue." Gu Jian Chao stressed.

Near the Spring Festival, usher in a peak period of gift giving, NILIDA shoes sales share is also improving. Previously, a Wenzhou boss ordered two pairs of high-end shoes with 28 thousand and 800 yuan, but the proportion of high priced shoes worth more than 10000 yuan was not very large. "80% of the people are customizing thousands of yuan and one pair of shoes, of which two thousand or three thousand yuan and one pair are the most." Gu Jianze revealed. It is said that the main consumption of NILIDA handmade shoes is the pursuit of comfort and unfloral bosses and the returnees.

After a year's efforts, NILIDA has opened 1 stores in Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou and Wenzhou, and is also in the high-end consumption areas such as senior clubs in the above cities. Because Shanghai, Beijing and other tier cities pay more attention to formal dress, their hand-made shoes business is also relatively good.

Lost money for four years.

Baidu search shows that there are about 8000 search results for NILIDA keyword. This is the result of NILIDA in the market in the past year and a half. Before that, Gu Jian had been preparing the brand for more than two and a half years.

"Originally, we planned to make foreign markets, and our customers in Guangzhou were almost ready, but due to the financial crisis of 2008, Guangzhou customers finally gave up the business." Gu Jianze said. In 2006, Gu Jianze, who began preparations for hand-made shoes, first focused on the demand of the middle class in the western countries for high-end hand-made shoes. Based on this, he went to visit the big hand custom shoe workshop in Italy many times.

"I realized that the key to do well in high-end hand-made shoes is the study of foot shape." Gu Jianze recalls. The production of leather shoes is generally only about 60%, while hand made shoes need about 90%.

Gu Jianze worked with Wenzhou Vocational and Technical College to recruit several experienced shoemakers, and began to study the foot shape and try to make customized shoes. However, the high-end hand-made shoe technology is much more difficult than imagined. "No fascination with hand-made footwear technology, certainly not good." Gu Jianze said with a smile. It is said that in the past few years, he has made a lot of shoes with several workers, plus more than 1000 pairs, with a total investment of about 2000000 yuan.

"Guangzhou's cooperation has not been successful, so I have to consider being a domestic foreigner market, but I don't know how to open up the market," he said. Gu Jianze said frankly. At the beginning, Gu Jian said that there was a hand-made shoe store on the road in Heng Mountain, Shanghai. He couldn't wait to go to the shop to discuss cooperation. But NILIDA had only one or two pairs of shoes in this store every day.

Obviously, it is impossible for Gu Jian to make a big market through this store. "Shortly afterwards, we rented dozens of square meters of shops on the Huashan Road near Hengshan Road and opened our own store." Gu Jianze said. Later, he set up a sales team of seven or eight people to negotiate and cooperate with five star hotels and other advanced places to sell NILIDA hand-made shoes. The result is very little. "After a few months, we lost almost a million yuan."

However, Gu Jian's business in Beijing outlets is much better than that in Shanghai. So he found a clothing store in Maoming South Road, Shanghai's core business district, and reopened the Shanghai market through cooperation.

With the word-of-mouth spread of a group of old customers, NILIDA orders are growing every day, and the profits of a pair of hand-made shoes are also very impressive. However, up to two months ago, the brand has been losing money. It is estimated that Gu has invested more than $10 million in NILIDA over the past four years, and has not yet assessed the intangible cost of thousands of square meters of cooperation with Wenzhou Vocational and Technical College.

"Now I see the market prospect and feel that all investment is worthwhile." Gu Jianze said. More than four years ago, he was a boss of a shoe factory worth about 10000000 yuan a year. He had done foreign trade in his early years. When he had the largest scale, he had two leather shoes production lines. Before trying to customize his shoes, he made about 10000000 years of OEM production for Kangnai, red dragonflies and crocodiles.

"I think about spanformation, on the one hand, the profit of making shoes has been very low. On the other hand, I have been elected director of the village committee of Ouhai Cha Shan village and have no time to manage shoe factories." Gu Jianze revealed. It is understood that at present, the pure profit of Wenzhou shoes has been very low, and each pair is generally up to 10 yuan. {page_break}

Customized technology research

As the name suggests, the value of hand-made goods is mainly reflected in the handicraft. Therefore, workers are the core competitiveness of many manual customization enterprises. There are people in the footwear industry who say that workers who engage in high-end hand made shoes do not have the experience of shoemaking for more than 15 years, and can not be competent for the processes. Like sewing processes, only 20 years old workers will be able to operate. A pair of hand made shoes requires 300 processes.

Gu Jianze said that in the past year, he had racked his brains not only in opening up the domestic market but also in recruiting experienced workers. At present, more than 30 workers in the workshop, about half of the local people in Wenzhou, and the rest from Anhui, Jiangsu, Hubei, Beijing and other places are basically inviting from various forms of high salary. "The monthly salary of our workers is basically over 5000 yuan, and there are many other benefits." According to the accounting, according to the current NILIDA manual customization production shoes, the labor cost of a pair of shoes is as high as 300 yuan.

In fact, the more crucial technology of hand-made shoes is the data acquisition of foot shape and the production of shoe last. Therefore, at the beginning of the NILIDA marketing campaign, Mr Gu immediately invited the Secretary General of the Wenzhou Footwear Design Association, Wu Lijun, who has over 30 years of experience in shoe making, to join him and give him many shares in the company. It is understood that Wu Lijun is a senior technician in the footwear industry of our city. He has a deep study in the foot shape and has been responsible for developing Kangnai group.

At present, more than 30 workers who make NILIDA brands are between 35 and 60 years old, and 30% of them have worked for more than 25 years. "Now we can only rely on experienced shoemaker, but this is not a long-term consideration. The next experienced workers will become more and more difficult to find. We have already begun to solve this problem." Wu Lijun revealed.

"After seeing the success of NILIDA, many shoe companies are also interested in developing manual customization business, but experienced masters are hard to find, but only by digging corners." People in shoe industry say so.

At the moment, Wu Lijun and his team are tackling technical barriers. After simplification and programming, workers who have experienced shoemaking for a few years will be able to complete the original complex process through one month's training. Wu Lijun said.

At the same time, Wu Lijun and his R & D team have made breakthroughs in the research of foot shape in the past year to measure the foot shape more accurately and conveniently for customers. Wu Lijun took out a graduated paper and placed it on the floor. He took off his shoes and socks and showed it to reporters. Commentary: with this graduated paper, put his feet up, and then take a picture on the front and side, and pass it to us, and you can manually customize and sell your comfortable shoes. It is said that this technology is based on its collection of enough different foot shape data, and the calculation model is configured. As long as the relevant indicators are input, data suitable for customer's foot shape will be generated.

Distance from international brands

"This year, we plan to recruit more people, expand production and expand market development." Gu Jianze said. Some customers used to wear big international hand made shoes, but now they only wear NILIDA. At the same time, NILIDA is trying to win more business from the hands of international brands, and plans to take the initiative to attack the market in order to avoid its inferior reputation. "We are considering adopting a new sales model, but we can not make it public at the moment." The reporter learned that NILIDA's new sales model may be divided into two aspects: on the one hand, based on maintaining four City stores, according to the sales summary over the past year, launching targeted sales, such as cooperation with five star hotels or senior clubs in big cities, selling directly to their members through these establishments; on the other hand, with the help of the network platform, the online order customization business is carried out.

"I think that NILIDA is hard to get a larger market share at the top end. People who wear tens of thousands of dollars and a pair of shoes care more about brands than the price." A person in the shoe industry said frankly.

Although NILIDA can match the international brand in technology, it can not compete in the design, brand culture, etc. For example, the design of shoes can be designed according to the needs of customers, and the NILIDA is mostly customized according to the styles provided by customers, or from the fashion magazines or the collection of fashionable shoes from the international top brands to customers. "We do not have our own style development team. We will consider it when we grow up." Gu Jianze said.

In terms of brand culture, NILIDA has a gap with international brands. NILIDA is just one of the original trademarks registered by Gu Jianze. "At that time, the trademark was mainly used to look more pleasing to the eye. After using it, some friends told me that the logo could not be issued in English, and suggested that it should be changed, but it has not been changed." Gu Jianze said. He added that because NILIDA is already well-known in the market, there is no plan to change.

Is customization a kingly way?

Information from the footwear industry association of Wenzhou shows that in Wenzhou, many of the shoe business owners, Gu Jian TSE is not a hand-made shoe eating crabs, including Kangnai, AOKANG and other shoe companies have tried before, but Gu Jian TSE is currently relatively successful Wenzhou boss. According to industry sources, some famous enterprises tried to customize the business in the early years, but they failed to make the final result. The main reason is that the enterprises focused on the big market and did not settle down to manually customize the relatively small business at that time. "At present, these well-known enterprises are going to enter the hand-made shoe business. What is missing is not strength, but perseverance." The head of a shoe enterprise admitted.

Reporters also learned that some small and medium-sized shoe enterprises in Wenzhou had tried on hand made shoes, but most of them failed. Like Wu Lijun and Gu Jianze, he opened a hand-made shoe workshop. But because of its low volume and high cost, it only lasted for a few months and then gave up.

Relevant personages of Wenzhou shoe leather industry association said that even if NILIDA's Handmade customized shoes can be large-scale, it does not mean that it is an effective way for many small and medium shoe enterprises to turn around. "The market capacity of hand-made shoes is still limited. So many small and medium enterprises in Wenzhou are going to do manual customization. This is not realistic." According to statistics, in 2010, there were 3035 shoe factories in Wenzhou. Due to the revival of the global economy, the number of shoe factories increased by 402 over the previous year. But these increased shoe factories are basically small and medium-sized shoe factories or workshops. They are doing OEM for large and medium-sized shoe companies.