Shishi Garment Industry Seeks Revival

Shishi is a coastal city with strong personality.

Once upon a time, costumes became synonymous with stone lions.

"All over the world, there is no business anywhere in the street", which vividly reflects the prosperity of the clothing trade in Shishi City.

Now, more than 20 years ago, we used to sell.

However, Shishi clothing is huge in size, but its business scale is small, and there are few famous brands in the country.

The "Shishi special shop counters", which have spread all over the country, are long gone.

On the contrary, the garments of Wenzhou and Changshu, which were not as good as stone lions, were now in the ascendant.

Zhou Shaoxiong, President of Quanzhou textile and Garment Association, said.

The young chairman of the seven wolf group, known as the "Min faction" clothing leader, also stressed that the rise and fall track of Shishi garment industry is very obvious. It is a typical sample and has great value for the development of other domestic garment plates.

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Roaring Across the Horizon

In the 80s of last century, Shishi clothing was well known for its fashionable style and complete variety.

At that time, only a few square kilometres of Shishi City area, though stone slab road and dust Road, formed 18 pieces.

"At that time, there would be two places for clothing business, one is Guangzhou, the other is stone lion.

At that time, the Shishi market was really full of vitality, and everywhere there were opportunities to make money.

"Looking back at the stone lions in the early years, Zhou Shaoxiong felt boundless.

Lv Yi, deputy general manager of Shishi Dadi group, was also disconsolate when he talked about the grand occasion of the Shishi clothing market.

"A lot of big brands or domestic brands of Quanzhou clothing, such as" Jin Ba "," Li Lang "," seven wolves "," Qipai "and so on, were originally built from Shishi, and their first pot of gold were all excavated in stone lions. Even though several key clothing production areas in China, they benefited early from the stone lion market.

"As a new generation of Minnan entrepreneurs, Lu Sheng, born in 1984, after six years of studying in Singapore, is now inheriting and wearing the clothing industry of his parents. His mentality is extremely open.

In fact, before the phenomenon of "running stone lions across the country", there was a saying that "lions run across the country".

At that time, the story of Shishi how to develop the national market is still circulating.

Since 1990, the young government of this young city has adopted the method of "putting the government on the stage and singing the business by the company". From time to time, clothing manufacturers have been organizing new products fairs in major cities across the country.

Since then, the "Shishi clothing store" or "monopoly cabinet", which is well known throughout the country, has taken root in the major department stores of major cities, and its business is booming.

At the same time, Shishi also set up export channels through overseas Chinese relatives, set up more than 160 business organizations overseas, set up 270 border trade points along the border between Northeast and southwest China, and exported 40% of Shishi's products to more than 30 countries and regions.

"At that time, the government took us to all the major cities in the country to wash the city. Our sales footprints spread all over the river, and Shishi clothes soon became famous. Stone lions also attracted the whole nation's vision.

"Cai Dongsheng, chairman of the Shishi textile and garment industry association, and chairman of the wild leopard children's wear company, said.

The rise and prosperity of Shishi garment industry has attracted the attention of the domestic industry. It has been awarded the title of "China's leisure clothing city" by the China Textile Industry Association and the China clothing association. Under the jurisdiction of the Chinese Academy of clothing and clothing, the Ming Xiu, the Hanjiang, Bao gai, and Feng Li Street offices have also been named "famous sports and leisure clothing towns in China", "Chinese trousers and famous towns", "China's accessories and accessories town" and "China's children's wear town".

Fading of halo

However, the tide washed away the sand and turned against the water, and the clothing industry of Shishi went through the tide.

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By the middle and late 90s of last century, Shishi's clothing enterprises felt the pressure of competition more and more.

Zhejiang Wenzhou, Liaoning Dalian, Guangdong Humen, Jiangsu Changshu and other places, the rapid development of the garment industry, the formation of stone lions forced.

Dalian took the lead in launching the international clothing festival in 1989. This dress Festival has become the most prestigious international economic and cultural event in the domestic industry. Humen, with its advantages in the intersection of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, pearl and Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, has learned the dynamic changes of the international clothing market step by step, registered hundreds of trademarks in more than 120 countries and regions, and has more than 4000 garment and apparel enterprises in Changshu, and a large number of enterprises are also specializing in the production and processing of world famous brands.

The domestic casual wear market has squeezed the sales of Shishi products in Changshu and other places with low-cost production; the relative shrinkage of the formal market has also prompted traditional formal enterprises in Wenzhou, Ningbo and other places to pform into casual clothes, forming a strong challenge to the Shishi casual wear industry.

The pattern of the national garment industry has undergone drastic changes in this context.

Shishi clothing has received an unprecedented cold reception. The market share of Shishi children's clothing, which has been as high as 95%, has slipped down to less than 5%.

Cai Dongsheng's wild leopard children's clothing is one of the representatives of Shishi children's wear.

"We began distributing goods to the whole country in 1990 and almost completely withdrew in 1998.

The mood at that time was really mixed up with five flavors.

"

In fact, bosses of Shishi clothing industry understand why the market is turning.

"In the past," no one has me, people change me quickly ", but now it is" I have people, I change people fast ".

North of Zhejiang, South of Jiangsu, south of Guangzhou and Shenzhen, their prices, styles, quality, fabrics, stone lions which are not dominant, and even in the wind.

"A government official who asked not to be named said.

After the domestic market suffered setbacks, Shishi clothing enterprises turned their attention to foreign countries.

However, most of their export garments are mainly made up of substitute persons, "large quantity and low price", and large profits are all made by middlemen, and Shishi enterprises only get a small processing fee.

What is more, many clothes are sold in the flea market after they have entered the foreign market, and finally the bad impression that "lion made" clothes can only spin in the low-end market.

Some small businesses are wearing clothes that fail to meet their requirements or are too picky.

This kind of simple clothing has to "export to domestic market" but can not enter the shopping malls, and can only enter the "stall" or stack into the warehouse like other low-grade clothing.

During this period, the Shishi garment industry was not only inferior to its products, but also the market which was originally prosperous.

In this regard, Zhou Shaoxiong said, "for many years, Shishi used a small pattern of small cities and small towns and tens of thousands of streets to build the market, and missed the opportunity to build a large market. At this time, the small commodity market in Yiwu soon formed a climate." Shishi "did not form a large market. The wholesale market in the early years was not fully seized. When other domestic clothing markets rose, they were even equal to Shishi, or even more than Changshu and Zhengzhou. They were the two tier market.

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Four major injuries

Combing the success and failure of the development of Shishi garment industry, Zhou Shaoxiong, Cai Dongsheng, Lv Yi and others all mentioned the problem of "injury" in the growth of the industry.

The first is the scale problem.

Behind the cold shoulder of Shishi products is the incompetence of enterprises.

Zhou Shaoxiong believes that most of the enterprises in Shishi are factories of dozens of people and hundreds of people. In foreign developed countries, the scale of such enterprises is thousands or tens of thousands.

Like other parts of the country, the "order economy" has created a production base, but at the same time, there is also a bottleneck problem of becoming bigger and stronger.

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In the past, Shishi enterprises received more orders from Hongkong, and they went to various large-scale trade fairs to directly contact customers.

Now it seems that the scale is a very important chip, the scale is too small, a single production cycle is long, a customer you can do it, if there are more than a few, there is no way, in the end, the original will be lost.

Peng Tian Village is a relatively concentrated area of production and sportswear in Shishi. There are more than 200 large and small sportswear enterprises in the village, but there are less than 10 enterprises with a certain scale.

Next is family management.

When it comes to the crisis in Pang Tian Village, Cai Dongsheng said: most of the lion's clothing enterprises are family businesses, and family management has become a common problem in Shishi enterprises.

"They are basically the whole family. When brothers are bosses, sisters manage money, sons manage marketing, the key departments are guarded by their own families. They want to introduce talents, and lack enough trust in talents, so that they can not put their hands and feet to do the job.

"

What Cai Dongsheng said was not a problem at the beginning, but now it is the biggest problem.

Overseas research data show that the life span of family businesses is usually about 23 years, and family businesses can only extend to second generations, only 39%, and only 15% of them can be extended to third generations.

Shishi's family business is facing such a life and death now.

"Family businesses need to change their family management into specialized companies based on contracts and property.

In addition, too many family members will affect the development space of professional managers.

"Zhou Shaoxiong said.

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The third is the problem of research and development and brand creation.

Design is one of the soul and core competitiveness of the clothing industry. But for a long time, design is the soft rib of Shishi garment industry.

There is no obvious difference between Shishi's several first-line brands in terms of product style. The homogenization of products leads to intensified competition within the region, which is extremely unfavorable for the development of the entire regional industry.

Brand loss is also intriguing.

Shishi clothing industry has two extreme reactions. Some people regret that they did not play the brand in those years. Some people are indifferent to the concept of brand and feel that the problem is not very meaningful.

Zhou Shaoxiong said, "in the past, it was imitation of creating brands, so it was easier to find stars to advertise.

But now, the brand is a brand, the consumer is looking at the connotation and culture of the brand, which requires the enterprise how to guarantee the quality of the brand.

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The fourth is the guidance and promotion of the government.

Cai Dongsheng said that some of the garment enterprises of Shishi spread their energies into other fields after developing to a certain stage. In fact, their foundation had not been tamped down. As a result, the "old bank" was lost, and the new expansion project was not smooth.

For businessmen, business is the business of making money, and the planning and guidance of the government is particularly important.

Wei Ran, assistant to the president of the Jian Jian group, expects the government to make greater efforts in the employment environment.

In the past few years, two hundred or three hundred workers in Shishi one factory have been working in Wenzhou. After media reports, "who drives out one hundred thousand workers from Shishi?"

In this regard, Wei Ran said, "the behavior of enterprises is sometimes very short-sighted. The work of super time and super strength is for more profits, but extremes are inevitable, and finally cause the shortage of workers in Shishi.

Like this, the government should intervene forcefully, but I think this is not enough.

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From 2003 to 2005, many famous brands of stone lions, such as star, CABBEEN and so on, moved to Guangzhou.

"As a city, a government, or have your development ideas, but our enterprises also have their own growth process. When our development is confronted with bottlenecks and some of the resources we need can be effectively provided, we will consider whether or not the headquarters economy of enterprises should be moved out.

"Lv Yi said.

Revive

Today, reviving the clothing industry has become a top priority for Shishi and the "12th Five-Year" period.

Since last year, stone lions have been retreating for many years.

The total investment of 2 billion yuan, 1110 acres of international clothing distribution and distribution center, and the largest clothing market in Asia -- Shishi clothing city, after eight years of construction, its supporting functions and functions are now fully in place, realizing the original intention of the then founder, then Shishi municipal Party Secretary and now mayor of Quan Ren, Li Jianguo, that is, "promoting the Shishi garment industry structure adjustment and industrial upgrading, and marketing the city's important carrier."

"According to the plan, Shishi will reposition" garment city "as the image axis and become the" International Textile City "to enhance the high-end competitiveness of the regional market.

Huang Nankang, mayor of Shishi, said that after 20 years of cultivation, Shishi textile and garment industry has formed a relatively complete industrial chain, covering textile, bleaching and dyeing, garment processing and production, excipient production, marketing and other fields. The annual output value exceeds 30 billion yuan, and the advantage of industrial cluster is obvious.

"Go to Shishi to run a garment factory, don't bring anything, just bring the money.

"This image of the industry reflects the fact that Shishi's textile and apparel industry chain is full of upstream and downstream elements.

In response to this, Lu was very impressed. He said, "why did the China Textile Industry Association give the title of" leisure clothing city "to Shishi? It is because there is a good industrial chain and market base. It should be said that the revitalization of Shishi is still promising.

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According to Huang Nankang, Shishi pioneered the establishment of the science and Technology Award Fund in the whole province, set up an annual industrial development fund of 10 million yuan, focused on supporting industrial innovation enterprises, rewarded enterprises for the establishment of innovation or research centers, and invested 230 million yuan to build the first nationwide ASP service platform for textile and clothing around the country, accelerating the pformation and application of scientific and technological achievements. At the same time, Shishi, as an important platform for the cross-strait textile and garment industry docking, is strengthening the industrial cooperation between the two sides of the ECFA era.

Huang Nankang emphasized in particular that the brand name of Shishi and the name card of Shishi should not be biased, because the road to brand is a shortcut to the development of enterprises, and the improvement of Shishi's popularity is to win the development space of enterprises.

To this end, he strongly encourages enterprises to list and develop headquarters economy, and promote the pformation and upgrading of industries and cities and healthy development.

Since taking office in October last year, Huang Nankang has hosted three business meetings, convened three hundred or four hundred home textile enterprises, and discussed with the bosses face-to-face talks on scale, listing, innovation and other issues. Some supporting policies have also been introduced, which makes people feel the atmosphere of reviving the industry.

In 2005, Wei Ran, who joined in Jian Jian, said that she watched the clothing city cover up every day. The empty modern architecture seemed to be cold and cheerless in the first few years.

"However, since the second half of last year, the situation has changed and the government has made great efforts.

Shops that were reluctant to move out of the old areas have now been relocated, and the market is booming.

In addition, this year's "Haibo" (cross strait textile and clothing exposition) has also been doing very well, with content and hierarchy, and some international exhibitions.

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Wei Ran said, Lu feels the same way.

He said, "now the Secretary and the mayor do often go to the enterprise to investigate and talk to us, grasp the real situation of the enterprises, and clearly feel that the government is going to make the industry bigger and stronger.

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However, Zhou Shaoxiong, standing at the commanding heights of the industry, believes that Shishi garment industry should not only stand in the national perspective, but also think about what role it should undertake from the perspective of global resource allocation.

After all, this has become the preferred place for multinational procurement in many countries and regions.

Shishi still has many opportunities. The key is that cities and industries must open their horizons and form a large pattern. Then the prospect of Shishi is still bright.