A county-level city with a population of only one million people can produce 1 billion pairs of shoes every year, and its footprint is deeply printed on the land of more than 140 countries and regions around the world.

This is Wenling, a “shoes kingdom” that has developed over 30 years. It has completed the transformation from family workshops to enterprises, creating a miracle of “the world is full, one has one”, and has come out of a road of its own. .

In 2018, a long-awaited revolution is growing.

Growing up, the shoe industry is improving

After more than 30 years of gathering and development, Wenling Shoes has become one of the “big names” in China's footwear industry. Last year, Wenling enterprises produced 1 billion pairs of shoes, and the total industrial output value reached 32.33 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.3%. Among them, 201 enterprises with a production value of more than 20 million have reached a total industrial output value of 12.686 billion yuan, an increase of 8.1%. The production and export volume of Wenling Shoes ranks first in counties (cities, districts) across the country. The children's shoes in the streets of Chengbei are a sudden emergence. With the unique competitiveness of “Guangdong style, Fujian quality and Wenling price”, it has become a dark horse in the children's shoes market.

But whoever thought, low scattered, was once a dysentery here. After the overwhelming, how do shoe enterprises stand on the ground?

Since the beginning of this year, Wenling has comprehensively promoted the reform and upgrading of the footwear industry, and issued the "Ten Policies on Supporting the Upgrade of Footwear Enterprises" and plans to complete the "dirty and dangerous" footwear enterprises at the end of this year. ) Centralized rectification: If the production is not up to standard, the system shall be shut down according to law.

By 2020, Wenling plans to build a number of small and micro-parks in six key towns (streets) to guide enterprises to relocate and enter the park, and to intensify innovation and promotion, promote the professionalization and brand development of footwear industry, and create influence in the country. The children's shoes brand.

Differentiating competition and finding new opportunities in market segments

"This is a desperate winter and a spring of hope." The scene depicted by Dickens in The Tale of Two Cities may also apply to the current Wenling footwear industry.

In the face of the government's forced transformation and upgrading of enterprises, the company itself is also actively changing.

"The current market is different from 10 years ago. It can no longer rely on price wars to win. Under the premise of improving product quality, enterprises must also understand differentiated competition." Jin Yongjie, Chairman of Taizhou Ougang Shoes Co., Ltd. Introduction, in the market, the most expensive shoes of their family can be sold for 1,200 yuan. On Amazon's official website, their shoes are priced at $84, and even merchants write letters to them every year.

Why can shoes sell for such a high price? In Jin Yongjie's view, independent research and development is their biggest weapon. “Based on the cost of a pair of shoes, research and development costs account for at least 30%.”

"Enterprise development to the present, we must pay attention to the development of design, especially in the past few years, foreign customers have higher and higher requirements for product design, want to seize orders, in the development and design must have their own highlights." Taizhou resistance Qi Chunhui, head of Qi Footwear Co., Ltd. said. Last year, they also established Zhejiang Heshengrong Shoes Co., Ltd. in cooperation with the old British company GOLDLINE. “Independent R&D is the shortcoming of Nike Shoes, and this is precisely the strength of GOLDLINE. The cooperation between the two companies can help us grow better.”

The innovative atmosphere of Wenling shoe enterprises is gradually taking shape. Fulong Shoes took the lead in introducing stable insoles, replacing the original slices, and leading a large number of brand children's shoes enterprises to update materials; Football Sports and China Leather Shoes Research Institute jointly established the country's first student shoe research center, developed for China The shoes worn by the students also participated in the drafting of the national standard for "School Shoes for Primary and Secondary School Students"; Zhuo Ling Shoes joined hands with Shaanxi University of Science and Technology to establish the Zhuo Ling Middle-aged and Shoe Design Institute, signed a contract with Jin Ma Yingdi Chen Jianbin, and strived to build a Chinese middle-aged and old-fashioned footwear industry. The benchmark brand; Jimmy Bear Shoes cooperates with a Swiss laboratory to develop and produce high-end functional shoes...

Based on the market segment, more Wenling shoe enterprises are looking for new development opportunities in independent innovation.

"Machine substitution", the policy encourages shoe enterprises to change "core"

"We also considered the difficulty of recruiting workers when we developed our own products. The shoes we developed avoided the sewing machine production as much as possible, such as the help of microfiber shoes, relying entirely on laser engraving machines." Laser engraving in the workshop The machine is specially imported from Germany by Jin Yongjie, and one will cost more than 400,000 yuan.

In recent years, many shoe companies have spent a lot of money on shoemaking equipment. This is evidenced by the popularity of intelligent and automated shoe-making equipment at the China (Wenling) shoe machine, shoe material and sewing machine exhibition.

"In order to improve the labor productivity of shoe enterprises, improve product quality, and accelerate industrial transformation and upgrading, the city is making efforts to promote the innovation of the machine-to-machine innovation of the footwear industry." Xu Jing, director of the Municipal Economic and Trade Bureau, said that in 2015, the city formulated The “Implementation Opinions on the Innovation of the Machine Substitution Mechanism” in Wenling's footwear industry was issued (Wen Zheng Banfa [2015] No. 41 Document), and the subsidy for the demonstration project of “machine substitution” in the footwear industry was carried out. In 2017, in the industrial transformation and upgrading policy introduced by the city, the amount of subsidies for the shoe industry technical transformation project has doubled compared with the general technical transformation project, and the threshold for entry has been reduced by half. Encourage the shoe enterprises to use smart manufacturing technology and automation equipment to speed up. Transformation and improvement.

This year, Wenling also issued the "Ten Policy on Supporting the Upgrade of Footwear Enterprises", one of which is to support the upgrading of technological upgrading of enterprises, the registration (approval) of the registration, and the actual investment of equipment purchased in the current year amounted to more than 1 million yuan (single The footwear enterprises with more than 10,000 yuan of equipment will be given a certain proportion of subsidies for equipment investment. Among them, part of the 2 million yuan is subsidized by 6%, part of 2 million yuan is subsidized by 10%, part of 5 million yuan is subsidized by 15%, and part of 10 million yuan is subsidized by 20%.

Not only that, Wenling has also set up two batches of 15 demonstration projects, and carried out the first test in the transformation of the production equipment of the complete set of shoes, the transformation of key links and the transformation of individual links. Through typical demonstrations, the city's shoe enterprises have been driven to implement 100 technological transformation projects of “machine substitution” for more than 5 million yuan.

Encouraged by the policy, Baker Sports cooperated with Dongguan Yili Automation Technology Co., Ltd. in Guangdong Province. It cost more than 7 million yuan to automate the transformation of the original production line and successfully developed the world's first fully automated production line for professional production of sports shoes. It became the first shoe enterprise in the country to adopt the automatic production line of sports shoes. The modified production line adopts positioning system, digital chip (RFID) and control software, combined with MES production system for management, and the production efficiency is greatly improved.

Boyang Shoes invested 17.5 million yuan and introduced a full computer automatic knitting machine to complete the production of 5 automatic assembly lines. The all-computer automatic knitting machine is 10 times more efficient than conventional machines and can save about 40% of energy consumption.

In 2017, the city's shoe enterprises completed an investment of 910 million yuan in industrial technology reform, accounting for 92% of the fixed assets investment of shoe enterprises, and the labor productivity of all employees increased by 12.8%.

Learn to earn a drink, Wenling shoes are more and more "good brand"

At the beginning of the development, Wenling Shoes once found a place in the market with OEM. But now, brand promotion is increasingly becoming the consensus of the future development of shoe enterprises.

"I used to process the brand factory. My shoes sell for 17 yuan, and he puts on his own brand and sells more than 30 yuan." Zhu Fude, chairman of Zhejiang Fulong Shoes Co., Ltd. said. OEM and independent brands, let Zhu Fude see the level of competitiveness of enterprises. Through a comprehensive inspection of Wenzhou and Fujian footwear industry, Zhu Fude was very emotional: "Some shoe companies in Fujian, like ABC and Anta, are about the same size as us before, but now they are ahead of us. Why? Because they know the brand operation."

"Wenling, one of the leading industries in the footwear industry, urgently needs to create a model of a leading enterprise, and drive the surrounding shoe factories to step by step toward the brand." Yuan Wenxin, chairman of Zhejiang Beck Sporting Goods Co., Ltd. thinks so.

Since 2010, Zhu Fude has recruited a professional management consulting company, hired a professional advertising company to make packaging plans for enterprises and products, and launched Xiaotongxing to enhance the image of the company, and promoted product awareness through a series of brand promotion methods. “Today, our shoes can sell for a few hundred dollars in some stores, and the shoes on the market can only sell forty or fifty yuan.”

"If you want to build a brand advantage, then you need to be clear about positioning. You can't compete for the market with low prices, but rely on quality and selling." At the desk of Yuan Wenxin, a book called "China Wenlin Children's Shoes and Accessories Comprehensive Innovation" The service platform (China • Wenling Children's Shoes Science and Technology Research Institute) overall construction program feasibility report has been drafted.

In the past few years, Wenling has fully promoted the brand strategy, taking the construction of the national-level children's shoes industry quality improvement demonstration zone as the starting point, and strives to crack the 'low-end, low-cost through measures such as quality improvement, brand cultivation, standard leadership, technical support, and technological innovation. 'The industrial dilemma.

“At present, the city's shoe enterprises have 5 well-known Chinese trademarks, 3 provincial famous brands, 11 provincial famous trademarks, 4 national-level regional brands and 1 provincial-level regional brand, and 3 national top ten children's shoes brands. The promotion of standard engineering construction, the brand awareness of the backbone enterprises of the footwear industry has been further strengthened.” Lin Xinde, deputy director of the Municipal Economic and Information Bureau, said that on December 20 last year, Becker Sports signed a license agreement with Disney in Guangzhou and was authorized to use Disney Mickye. And Minnie's prototype and trademark, this is the iconic event of Wenling footwear quality recognized by international brands.

The China (Wenling) Children's Shoes Industry Summit Forum held at the end of last year also allowed many merchants to have a new understanding of Wenling children's shoes. The children's shoes enterprises not only increased their orders, but also the popularity and influence of the entire industry.