After waiting for more than a month, Zhou Hong, a native of Jiangxi, decided to give up running a small workshop, thus ending her more than 20 years of clothing business in Guangzhou.
“I can’t wait for the employees to return, and I don’t know when work will resume. I don’t want to pay rent to the landlord in vain.” Zhou Hong’s factory is located in Houjiao Village, Haizhu District, Guangzhou, which is a short distance from Zhongda Textile. The business district is only seven or eight kilometers away and is one of the places where Hubei garment workers stay.
Although they are only small and micro enterprises employing two or three employees, similar garment factories are widely distributed in the Zhongda Textile Business District and around Baiyun District, forming “front shops” with Liuhua, Shahe and Shisanhang. The relationship between “factory behind” has jointly built the ecology of the largest clothing circle in South China.
The Zhongda Textile Business District has been shut down for more than a month, and the butterfly effect on the downstream clothing industry chain has already appeared. Xiangguo, head of the women’s clothing supply chain of Mogujie, told reporters that due to the epidemic, the demand for new spring clothing that merchants had prepared for a long time was not fully released. In addition, the sales cycle in spring is short, resulting in a backlog in the wholesale market.
On March 25, at the Guangdong Provincial Epidemic Prevention and Control Press Conference, Bu Xiaoqiang, President of the Guangdong Provincial Clothing and Apparel Industry Association, analyzed that the impact of the epidemic on the industry may last until August, and corporate liquidity and expenses It’s very stressful. Up to now, more than 60% of the shops in Guangdong Province’s key textile and apparel markets have opened. However, a series of problems such as declining buyer flow, poor commodity circulation, and tight liquidity are still hampering market recovery.
He said that after the epidemic is over, the Guangdong Garment and Apparel Industry Association will plan and hold offline consumption promotion activities based on the needs of clothing enterprises, and jointly carry out consumption promotion activities with various professional markets and industrial clusters, and strive to Setting up venues at fashionable landmarks such as Beijing Road Pedestrian Street in Guangzhou is currently under active preparation.
The rhythm of the industrial chain is disrupted
The supply of goods is inventory, and summer clothes are sold “Can’t keep up”
Houjiao Village is an urban village in Haizhu District. Relatively cheap rent has become an important reason for small garment factories to locate here. Zhou Hong’s workshop has ten machines and facilities such as cutting beds, ironing beds and ironing stoves. She thought she could sell it out quickly at a low price of 30,000 yuan, but so far no one has taken any interest.
According to the situation in previous years, after the Lantern Festival, it is the busy recruitment season in Zhongda Textile Business District. The owners of garment factories are willing to pay tens of thousands of yuan to recruit skilled technicians. In mid-March, Guangzhou’s major professional wholesale markets have resumed operations one after another, and the “fashion capital” is gradually waking up from its slumber.
▲ Clothing merchants are busy handling inventory after resuming work. Photo by Beijing News reporter Lu Yifu
In the field of textile and clothing circulation, Guangzhou Zhongda Textile Industry Business District plays a decisive role. After more than 30 years of development, it has become a globally renowned and domestically leading world-class textile and apparel surface and accessories trading market gathering area. “The country’s fabrics look to Guangdong, and Guangdong’s fabrics look to China and China” is by no means an empty statement.
Only in the Zhongda Textile Business District, 59 professional markets and nearly 23,000 merchants participate, with as many as 74,000 direct employees and more than 100,000 types of clothing accessories. , the annual transaction volume is estimated to exceed 200 billion yuan.
Clothing is one of the categories with the highest penetration rate of e-commerce, but the Internet cannot replace the manufacturing process. A fashion designer told reporters that although the clothing market has experienced 20 years of e-commerce, the wholesale market in the Zhongda Textile Business District is still booming. The reason is that the fabrics required for making clothes must be actually touched to determine the texture. This is A step that the internet cannot replace.
At the end of January, all 59 professional wholesale markets in the Zhongda Textile Business District postponed their opening. As of March 9, the Guangzhou Textile Trading Park resumed business, becoming the first in the Zhongda Textile Business District to welcome the Come and resume the market. For more than a month, downstream garment factories have been unable to obtain raw material supplies, which has affected the recovery progress of the garment industry.
Shahe is one of the three major clothing trading centers in Guangzhou. One of its most well-known wholesale markets, Wanjia Clothing Wholesale Market, officially resumed operations on March 17. Many merchants in the market told reporters, Since the factory has not yet fully resumed work, most of the current supply comes from pre-holiday inventory.
Xiang Guo, head of the women’s clothing supply chain of Mogujie, told reporters that in the early days of the epidemic, many wholesale market merchants prepared new clothing for this spring in advance, but due to the epidemic, this part of the demand was not sufficient. The time release, coupled with the shorter sales cycle in spring, has led to a backlog in the wholesale market.
At the same time, due to insufficient fabric supply for new seasonal summer clothing and unsatisfactory resumption of work in garment factories, merchants are also likely to miss out on the upcoming summer clothing sales.
▲ In the cloth market, there are auxiliary material merchants supplying mask raw materials. Photo by Beijing News reporter Lu Yifu
As for the impact on the downstream industry chain, according to industry survey results of Guangdong Province’s clothing and apparel industry in early March, 71.2% of surveyed companies reported that currently The unsynchronized start-up of enterprises upstream and downstream of the industrial chain has resulted in insufficient supply of raw materials and auxiliary materials and blocked sales channels.
“�In addition to two months’ rent, there is still a certain discount on rent from April to the second half of the year.
“The entire Zhongda cloth market is composed of more than ten or twenty independent textile cities of different sizes. The average rent for each merchant is about two to three hundred thousand per year. For this average gross profit, it is only 10 For %-15% of the industry, paying two months’ rent in vain without receiving anything will have a huge impact on merchants,” said Yang Dongwei.
However, in Bu Xiaoqiang’s view, on the surface it is a rent issue, but in fact, even if rent is free for one year, without the recovery of passenger flow, logistics and cash flow, merchants’ sales will not be able to revive. “The current factors affecting the apparel industry are mainly two-fold. One is that the epidemic has affected passenger flow, and the other is that the crude oil price war in the international market directly affects the global financial and consumer markets.”
He believes that the most important thing at the moment is The first is to restore the confidence of clothing merchants, and the second is to stimulate domestic demand for clothing, and the method of pulling must have a grasp. “It is not to increase factory production, but to effectively stimulate domestic consumers’ demand for clothing.”
(Zhou Hong and Yang Dongwei in the article are pseudonyms)
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