Revival Of "Fashion Capital" After Hibernation: Guangzhou'S Clothing Industry Is Breaking Through Again.

After waiting for more than a month, Jiangxi people Zhou Hong decided to abandon the operation of the small workshop, thus ending her more than 20 year clothing business in Guangzhou.

"I can't wait until employees come back, and I don't know when I'll be able to return to work. I don't want to pay rent to landlords again." Zhou Hong's factory is located in Hou Kau village, Haizhuqu District, Guangzhou. It is only seven or eight kilometers away from the Zhongda textile business circle. It is one of the foothold of Hubei's clothing staff.

Although it is only a small and micro enterprise employing two or three employees, similar clothing factories are widely distributed in the central and western textile business circles and Baiyun District, and the relationship between Liuhua, Shahe and the thirteen lines form the "front shop and post factory", and together with the ecology of Gou Jianqi's largest clothing circle in Southern China.

Zhongda textile business circle has been suspended for more than a month, and the butterfly effect of the downstream industry chain of clothing has already appeared. Mogujie.com women's clothing supply chain leader Xiang Guo told reporters that affected by the epidemic, businesses have long been ready for spring new clothing demand is not fully released, coupled with a shorter sales cycle in spring, resulting in a backlog of wholesale market.

In March 25th, Guangdong province epidemic prevention and control news conference, Bu Xiaoqiang, President of Guangdong clothing and apparel industry association, analyzed that the impact of the epidemic on the industry may continue until August, and the pressure of enterprise liquidity and cost is very large. Up to now, there are more than 60% shops in the major textile and garment market in Guangdong Province, but a series of problems, such as the drop in passenger flow, the poor circulation of commodities and the tight liquidity, are still troubling the market recovery.

He said that after the end of the epidemic, the Guangdong clothing and apparel industry association will, according to the needs of garment enterprises, plan and organize consumption promotion activities under the line, jointly promote the consumption activities of various professional markets and industrial clusters, and strive to set up a venue in Guangzhou Beijing road pedestrian street.

　　 Industrial chain rhythm disrupted: supply of goods for the inventory of summer sales "can not catch up"

After the Kau village is a village in Haizhuqu District, relatively cheap rent has become an important reason for the location of small garment factories. Zhou Hong's workshop has ten machines, such as cutting beds, ironing beds and ironing furnaces. She thought that the low price of 30 thousand yuan would soon be transferred, but so far no one was interested in it.

According to past years, after the Lantern Festival, it is the busy recruiting season in the big textile business circle. The boss of the garment factory is willing to pay a salary of $10000 to recruit skilled workers. Entering the middle of March, Guangzhou's major wholesale markets have been resumed, and the "fashion capital" is gradually revived from the deep sleep.

In the field of textile and clothing circulation, Guangzhou Zhongda textile industry business circle has a pivotal position. After more than 30 years of development, it has become the world's leading and leading textile and garment accessories market in the world. "National fabrics look at Guangdong, Guangdong fabrics look at the big" is not empty talk. There are only 59 professional markets and nearly 23 thousand merchants in the China textile business circle. There are as many as 74 thousand direct employees, and there are more than 100 thousand kinds of garment accessories, and the annual turnover is estimated to exceed RMB 200 billion yuan.

Clothing is one of the highest penetration categories of e-commerce, but the Internet can not replace the manufacturing process. A fashion designer told reporters that although the clothing market has undergone 20 years of electronic commerce, the wholesale market of China textile business circle is still thriving, because the fabric needed for clothing needs to be approached through physical contact to determine the texture. This is the step that the Internet can not replace.

At the end of January, 59 professional wholesale markets in the textile business circle of China and Guangzhou were postponed. In March 9th, the light textile trading garden resumed business and became the first market in the big textile business circle. For more than a month, the downstream garment factories were unable to get the supply of raw materials, which affected the progress of the garment industry's recovery.

Shahe is one of the three major clothing distribution centers in Guangzhou. The ten thousand best clothing wholesale market of its most famous wholesale market was officially resumed in March 17th. Many traders in the market told reporters that the current supply of goods was mostly from the storage before the festival because the factory had not yet fully recovered.

Mogujie.com women's clothing supply chain leader Xiang Guo told reporters that in the early days of the epidemic, many wholesale market merchants prepared the new clothes in spring this year, but affected by the epidemic, this part of the demand did not have enough time to release, coupled with a shorter sales cycle in spring, resulting in a backlog in the wholesale market.

At the same time, due to inadequate supply of fabrics and unsatisfactory progress in the resumption of garment factories, the new season's summer wear is likely to miss the upcoming summer wear sales.

As for the impact of downstream industry chain, according to the industry survey results of Guangdong clothing and apparel industry in the early March, 71.2% of the survey enterprises reflected that the current operation of the upstream and downstream enterprises in the industry chain was not synchronized, resulting in the lack of raw materials and sales channels.

"The epidemic did disrupt the rhythm and arrangement of the whole industry chain." In an interview with reporters in March 22nd, Bu Xiaoqiang said that according to the seasonal sales of clothing industry, the shipment date of summer clothing was in March and April each year. In June and July, it will be transferred to the off-season sales. At present, the recovery of passenger flow and logistics is not ideal, which will affect the cash flow of enterprises.

Yang Dongwei, a fabric supplier, told reporters that the 3 months after the resumption of the Chinese new year was the most important month for business year, because the turnover accounted for 35% and the remaining nine months accounted for 65%.

　 Hubei migrant workers are "late", foreign trade orders have been cut into worries.

Hubei is an important source of labor in China textile business circle. According to public reports, there were about 150 thousand people coming to Hubei in recent years, of whom 52 thousand were from the mainland.

Their "late", to a certain extent, makes it difficult to say that the actual local resumption is ideal. Xiang Guo told reporters that, because most of the cooperative businesses are from Hubei, judging from the recent business situation, the overall recovery level of Guangzhou's clothing industry has not reached the original 10%.

"A comparable data for the same period is that 60% of the merchants in the Top 100 business on the mogujie.com went down, and even 20% of them fell out of Top 100, but the Jieyang city of Guangdong province (only 10 cases of confirmed cases) were less affected by the epidemic, and some merchants rose from 20 to 100 outside the original Top." Fragrant fruit said.

In March 12th, the Guangzhou epidemic prevention and control news briefing (Haizhuqu District special field), Haizhuqu District deputy district head Sun Wei introduced that Guangzhou city Haizhuqu District Hubei nationality personnel most, as high as 192 thousand people, after touches the statistics, 174 thousand Hubei nationality personnel are still in Hubei.

Recently, various cities in Hubei have been lifted up to make the dawn come true. Hubei migrant workers began to leave the province, and recently formed a small peak of returning panicles. Data from Baidu map show that after March 15th, the trend of Hubei's migration increased significantly. The top three of the main destinations were Shenzhen, Dongguan and Guangzhou, which accounted for about 30% of the total migration of Hubei. According to the latest policy of Guangzhou in March 22nd, Hubei low risk areas with Hubei Health Code Green Code personnel can come back to spike.

However, with the outbreak of the epidemic in the global fashion industry, the clothing industry's foreign trade orders are "chopping up tide", and the fragile supply and demand balance will be broken again.

Bu Xiaoqiang said that the clothing industry has about three to 40% orders for foreign trade orders, domestic orders close to 60%, but affected by the epidemic, foreign trade orders from Europe and the United States, the Middle East and other places have been large-scale cancellation. According to his data, about 80% of the foreign orders currently cancelled.

The garment industry has been one of the important pillar industries in China. However, the growth of the garment industry has been slowing down due to the decrease in foreign trade demand and the impact of foreign capital brands. According to the statistics of the National Bureau of statistics, in 2019, China's garment enterprises above Designated Size completed 24 billion 472 million apparel production, an increase of 3.28% over the same period, and the total retail sales of clothing products above the quota reached 977 billion 810 million yuan, up 2.6% over the same period last year, and the total export of garments and accessories reached 151 billion 370 million US dollars, down 4.08% from the same period last year.

The wholesale market is resumed and live with goods. "Now we need to restore the confidence of the clothing business".

Reporters recently visited, in Wanjia and other clothing wholesale market one after another merchants have resumed work, and rework is not only goods, electronic business platform reopened live broadcast is also part of the resumption of work. According to the data provided by Jingdong's social networking platform Jingxi, Guangzhou merchants receive 31 times the growth of sales volume and 51 times the growth of sales volume, with the support of streaming resources such as live broadcast.

As a matter of fact, the business circle of China and the big textile industry has already been getting weaker and weaker in terms of format, mode and matching. The industry content of the business circle needs to be innovated, and the overall transformation and upgrading is already in the firing line. Recently, Guangzhou has consulted openly on the three year action plan of Guangzhou to create a fashion capital, and issued the Guangzhou city direct seeding electricity supplier development action plan (2020-2022 years). The former proposed that in the next 3 years Guangzhou will cultivate 25 leading enterprises with an annual output value exceeding 1 billion yuan, and cultivate no less than 3 fashion industry national, provincial and municipal industrial design centers. It is estimated that by 2022, Guangzhou will support 10 head office direct seeding organizations with furniture demonstration and training, and train 10 thousand people with goods.

Under the impact of the epidemic, Guangzhou city launched fifteen measures in February to reduce rent by 830 million yuan by reducing the 2 month rent of small and medium enterprises and individual industrial and commercial businesses operated by commercial entities in the whole city.

According to the reporter's understanding, red cotton fashion city, Chengdu Fashion Plaza and Wanjia clothing wholesale market have announced specific policies on rent reduction and rent. Apart from the two month rent exemption, some of the rent from April to the second half of the market still has a certain discount.

"The middle and large cloth market is made up of 10 or 20 different independent textile cities. The average rent of each merchant is about 2.3 million a year. For the industry with an average gross margin of only 10%-15%, it is very large for the merchants to pay two months' rent without any income." Yang Dongwei said.

However, in Bu Xiaoqiang's view, it is a rent problem on the surface. In fact, even if the rent free year is not available, if there is no passenger flow, logistics and cash flow recovery, the sales of businesses will not be revival. "At present, the main factors that affect the clothing industry are two aspects. First, the epidemic affects the passenger flow. Two, the international crude oil price war directly affects the global financial and consumer market."

He believes that the most important thing at present is to restore the confidence of clothing businesses, and secondly to stimulate domestic demand for clothing, and the way to pull them must be grasps. "It is not to increase the production of factories, but to effectively stimulate the demand of domestic consumers for clothing."

(both Zhou Hong and Yang Dongwei are pseudonyms).