As the famous shoe production area in China, the wholesale business of the “Suzhong Trade City” in the distribution market of Jiangdu shoes is still prosperous. In the past, “pre-shopping” was replaced by stores of various products. However, Wang Kailin, director of the office of the Jiangdu Leather Association, felt otherwise: “Although there are more than 100,000 pairs of leather shoes shipped from here to other parts of the country every day, there is not a single brand that really deserves to be heard.”

"License" started

Jiangdu has been making shoes for nearly 800 years. Today, the city is home to more than 750 shoe factories and workshops. It has become the largest shoemaking base in East China and 35,000 people are engaged in this traditional industry. Jiangdu people are proud that almost one in every 15 people across the country wears Jiangdu shoes.

The development of the footwear industry in Jiangdu is closely related to Shanghai. Zhou Xiaoxiang, deputy director of the Jiangdu Municipal Propaganda Department, once worked in the township. According to his recollection, in the 1980s, when there were only flowers in the town, there were associated companies such as the Shanghai Baodi Leather Shoes Factory and the Heming Leather Shoes Factory. One of the associate factory employees reached more than 1,000 people, and the scale can be imagined. "In association with the Shanghai shoe factory, we only need to produce according to the requirements. The raw materials are people's. The production plan and sales are all people's. By the Shanghai gold shoes, the Jiangdu shoes are popular all over the country."

In a boom, no one thought that the crisis was coming.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, with the rise of leather shoes in Guangdong and Zhejiang, the state-owned shoe factories in Shanghai were either closed down or merged, and the joint ventures in Jiangdu also fell.

"OEM" under the sea

On the scale of the shoe factory closed down, more individual private small businesses, small workshops appeared as many.

Chen Lianghai, 51, is a veteran shoe company with more than 500 employees in Jiangdu. Fifteen years ago, the China-Sino Trade City was opened. He took advantage of the fact that the township and township enterprises ran leather shoes and sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of hard-earned money. Here they rented a facade to sell shoes.

“We are the front shop back square, and we have seven or eight workers at the beginning.” Chen Lianghai said that everything was done at the beginning, and there were self-produced, self-produced, but also processed, OEM, and what money did. “After a period of time, it was found that while giving each other a license, each pair of shoes earned only a few bucks, but the output was large, the sales were guaranteed, and the overall efficiency was higher than the self-produced and self-selling. The OEM production gradually became the prevalence of our line. practice."

Gradually, there are hundreds of small and medium-sized shoe factories and workshops processing centers in Jiangdu townships. “Guangdong and Zhejiang merchants brought in the latest models from all over the country, and the collection of raw material suppliers such as leather also reduced the cost of production. The OEM advantages of Jiangdu shoes gradually emerged.”

Jiangdu shoes in the end past what cards? Wang Kailin quoted a shoe owner as saying that almost all of the country’s leather shoes had Jiangdu’s OEM. According to statistics from the Leather Chamber of Commerce, Jiangdu branded leather shoes are sold throughout the country, with the northern and western regions being the main ones.
"Create brand" competition

Although there are many real estate brand shoes in the Central China Business City, the price is generally not high, and usually a pair of shoes can be purchased for a few tens of dollars. Prices are slightly higher, Zhejiang, Guangdong and other places.

“Obviously selling is a coolie, and it is a service that objectively improves our shoemaking ability and design quality. This is an unavoidable process for us, but we cannot always stay at this level.” Chen Lianghai is an idea. The boss, he registered his own trademark brand a few years ago, walking on both legs with OEM and independent brands. Today, his brand is well known in Jiangdu and its customer base.

“Our own brand sales currently account for 60% to 70%, and OEMs account for 30% or 40%, which is a good job among counterparts in Jiangdu. This year we will build 150 stores with independent brands, with county-level cities and townships as Lord, the countryside surrounds the city.” Chen Lianghai has planned to requisition a new factory building and launch a standardized production line.

“Creating a brand is not as simple as taking a name. It is necessary to enhance the brand image and quality level of Jiangdu shoes through new designs, new materials, new features, new technologies, and other innovations. Through a highly specialized division of labor, many small businesses are changed. The overall low-level competition state requires the government to support the adoption of funds and policies, to guide the emergence of leading enterprises by means of marketization, and encourage advantageous enterprises to participate in the formulation of industry standards and national standards, Professor Song Linfei suggested.

The owner of a leather shoe like Chen Lianghai has already had many in Jiangdu. According to the latest data, last year, Jiangdu produced more than 70 million pairs of leather shoes annually, and the income from shoes, leather, and accessories has reached 7.5 billion yuan, which is a significant increase over the past few years. The city has more than 200 trademarks of various types of leather shoes, including 2 famous trademarks in the province.

Professor Song Linfei, deputy director of the Provincial Academy of Social Sciences who had studied leather shoes in the province and various professional markets in the province, believes that the first-tier wholesale market and numerous manufacturing enterprises are the biggest advantages for the leather shoe industry in Jiangdu, and they must create “Eastern Shoes Capital”. "To achieve new expansion through the brand is an inevitable transition.