Huajian Group Steadily Challenges Itself

The spring river is cold and the wise lead.

In the face of the rising cost crisis, six years ago, Huajian group, one of the world's largest women's footwear manufacturers, began to survive in the mainland.

Unexpectedly, the company that had intended to stop moving for at least 15 years is now likely to move again.

Li Weimin, 37 years old, has lived in Ganzhou for more than 6 years. Every winter, he will take the parents of Henan's hometown to spend the winter in Ganzhou.

In his mind, the ancient city at the junction of Zhangjiang and Gong Jiang has become his second hometown. There are not only the warm sunshine in winter, but also the rare blue sky and white clouds in the Pearl River Delta.

Li Weimin should have worked in Dongguan.

Six years ago, he was "airdropped" to Huazhong group in Dongguan, and was responsible for the project in Ganzhou.

Before and after 2000, Dongguan footwear industry, which experienced a rapid growth, suffered from land shortage and artificial rise, and the pressure of industrial pfer has emerged.

But considering the shortage of supporting industries in the mainland and backward logistics and pportation, many enterprises prefer to stay in Dongguan for more than a few years.

Hua Hua is the first to go out.

In 2002, the Group invested more than 300 million yuan in Ganzhou, Jiangxi to build a production base.

As a member of the Jiangxi project, Li Weimin spent six years in the ancient city.

Many colleagues were surprised by Huajian's boldness. Li Weimin was often asked a question, "what kind of factory do you build if you don't get a single?"

"Actually, we were scared at the time, but the boss said, if a shoe factory does not own its own factory, no equipment, no skilled workers, no competitive management, quality and price, what will the customer order you?"

Despite the fact that he was fully prepared mentally, the hardships of his pioneering work still impressed him. "There is a small insect called hidden wings in the local area. It will cause the skin to fester in large areas after biting." we men don't care much, but the female clerks are scared to cry, and we give it a nickname called "disfigured guest."

The lack of supporting manufacturers is also a challenge.

Most of the raw materials needed for production in Jiangxi base need to be shipped from Dongguan.

At that time, the expressway from Ganzhou to Dongguan had not yet been opened, and pportation time was enough for them to suffer. "Once because of the lack of 8 kilograms of material, the whole production line was discontinued, and the result was that the boss sent two drivers and drove his car for nearly 10 hours overnight."

Now, the expressway has been built. Between Jiangxi base and Guangdong, there are still ten trucks to be opened daily: pporting raw materials while pporting the shoes to Shenzhen port.

Hua Hua Jian, of course, hopes to purchase raw materials in Ganzhou nearby, but shoes manufacturers are also very upset: in the shoe factories concentrated in Dongguan, they can supply dozens of factories at the same time. Now many shoe factories are beginning to build new production lines in the mainland, and they are all located in Jiangxi, Guangxi, Hunan and Sichuan. But basically, there are only one or two large shoe factories in a region, and they do not know which one to follow.

In spite of this, Huajian had to build a "big matching circle" within the 500 km range based on the ancillary market in Dongguan.

"If the pport conditions can be satisfied, the matching problems within 1000 km are not large, but there is no way out."

Li Weimin said.

He said that Huajian's project in Vietnam is even more difficult. After two production lines have been put into operation, it has not been expanded. "Vietnam's needles must be shipped from Dongguan. If there are too many stocks, the styles of shoes will change, and a lot of raw materials will be scrapped."

The problem of raw materials and pportation is expected. There are still unexpected problems. At the beginning, labor wages in Ganzhou were much cheaper than that in Dongguan. However, due to the opening of Jiangxi and Guangdong Expressway, the labor force difference has been narrowed rapidly, and there is basically no comparative advantage in labor cost.

"Compared with Dongguan, the cost advantage of Ganzhou is mainly the low price of land and hydropower."

Hua Jian, executive deputy general manager of Jiangxi base, has calculated that the cost of utilities under Ganzhou can almost offset pportation costs. The company is leasing factories in Dongguan, and buying land in Ganzhou for 50 years in Ganzhou. It can be more calmly built according to its own needs, and "it is also good for enhancing employees' sense of belonging."

In order to ensure that the Jiangxi project is more successful, when the group quotes abroad, the shoes produced in Ganzhou are reduced by 3%.

In the past six years, the Jiangxi base has expanded from the original production line to 18, and the number of employees has increased from more than 300 to nearly 10000 now.

"It's too fast. I never thought that development would be so fast."

Li Weimin said.

Jiangxi's project has been evaluated by the state as one of the most successful cases of industrial gradient pfer.

Everything looks good.

In the wake of Huajian, in order to cope with the pressure of rising costs, shifting to lower cost places has become a common choice for many shoemaking enterprises.

In fact, since the second half of last year, this has become a trend.

Over the past one or two years, the cost has risen all the way. The competitiveness of labor-intensive industries in China is particularly worrying. Many experts and scholars have prescribed or migrated or upgraded.

He also tried at these two directions. They did not want to be nomads like Taiwan's predecessors. They could only live in a "cost by land".

Tu fire protection revealed that in the second half of 2005, Huajian senior executives realized that only shifting is not enough. Transfer can only solve the problem of survival, and competitiveness comes from industrial upgrading. In this industry, upgrading means R & D, design, brand and channel.

In Li Weimin's view, whether the change of market demand or the increase of production costs, Chinese enterprises growing up in competition have the ability to digest and overcome. He is more worried about the subtle turn of policy and public opinion.

"China's economy has been tilting towards the heavy chemical industry in recent years. With the reduction of the proportion of light industry in the national economy, the voice of light industry enterprises in the society is also declining."

He frankly said that in the past, earning foreign exchange through exports was a glorious thing. But now that there are more foreign exchange, Huajian's foreign exchange enterprise "seems to have done something wrong".

In some places, the government has pushed the high-tech industry, and has already applied high-tech achievements in the management, new material application and independent design, but is still regarded as "backward production capacity".

In Ganzhou, due to more tax revenue from local resources development, the Ganzhou Economic Development Zone has been actively attracting labor-intensive enterprises in the past two years, and is quietly becoming the focus of training local dominant enterprises (such as tungsten and rare earth resources enterprises).

Huajian is the largest local enterprise, but the investment is not the biggest.

Since last year, Huajian has entered a period of adjustment, and no new production lines have been put into operation. The first half of this year is particularly difficult, and production in Ganzhou is also compressed. Because it is not clear about the prospects of the US economy, customers dare not place orders in May, but by June, orders suddenly poured into large quantities, and factories suddenly fell into overloaded production.

The days seemed to be better.

But the top group has been thinking about continuing to move to more close to the source of the wage.

"When we decided to arrive in Ganzhou in 2002, the company estimated that 15 to 20 years would be enough.

I didn't think it was only 6 years ago, but I had to think about it. "

Tu Huo Bao has some helplessness.