Restricted Chinese footwear export industry struggle for national brand

Last month, European footwear manufacturers proposed extending anti-dumping measures against Chinese footwear exports. Many signs indicated that European Union is likely to carry out the proposal, which will make Restricted Chinese footwear. According to the market statistics from Tootoo.com, Zhujiang Delta, as one of the most important footwear export area in China, exported 940,000,000 pairs of footwear (slumped 25.7%) in the first 5 months this year, with only 2428 footwear exporters now, a decrease of 2331 ones from last year. However, footwear export price hiked 45% compared with last year; the export volume reached 3,460,000,000 US dollars, increasing 8% from last year. So quantity reduced, unit price and export volume grew, a complicated phenomenon worth rethinking.

In Zhujiang Delta, footwear manufacturing is one of the most significant industries. This industry’s change has been the main index for other countries studying China’s industrial reforming. At the beginning of this year, in a research note, Asia Footwear Association in Zhujiang Delta found that among Guangdong 5,000-6,000 footwear enterprises closed down more than 1000 in 2007, involved 150,000 to 200,000 staff. This news once aroused great domestic and foreign medias’ interests. So that thousands of footwear enterprises closed down or moved inland suddenly became the crucial evidence for Guangdong industry moving out.

Now, just after a half year from “Thousands of Footwear Enterprises Closure Matter”, footwear export statistics let us see a different side about Zhujiang Delta’s footwear industry. Although half of footwear enterprises withdrew from foreign markets, this industry’s strength has not been weakened on the contrary, it grows out of expectation.

Seemingly, footwear exporters’ decrease largely but their enterprise scales distinctly expand; some of big enterprises still develop very well. Last year, Zhujiang Delta had only two enterprises with more than 100,000,000 US dollars footwear exports but this year increased 4 with the same sales, which demonstrates Zhujiang Delta footwear enterprises have been more centralized to trend large enterprises.

Zhujiang Delta enterprises expanding scales and improving technology are the footwear industry’s status quo as well as the effective way to compete in global market. Among the thousands of closed footwear enterprises, many of them were small and middle scales and their total producing strength was inferior to a leading one. The board chairman, from Wenzhou Jinmao Shoes Co., Ltd (its annual exports over thousands of US dollar), said those withdrawing enterprises exported low-price footwear and this was the main reason for the footwear unit price rising.

Tootoo.com, as the global biggest vertical B2B search engine, analyzed although Zhujiang Delta had massive footwear enterprises closed down and withdrew from foreign market, footwear industry does not go down, it grows bigger and stronger in scales and quality.