Guangzhou Clothing Man: Tragic!
Guangzhou, which is famous for its slow pace, has such a different place. Everyone is so busy, as if time is traveling at twice the speed: there are freight personnel pulling small trailers in a hurry, and there are people racing against time to tally goods. There are many shop assistant girls, not to mention foreign customers carrying large black and white plastic bags in both hands.
The New China Building in Thirteen Rows is crowded with people (Photo source: Liu Jingjing)
This is the Thirteen-Hong Wholesale Street in Guangzhou, which is the last few links of Guangzhou’s textile and clothing industry chain. The street is only 400 meters long, but it brings together the New China Building, the popular shopping mall Tianman Building and Dongfanghong Clothing Wholesale Market are several nationally famous wholesale markets with tens of thousands of shops. They are one of the most profitable commercial markets in Guangzhou.
In addition to the Thirteen Hangings, Guangzhou also has three large wholesale markets, centered on Guangzhou Railway Station, Shahe and Zhongshan 8th Road. They jointly play the backbone of Guangzhou’s clothing wholesale industry.
“80%of spring and summer clothes come from Guangzhou”, this is a familiar saying in the clothing industry.
Clothes from these places flow to secondary wholesalers including clothing store owners, Taobao store owners, brand owners, etc. These second batches are supposed to be for consumers“The last mile “, consumers look for goods through “ people“ form.
With the rise of live broadcasting, these second batches have found new ways to get rich. They build their own live broadcast teams, or find anchors such as Xue Li and Wei Ya to carry out their work.“ Looking for goods”, an anchor’s dayGMV often reaches millions, Douyin is the only platform. 2020The live broadcast of men’s and women’s wearGMV has reached 89 billion yuan.
As a result, live broadcasting, wholesale, clothing processing, pattern making, and design jointly support Guangzhou’s trillion-dollar clothing industry chain.
Laymen watch the excitement, and insiders watch the door. These wholesale markets are the places where designer Liu Jingjing visits most often. She has worked and started a business in the clothing field, so she is familiar with the wholesale market and is familiar with it. I understand the hardships of the supply chain. Being in this industry, I understand but feel helpless.
The landlord is at the top of the tower, and the practitioners accompany him
“The rent for a clothing store of more than ten square meters here can reach 6010,000“
If there is a pyramid for textile and garment practitioners, then there will be only two levels. The top of the tower is the landlord of the wholesale market, and the body of the tower is the practitioners in other links. In the Thirteenth Line, the monthly rent for a small shop of only 10 square meters reached 2.58 yuan, which is still cheap. Because this is a commercial street with relatively dispersed crowds.
Shisanhang Roadside Shop Rent2.58Ten thousand yuan/month, which is not high (Source: Anjuke)
If you move the location to the New China Building, the fourth, fifth and sixth floors are stores that mainly sell Korean clothing, and are also the most expensive stores to rent.The monthly rent for a cubicle shop of more than ten square meters can reach 400,000 to 600,000, and the lease term is generally three-year deposit and one payment. </Generally, you have to contact many factories to find one that is willing to take over.
Jingjing did what others were unwilling to do, but Liu Jingjing would not accept the foreign trade of double-sided denim and down jackets. “Guangzhou’s advantage is that it makes T shirts, pants, women’s clothing, and down jackets. These are not advantages. Few factories can make them well, so we generally I won’t accept this kind of order either”.
In the few years since she started her business, she has experienced the expansion of her studio from tens to hundreds of square meters, and also experienced the bitterness of going from hundreds of square meters back to dozens of square meters again.“Making a living It is easy for one person, but it is difficult to support a team for a long time” When it comes to studio expansion, Jingjing is now more cautious.
“First, the order pattern of foreign trade after the epidemic is unstable, and there are too many studios that cannot survive and have closed down”, what Liu Jingjing wants to do, She seeks stability first, because she has seen too many studio situations where it was difficult to survive.
Next door to her office, there used to be a men’s clothing design studio with an area of more than 100 square meters, and brands such as Carbine were its customers. 2020At the end of 2020, this studio changed to a 300-square-meter studio and relocated. However, after a year, there may be something wrong with a certain order, and the rent was high. It closed at the beginning of the month.
The second reason is that the profit level of the studio itself is not high.
“12%, not counting other expenses such as water, electricity, shop rent, etc.“, when talking about the profit of each order, Jingjing said one thing Highest gross profit margin. “If the customer’s needs are simple, I will charge less, if the customer’s needs are complex, I will charge more. Even if I charge more, the gross profit will not exceed at most 12%”.
Profits are low and orders are unstable after the epidemic. What should we use to expand?
On the occasion of the Spring Festival, the Chinese New Year is a symbol of joy in the hearts of many people, but this is not the case in the eyes of clothing people.
At the end of the year, wholesale markets such as the Thirteen Banks clear out goods at very low prices. They are closed during the Spring Festival but still have to bear high rents; at the end of December every year, Liu Jingjing starts“Passive” During the holidays, it’s not that she doesn’t take orders, but that even if she takes orders, the upstream factories are unwilling and don’t have the capacity to do it.
For garment factories, even before the new year is over, they are already worried about the recruitment problem for the coming year, because the turnover rate of workers at the end of the year is very high.
Making clothing is a tedious and boring process. No matter which link it is, those who work in the game face low wages, no security, and heavy work and have a bleak future; those who start a business face the economic downturn, declining demand and financial pressure. Big, trying to carve out a piece of your own world in this red sea is difficult every step of the way.
The entire Guangzhou garment industry has also fallen into a vicious cycle that makes it difficult to upgrade the industry. The current garment processing and trade“cannot squeeze out high profits—Cannot provide practitioners with high wages and security—Reluctant to do higher-end clothing categories for the sake of continuity of orders—There is no room for subsequent profit growth—Staff loss continues— Continue to be unable to squeeze out high profits.”
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