In 2020, the total number of employed people in the upstream and downstream industrial chains of China’s textile and garment industry is said to be as high as 170 million. Although the specific figures cannot be verified, the textile and clothing industry undoubtedly accounts for half of the national economy.
As a pillar industry, the domestic textile and garment industry is facing a crisis moment of internal and external troubles. In the past six months, more than nine well-known textile and apparel companies have gone bankrupt. Metersbonwe’s profits exceeded 1 billion four years ago. Today, this former clothing empire is on the decline of losses, and international fast fashion brands represented by ZARA and Uniqlo have become the new favorites of young people.
At such a moment, the transformation of traditional industries by the Internet is actually far less reflected in the clothing field than we imagined.
“Just a simple hang tag is a very complicated thing in traditional retail stores”
Clothing is a huge manufacturing system. What we talk most about with people from traditional clothing companies is the back-end production and supply chain in clothing. Each link in the clothing supply chain is like a gear with sophisticated design. These gears mesh with each other to form a huge machine, and this machine is truly affecting the development of the clothing industry.
In the traditional clothing industry, the supply chain is roughly divided into three parts: clothing companies, clothing factories and fabrics factory. Geographically, the entire apparel industry is concentrated in Qingdao, Guangzhou, and the Yangtze River Delta in Shandong. Fabrics are distributed in Keqiao, Shaoxing, and Zhongda, Guangzhou. Production bases are mainly in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
Wang Jinhua, general manager of Youliubao, who has worked hard in the traditional clothing industry for 15 years, said, “In terms of the specific operation of the supply chain, some clothing companies are very light-hearted. For brand operations that are close to marketing, their clothing will be outsourced to a design team for design. Some clothing companies are more focused and will have corresponding design departments underneath. No matter which type, the final design of the designer can only be called To turn a work into a product, it must go through important clothing production links, including layout, cutting, sewing, ironing and other processes.”
From design to production , in the processing and manufacturing of clothing, there are currently two most common models in the industry: one is the all-inclusive model. The factory is directly responsible for the full package, the clothing company directly pays the total price, and in the end only the finished product is received; one is a pure OEM model. The factory is only responsible for processing, and the fabrics are purchased by the clothing company itself. The clothing company will pay two fees, one is the processing fee to the factory, and the other is the fabric fee to the fabric factory. As for the logistics of fabrics from the fabric factory to the factory, you can choose to pull them yourself or ask the factory to deliver them.
In addition to fabrics, there are also accessories, which refer to the button materials on clothes. If it is an all-inclusive model, the factory will directly prepare the accessories for the clothing company. In another way, the clothing company will buy the accessories itself, and the factory will only be responsible for assembly.
“The fabrics and raw materials that are more upstream than processing and manufacturing are also very complicated. The fabric itself has its own process, for example, different fabrics have different base fabrics. One piece For a heather gray knitted T-shirt, the base fabric must be dyed from the original white to heather gray; for a skirt with lace, during production, the base fabric first needs to be processed through the lace process. These treatments may It is spliced by the garment factory itself, or the base fabric may be ready-made by the fabric factory. Under different cooperation models, the upstream and downstream chains may be longer,” Wang Jinhua said.
This complex production process and intricate chain nodes can be reflected in the simplest T-shirt.
T-shirts can be considered a very standardized product in clothing, but to make a T-shirt, the supply chain involved is also very troublesome. Starting from purchasing garment embryos, you need to find a printing factory, then go through many different processes (such as printing, labeling, etc.), then to packaging (at this time, you need to contact packaging workers), and finally to logistics suppliers and after-sales. Before the garment embryo, there is post-processing, which includes ironing, inspection, folding and other processes, as well as washing, shearing, steaming, pressing and other methods. Further ahead, there are garment processing, fabric procurement, printing and dyeing, raw materials, etc.
“There are really, really many ways to do this in the clothing manufacturing industry. Just a simple hang tag is a very complicated thing in a traditional retail store. The information on the hang tag The description of the clothes needs to be very precise, and there are so many SKUs in the store, so it is not easy to match them one by one. If there is any discrepancy between the tag information and the clothes, it will be very troublesome, because the store has purchase records, and it will be shipped according to the number. , the quality supervision department will conduct random inspections, and if any discrepancies are found, the penalties will be very strict. Some stores directly remove the labels to save trouble, but retail clerks are often confused by this,” Liu Chao said.
It can be seen that the entire chain in the clothing supply chain is very long, with many nodes. Almost every process involved has a different factory responsible for it. It is very professional and segmented. Supply The cooperation methods of the chain are also very flexible and diverse, but in the end it is the result of the cooperation of multiple suppliers.
“This industry itself is not on-demand.�.
For example, they will make color plans at the beginning of the year, and these colors often come from the popularity of the fashion circle. After these plans are finalized, ZARA will ask its suppliers to prepare the large-frame dyed semi-finished products first to save subsequent reaction time. And if you look closely at ZARA style clothes, you will find that the base fabrics of these styles are almost all of the same type, because only in this way can the pressure on the upstream fabric factories be reduced.
Finally, ZARA never makes hot items, they even do limited hunger marketing. All these measures combined, coupled with the strong position of the ZARA brand and the willingness of the supply chain to cooperate, make it possible to quickly produce small batches of clothing. “The industry insider analyzed.
Similar to ZARA, the domestic fast fashion brand Handu Yishe has also adopted a similar approach to solve supply chain problems. An industry insider said , Handu Yishe adopts a single product full-process operation mechanism, headed by the marketing, design, and planning teams, making real-time adjustments based on market response, analyzing based on sales data, and making predictions about the market. Because of the supply chain requirements It is very high, and it is easier to achieve by making a single product.
On the other hand, there are many small manufacturers in China who often reluctantly cater to the changing needs of the market, but after changing the fabrics, the people behind them The response speed cannot keep up, because it is very difficult to build a full range of products, and the supply chain needs to be rebuilt.
“China actually has the earliest flexible supply chain, which is the small workshop model. ”
The flexible supply chain that has been proposed in recent years is actually a way to restructure and transform the supply chain proposed by the consumer market.
The traditional supply chain model is a supply-side market. What the company produces is what consumers buy, and it is related to the company’s products. Now the demand side is dominated by the demand side, and the perceptual appeal is getting stronger and stronger, forcing clothing companies to cater to consumers and focus on consumption. dominated. However, consumer demand is changeable, fast, and personalized, and small batches have become mainstream.
As a result, this market change has prompted clothing companies to face transformation: they used to be large-scale The industrialized production model, which produces large quantities in one year and then distributes them, is now likely to cause inventory backlog. It is necessary to cater to the market, sell well and then return orders, and reduce clothing inventory.
This pair The new requirements put forward by the supply chain are: the original chain operation is to set a production plan from the beginning of the year, and the fabric manufacturer starts to organize the gray fabric, dyeing process, etc., and then delivers it to the garment processing factory for processing. After the garment factory produces it, it is handed over to the brand owner, and the brand owner then Distribution of goods; now due to unstable market demand, frequent, small batch, and unstable orders have become the mainstream, requiring fabric manufacturers and garment factories to cater to the changes of brand owners, so the concept of flexibility (quick response chain) was born. Flexibility is to supply The chain leaves room for flexibility.
“Strictly speaking, China’s flexible supply chain actually came out very early. The small workshop model is a flexible supply chain that is flexible enough. But for garment processing factories, industrial production is standardized. The machinery and equipment in the factory need to adapt to flow production. If you want to create a flexible supply chain with consistent speed and quality, you need to see whether the production line can adapt to personalized production needs. The same is true for fabric factories. In the past, there was no charge for cylinders with a length of more than 1,000 meters. Now, the cost of small batch production has increased. Fabric factories can only increase prices or adjust equipment processes to respond faster. “Wang Jinhua said.
“Most factories generally do not have the courage and funds to do this. At the same time, the transformation is also very difficult. An order for a big brand usually involves hundreds of pieces, but there are many SKUs, so the factory has high requirements for production line transformation. “Liu Chao said.
Although it is difficult to transform flexible production lines, the demand for reverse customization is becoming more and more obvious. Will There may only be three types of manufacturers left that continue to adhere to the industrialized mass production model: the first is companies with strong brands themselves. They will not cater to consumers, but will guide them in a forward-looking manner; the second is companies with strong brands. Companies with strong sales channels occupy all the long tail and support standardized industrial production; the third type are export-oriented companies, and their products are mainly sold to third world countries and regions such as Africa.
For most clothing companies, transformation is almost a must. “Chinese clothing companies started out as OEMs and had no clothing brands. Now as the cost of profit gets higher and higher, clothing companies find that they are simply doing OEM OEM opportunities are getting smaller and smaller, and if you don’t make your own products now, you will go out of business. “Wang Jinhua said.
When these clothing companies prepare to build their own brands, they will inevitably encounter these problems: The first is the channel problem. “Channels are not just what you want to enter. can enter”; the second problem is that the market demand is not known, so the risk is very high. From the perspective of its own business, using the uniqueness of the product to attract purchases and organizing rapid production for launch will be a general trend. Therefore, more and more garment factories will begin to adopt this model.
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