Fumian District, Yulin City, Guangxi is an important commodity distribution center in history. Since the reform and opening up, Fumian's social economy has entered the fast lane of development, especially the garment industry, which has become a leading enterprise and the largest garment production and processing base in Guangxi. The annual output of clothing is 120 million pieces (sets), with an output value of 1.3 billion yuan. The main varieties include casual pants, jeans, trousers, children's clothing, etc. The products are sold throughout the country, Hong Kong, Macao, Southeast Asia and other countries and regions. ?
Fu Mian is not very well-known in Yulin, but it was published in a French newspaper last year: [French "Liberation" article on December 14] Title: Fu Mian - the world's top trousers (Special Correspondent Pierre Askey)? In a small town called Fumian in Guangxi Province, China, there is a very strange phenomenon: every day, a large number of porters carry bundles of trousers. Traveling through the dusty streets, running from house to house. ? Fumian was once just an ordinary rural town with a population of only tens of thousands, but now it has invested in an intensive production like the whole of China, and its product is: pants. On the main street of the town, half of the houses are workshops. Each workshop has more than a dozen hardworking workers. A large number of pants waiting to be loaded and unloaded are piled on the tattered sidewalk. Large trucks brought in bales of raw materials, which were then moved into the house by stevedores. ?
If you leave the main street and take a look at the back alleys, you will understand that the production here is not limited to this main street. Every household in the town has an old-fashioned sewing machine. We met an elderly woman whose job was to sew trouser pockets—assigned to her by one of the town's big manufacturers—while her son or a neighbor hemmed them. In this way, the residents of the entire town were integrated into a huge informal production line, while their monthly salary was only a few dozen yuan. Although it is pitiful, it is a stable income that can save a primitive peasant family from a tragic fate. There are no labor regulations here, just long hours of work and meager pay...? Behind the town is an orderly system. A small private business owner explained that the orders and customized styles he holds come from companies in Guangdong (more than 500 kilometers east of Fumian). These companies all have export qualifications and their own marketing networks. The company keeps the purchase cost very low: the ex-factory price of a pair of jeans with butterflies embroidered on the back pocket is only 15 yuan in Fumian. This is a price that others cannot compete with! The owner of this small private enterprise can only earn 1 yuan from it, so he can only hope to increase production. Workers (whether working in workshops or working at home) account for 1 yuan in wages, and the rest is divided up by raw material merchants and logistics companies...? These jeans of average quality have a huge market: small stores in China, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East... This small business owner's jeans are also exported to South Africa. He said: "We are not planning to attack the European and American markets. Now it seems that the quality of our pants does not meet their requirements."? In Fumian, the cheapest pants in the world swarm out from this huge and flexible production system: there are both rural handicraftsmen and small industries; there are both cruel capitalist spirits and those who shed blood and tears. labor. All of this is connected to foreign markets through a vast system of branches. The same "model" has spread all over China, and it is making China's textile industry an opponent that makes all developing countries fearful. ?
〈This article is reprinted from Fu Mian Bar〉?
On December 14, 2004, a French newspaper published a piece of news about Yulin Fu Mian. The article referred to Fu Mian as "Pants Capital of the World", "Reference News" reprinted this report on December 21. What is the reason that made the French media in Europe pay attention to a small town in the remote southwest of China? With this question in mind, we visited Fumian.
Looking for Roots
Fumian is a newly established county-level district in Yulin City with a long history in the garment industry. As early as the 1920s, there were already a small number of families specializing in clothing production. In the 1970s, Fumian truly entered the stage of garment processing.
In the 1980s, Fumian's clothing industry began to make great progress. Villagers in Fumian, Fudong and Fuxi villages began to run full-time garment factories. Although the equipment was simple, the number and scale had doubled compared with the 1970s. Some bold manufacturers began to look for sales points in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. .
In the 1990s, Fu Mian's clothing industry has emerged. The large-scale introduction of advanced equipment and technology has greatly improved the quality of clothing. Major domestic and foreign brand clothing factories often come to Fu Mian to place orders for clothing processing. At that time, 10 large trucks would come in and out of Fumian in one day, transporting fabrics into the town for processing, and then transporting the processed clothes out for sale. At that time, nearly two-thirds of the stalls in Guangzhou Shahe Clothing Market were rented by Fu Mian's boss.
Resolve doubts
Today, Fumian has more than 690 large and small clothing factories, which can produce more than 500,000 pairs of trousers a day, with 200 styles of trousers. A variety of styles, the three major series of clothing trousers, jeans and casual trousers occupy a considerable market share in China, and the products are sold to more than 30 countries and regions in Southeast Asia, Australia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. According to statistics, among 100 pairs of pants produced in China, 3 are produced by Fumian. In a small urban area, various private business owners and many peasant-like workers produce more than 500,000 pairs of trousers every day and successfully export them, which can't help but amaze foreign reporters.
Breakthrough
Although the production volume of Fu Mian pants is amazing, the quality is not satisfactory. Pierre Aschi, a special correspondent for this French newspaper, also mentioned that Fu Mian produces "the cheapest pants in the world" but "the quality is average." Most of Fumian's clothing processing factories are traditional family workshops. The scale of the enterprise is small. The products are mainly medium and low-end trousers. They lack diversification, personalization, popularity, environmental protection and high-end. The added value of the products is low and the market Competitiveness is weak.
In order to raise the quality of Fumian pants to a new level, Fumian has made breakthroughs in the clothing industry from three aspects.
The first is a breakthrough in the concept of clothing owners. Since 2003, the government has organized individual bosses to visit large clothing groups such as Ningbo and Wenzhou many times. The difference in scale shocked the bosses. They are no longer limited to the traditional concept of "being rich and contented" and have begun to build large-scale clothing groups. Factory building. Pang Chunhu, the owner of Fumian Yongyu Garment Factory, invested 20 million yuan to build a standardized factory covering an area of ??22 acres. Now, the dormitory building, canteen, and modern factory building have begun to show scale, and are expected to be officially put into production in March this year.
The second is the breakthrough of the brand. Before 1999, the pants processed by Fumian were basically other brands, and the average profit from a pair of pants was only 0.5 yuan to 1 yuan. In 2000, the district government began to guide Fumian entrepreneurs to create their own brands. After several years of publicity and encouragement, Fumian now owns more than 20 clothing brands such as "Emperor", "Xinyong", "Chile Lai" and "Shengjianhua Family", and most of the trademarks are also registered in Hong Kong. Fuli Garment Co., Ltd., invested and established by Tang Jizhong, a private owner of Fuxi Village, after applying for the trademark "Shengjianhua Family", it receives more than 600,000 pieces (sets) of foreign orders every year. The company's annual output value is more than 12 million yuan, and the tax revenue is more than 400,000 yuan. .
The third is a breakthrough in development platform. The distribution of Fumian garment factories is very scattered, and there is no centralized platform to attract foreign investment. The Fumian District Government built a Fumian Avenue in 2003 as a garment industry base, and built factories on both sides of the avenue. It is expected that there will be 15 garment enterprises on both sides of the avenue, mainly invested by private and foreign enterprises, including entrepreneurs from Nanhai, Shantou, Shunde, Foshan and Wenzhou. The total investment is more than 85 million yuan, and the annual output value after completion can reach 2. 600 million yuan, with annual tax revenue of nearly 10 million yuan.
Fumian also vigorously develops the upstream and downstream industrial chain, covering various fields such as clothing manufacturing, washing, auxiliary material production, marketing, etc., from fabrics, zippers, buttons, trademarks, finished product packaging bags and other ancillary products Everything is complete, and the production process of a pair of pants does not need to leave Fumian at all. The extension of the industrial chain has increased output value and spawned many new enterprises.
It is reported that Fumian currently has 17 clothing washing companies, 35 computer embroidery factories, 9 clothing accessories factories, 53 dealers in cloth wholesale, clothing machinery, and accessories sales, and 3 logistics companies.
Fumian successfully held the "2005 Fumian Clothing Exhibition". Nearly 200 companies from inside and outside the region participated in the exhibition, and orders for 18.3 million pairs of pants were signed, with an amount of 530 million yuan. On-site transactions were completed The amount is 21 million yuan. A merchant who came all the way from the Philippines signed an order for 10,000 pairs of pants on the spot. Fumian, a small town in a remote area of ??southwest China, is believed to not only become a nationally renowned "clothing kingdom" in the near future, but will also become a veritable "Pants Capital of the World."
Source: Xingui.com-Guangxi Daily