Export Shoe Machine Gains Momentum, Shoe Industry Still Worries

Introduce imitation and turn to sea by boat.

The shoes are placed on the column of a machine and then sent to the closed box for automatic painting.

People are not the main force here. They only need to repeat and mechanically put their shoes up. This machine can replace 15 people before.

This is a shoe making robot developed by Dongguan ILLY Automation Technology Co., Ltd. (ILLY shoe machine). ILLY shoe machine was founded in 1998, and its headquarters is in Ting Shan village, Houjie, Dongguan. At present, this enterprise has formed the industrial scale of the whole shoe machine output.

2001, ILLY

Yang Chongguo, chairman of the board, turned from shoe repair to shoe making machine, and bought three shoe machines from Italy for improvement.

"In 2004, ILLY products entered the Chinese market but were sued by the Italy brand ALFA for infringement."

Yang Chongguo said that ILLY just copied instead of plagiarism. In fact, ILLY's products added many practical elements, so ALFA could not bring down ILLY, and finally the two sides chose cooperation.

Using ALFA brand and technical guidance, ILLY shoe machine smoothly "borrow the ship to sea", products are exported to overseas.

In recent years, due to a series of factors such as rising labor costs, some shoe companies in Dongguan have tried to set up factories in Southeast Asia. As a supporting industry chain, the order of Dongguan shoe machine enterprises has started overseas orders from a single domestic market.

Wang Jingwen, President of Dongguan shoe machine Association and general manager of Dongguan name Ling Industrial Automation Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Ming Ling Industry"), said that there are 41 investment projects pferred from Guangdong to China since 2012, of which 15 and 13 projects have been pferred to Malaysia and Vietnam, mainly based on textiles, clothing, shoes and hats.

Affected by this, 40% members of the more than 100 member enterprises of the shoe machine Association of Dongguan have generally received the rise in export orders or export orders.

Driven by profits, many shoe-making enterprises began to study and expand overseas markets.

"This is the last resort."

Wang Jingwen said that some customers moved abroad. These customers were familiar with the original shoes machine products, and guided by the idea of doing better than cooked, the shoe machine products in Dongguan also went abroad in a rational way.

Wang Jingwen said this phenomenon is the "Butterfly Effect" of the footwear industry. Under this effect, the export share of Dongguan shoe machine enterprises has been rising. Taking the name Ling industry as an example, "before 2011, the export share of our company was 20%, up to 30% last year, and it is expected to reach 40% this year."

Shoe machine shop in the domestic market

The exportation of export orders is exulting, but shoe machine shops that only take domestic orders are having a hard time.

There are hundreds of shoe machine shops on both sides of 256 provincial highways.

Li Yong is one of the boss of a shoe machine shop. "In 2012, profits dropped sharply. Many shoe machine shops were closed down, most of them remained in maintenance, and only a small part of them were performance gains."

Li Yong told reporters that business has become more and more difficult in recent years. "My shop is pretty good. There are still a lot of orders in Dongguan. Some small shops are not so lucky. Profits continue to compress and then go bankrupt."

Li Yong said that this may be what experts call "shuffle era".

Wang Jingwen said that although the export orders received by Dongguan's shoe-making enterprises were actually the continuation of the previous domestic orders, the sense of share increased, but in fact profits increased little. "If you sell a machine to India, India will charge you customs duties, and at the same time you will have freight and service charges. There is no advantage in comparison with the domestic sales ratio."

Wang Jingwen introduced that the name Ling industry has set up 18 consignment points in 10 countries, including India, Brazil, Kampuchea and Vietnam, to follow up local services, which are thinning out export profits.

Danger signal

Shoe machines are sold overseas.

Domestic shoe industry

"Shoes are necessities of life. Even if the economy is not good, people will not wear shoes. At most, they buy two pairs of high-end shoes, two pairs of medium and low grade shoes, and now buy three pairs of high and medium shoes."

Jiang Lin, deputy director of the Hong Kong, Macao and Pearl River Delta Research Center of Zhongshan University, believes that Dongguan shoe enterprises are mainly foundry workers, and a small number of shoe enterprises are pferring to Southeast Asia to continue to take orders, and they are also making low and medium shoes.

"The export orders of Dongguan shoe machine enterprises increased, indicating that the order of shoes enterprises in Southeast Asia has increased," Jiang Lin said. This is a dangerous signal. "These shoes machines were bought to compete with Dongguan shoe companies, and better to take orders from Dongguan shoe enterprises."

"Shoe enterprises in Dongguan should speed up the pformation and upgrading process, recognize the situation and seek new outlets for enterprises."