Currently, a piece of clothing uses Indian cotton and cotton yarn, is woven and printed by domestic textile factories, and is made into semi-finished clothing in Bangladesh. It is then shipped to Gulf countries or Middle East countries for sewing, and the final product is exported to Europe and the United States. Countries and regions, such “transnational models” have become more and more mature. To some extent, companies without the ability to integrate global supply chain resources will be eliminated by the market in the future. In the environment of global resource allocation, the cotton textile industry can only dispel the dark cloud hanging over the entire cotton and textile industry chain as soon as possible by continuously enhancing its competitive advantages.
With the development of the Internet and communication technology, buyers and sellers can easily complete international goods sales transactions online, so much so that in today’s Canton Fair, “trade transactions” have little meaning and have slowly become business transactions. An image “exhibition” and a “gathering” of old and new friends. At the Canton Fair and various similar exhibitions, it is outdated to use the method of “counting heads” or inflated transaction amounts to judge industry development trends. However, through in-depth face-to-face conversations with many cotton textile business owners at the Canton Fair, But you can truly understand the development status of the industry and the problems it faces, and get a lot of useful information.
As the saying goes, “A layman sees the excitement, an expert sees the door.” The decrease in downstream orders in the cotton textile industry has caused the “destocking” of upstream cotton raw materials to take longer than expected. If there is news of cotton reserves being dumped at this time, it will undoubtedly make things worse for the entire cotton and textile industry. The boss of a cotton processing company looked at the bank loans that were about to expire on his account, and then looked at the slow sales and shipments of cotton in his warehouse. He couldn’t help but lament that the weather was getting hotter in early summer, but the market was still so cold!
The replacement of cotton with chemical fiber raw materials is accelerating
Currently, among the various types of textiles on the market, the proportion of cotton fiber used has dropped significantly. As cotton prices have remained high and fluctuated dramatically in recent years, downstream customers have gradually used blended raw materials or chemical fiber raw materials to replace cotton. At the Canton Fair, denim clothing, which used to be a traditional “big consumer of cotton”, now also widely uses viscose, cotton blended yarn and recycled fiber blended yarn. It can be said that the large-scale use of chemical fiber raw materials to replace cotton fiber has become an irreversible development. trend. The use of non-cotton fibers can avoid the uncertainty of orders caused by fluctuations in cotton prices, and at the same time meet the market’s demand for different functional clothing.
As textiles are used more and more widely, the functional requirements for textiles are becoming increasingly complex. This requires manufacturing companies not only to have the ability to operate orders, but also to have the ability to develop new products. In this regard, Taiwanese exhibitors at the Canton Fair are worth learning from mainland companies. Talking with several Taiwanese exhibitors, we found that they spend 15% to 20% of their corporate profits as research and development expenses for new products every year. The functional textiles they develop are widely used in various types of functional clothing, industrial textiles, and automotive textiles. field. On the other hand, most of the cotton and cotton yarn manufacturing enterprises in mainland China have no core competitiveness and have been operating at a low level all year round at the level of “selling resources and selling physical strength.” Faced with increasingly complex market requirements, companies without talent and strength will soon fail. will be eliminated.
At the Canton Fair, the author tried to find several factories that produce pure cotton products, but finally found a company from Hubei in a corner that produces pure cotton yarn and gray fabrics. Boss Chen, the person in charge of the company, said that the company has 150,000 spindles and 280 Toyota brand wide-width air-jet looms. Recently, it has not paid much attention to the price of domestic cotton because the company mainly produces 60-80 count pure cotton yarn and is used for weaving. Combed compact spinning of high-end home textiles has good export and domestic sales markets. Since combed compact spinning of 60 to 80 counts is profitable, the company also plans to expand production scale, and new equipment is currently being installed and debugged.
Look around the world for high-quality cotton
Some companies said that the most worrying thing at present is the supply of cotton raw materials. There is a serious disconnect between domestic cotton processing companies and cotton textile and cotton companies. The quality of domestic cotton reserves cannot meet the cotton requirements of companies. Coupled with policy deviations, this has resulted in the current situation of “a shortage of good cotton and an abundance of bad cotton.” . Therefore, many companies have said that they are currently increasing their procurement of cotton from around the world to find high-quality cotton raw materials that can be matched with high-end products.
Regarding the issue of cotton dumping and storage that is currently attracting more attention in the market, spinning mills hope that the price of cotton will be relatively stable. No matter whether the price is high or low, only when the price of raw materials is stable can they dare to accept long-term or large orders. . Some business owners said that no matter how high the price of cotton is, as long as the market agrees, the company will have room to survive; on the contrary, if the market does not agree, the price of cotton will drop again and again, which will be unacceptable to the company. At present, domestic cotton prices are mostly between 13,000 yuan/ton and 14,000 yuan/ton. Most companies believe that there is still room for downward adjustments. Therefore, companies currently do not dare to replenish their stocks in large quantities to avoid inventory depreciation due to the introduction of the stockpiling policy. .
Some business owners also expressed their opinions on the cotton dumping and stockpiling.According to ��’s view, the new cotton in 2015 has just been sown, and the conditions for selling and stocking are not mature at this time, because the current low-grade cotton on the market has not reached a situation of “supply exceeds demand”. On the contrary, there is still a large amount of cotton that has not been sold. If The recent stockpiling of low-grade cotton has hit both cotton farmers and textile mills. Once the stockpiling is implemented, downstream customers immediately demand corresponding price reductions from cotton yarn and gray fabric mills, so cotton spinning mills do not dare to hold raw material inventory at all.
Use e-commerce technology to enhance your advantages
Currently, a piece of clothing uses Indian cotton and cotton yarn, is woven and printed by domestic textile factories, and is made into semi-finished clothing in Bangladesh. It is then shipped to Gulf countries or Middle East countries for sewing, and the final product is exported to Europe and the United States. Countries and regions, such “transnational models” have become more and more mature. To some extent, companies without the ability to integrate global supply chain resources will be eliminated by the market in the future. At the Canton Fair, the owner of a garment factory in Dongguan said that the company had moved the factory abroad a few years ago, but because the local market for fabrics and accessories was not suitable, the design and pattern making of clothing still had to be done in Guangdong. Guangdong has various professional markets with complete supporting facilities. Fashion designers can find almost any materials they want in various professional markets in Guangdong. They can get them done in as little as half a day. After European and American customers confirm their orders, they can then hand over the materials list. Guangdong Procurement Department operates.
Similarly, cotton textile companies also need global resource allocation, and they must make good use of modern means to continuously increase their own survival advantages. In recent years, due to the continuous development of e-commerce technology, more and more manufacturers and buyers complete transactions through electronic data exchange systems. In the past, when customers needed fabrics or yarns of a certain color, they had to send physical samples to the manufacturer, and the manufacturer would then make samples for the customer to confirm. However, due to different environmental conditions and the different ability of the eyes of people in different countries to distinguish colors, colors that are often considered very close to each other in Chinese factories are often delayed in getting approval from American customers, so they use computers for color measurement, color matching and color electronics. Data systems emerged. At the Canton Fair, a European customer needed a dark green yarn with a yellowish light. The customer took out a portable electronic color measurement system and instantly transmitted it to the European headquarters through the network. In less than 5 minutes, he could get the results from the headquarters. Comments. In the past, this matter took at least a month and a half, through constant international express mail exchanges, and repeated revisions many times, to get a positive approval opinion on the color palette.
Most of the enterprises in the cotton industry and textile industry chain are private enterprises. Through communication with upstream and downstream enterprises at this Canton Fair, we can see that only in the environment of global resource allocation, can we continuously increase our competitive advantages. Only in this way can the dark cloud hanging over the entire cotton and textile industry chain be dispelled as soon as possible.
