“Recently, I estimate that 60-70% of factories in the finishing industry are losing money. It is the off-season and there are very few orders.” said the boss of a finishing and hot stamping factory.
The finishing industry is polarized
It is understood that since the beginning of the year, the finishing industry has been in a sluggish state, especially small factories that have difficulty receiving orders and have been in a state of unsaturation for a long time. However, there are also some medium-sized and large-scale enterprises that are doing well in receiving orders and can maintain a fully operational status.
The boss of a local hot stamping company told the editor that orders in the past month have been okay, and they can barely maintain a full business. As for other finishing plants, most of them don’t have to wait and can be done as soon as they come.
So what’s the secret of the above-mentioned hot stamping factory? How to gain a chance of survival among many post-finishing companies? According to the boss, on the one hand, its own products have advantages, the technology meets market demand, and the quality is very high, so customers have no worries. On the other hand, it has a wide customer base and accumulated many customers, so it has more orders than other companies.
There are too many finishing techniques for down jackets
Recently, hot stamping technology mainly focuses on hand-feeling products, such as respiratory membranes, anti-chorion membranes, and black gold membranes that became popular last year. Other finishing processes are mainly velvet-proof coatings, and these processes are used to produce down jackets.
The post-finishing process is mostly used for warm clothing such as down jackets and cotton jackets in autumn and winter, so the seasonality is strong. Autumn and winter clothing are mainly produced in the second half of the year, so there are fewer sales in the first half of the year. According to feedback from manufacturers, orders for the second half of the year are currently in the proofing stage, and large quantities will be delivered as early as mid-June, and August may be the beginning of the peak order season.
The finishing industry is in urgent need of transformation and upgrading
Since the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, life for post-processing companies has become extremely difficult. On the one hand, there is pressure from the lack of orders in the entire industry, and on the other hand, there is pressure from excessive competition in the industry itself. Taking Shengze alone as an example, there are more than 300 finishing companies, large and small, and for the orders received by the company, not all orders require finishing processes, so the scope it covers is limited. A typical example of “more wolves but less meat”, the competitive pressure is evident.
As finishing companies, many bosses are constantly developing new processes in order to adapt to the ever-changing market. In recent years, the rise of functional fabrics has given finishing companies a new development direction, focusing more on research and development. Compared with the first half of the year, the peak season for finishing companies is in the second half of the year. Especially this year, the off-season in the first half of the year is very obvious. Except for some larger manufacturers, orders from other finishing plants are relatively bleak. Companies have more free time, and in order to attract customers, they have to develop new processes to retain customers.
With the transformation and upgrading of enterprises, environmental protection requirements for post-finishing enterprises have become higher, and this is a trend in the industry. Whether it is a finishing company or any company in the textile industry, they may face the problem of being forced to transform and upgrade in the future. In fact, this problem has been faced once as early as 2017, but the editor believes that there will be a big test of forced transformation and upgrading in the future.
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