When I chatted with many cloth bosses this year, they all lamented that it is really difficult to do business now, and the information is too transparent. If other companies sell it for what price, their own quotation can only be low and not high. Just a few days after the money came out, the entire market knew about it, and everyone was doing it, and they could only make some hard money.
I still miss the old days. Customers came for samples. As long as they had such samples, they could make a lot of money. It was not uncommon for a business to stay open for three years if it did not open for three years.
But clearly, those days are gone.
Poor information, missing
In the past, business was based on an information gap. Consumers had few choices and customers had limited choices. Boss Bu was able to make a lot of money by relying on the information gap.
But with the gradual development of the market, and more importantly, the continuous development of digital information technology, a lot of information that textile people could not ask for in the past can now be easily obtained. With comparison, you can make money by relying on information differences. It’s not easy.
The same is true for terminal channels. With the rise of platforms such as Taobao, Pinduoduo, and Douyin, consumers also have cheap purchasing channels. Textiles no longer have such high premiums, and downstream customers are naturally unwilling to pay so much cost. On raw materials.
The same is true for foreign trade. At the beginning, labor costs in China were low, and reliable suppliers were difficult to identify, so it was cost-effective to spend some money to ensure quality. Now the cost of Chinese textiles has also increased, and information has become transparent. , overseas customers can find reliable and cheap suppliers, and they are naturally willing to save more money.
When the information gap is infinitely narrowed, textile companies must find new ways to survive if they want to survive better.
Win by quantity
Winning by quantity means amortizing costs by increasing production scale, amortizing costs with economies of scale, so that the final finished product can be lower in cost than others. This is the most traditional industrialization process, but there are barriers to doing so, including sufficient capital and corresponding sales channels.
The most powerful companies in this model now are some of the original chemical fiber companies. They have strong financial resources, and their own supply of raw materials can better amortize costs and create sales for their own raw materials. There are also some regions in the central and western regions. Due to policy reasons, some powerful textile companies have established large-scale textile industrial parks in the local areas.
However, the emergence of this situation has also intensified the involution of the industry.
Win quickly
Not all textile companies have enough capital for large-scale production, and small and medium-sized textile companies also have their own ways of survival. The rise of fast fashion in recent years has become a new focus for many textile companies, achieving fast returns in 14 days or even7As long as you do it quickly enough, you will have enough room for a premium. After all, although cloth is not a scarce resource, time is always a scarce resource.
Channel is King
Reducing information gaps is a challenge for textile companies, but it is also an opportunity to integrate channels. Now, textile companies have a way to understand the needs of front-line consumers and determine their own production according to demand, instead of relying on prediction and early production as in the past, burdened with unnecessary inventory pressure. And this part of the cost will eventually be added to the selling price of ready-made clothes, making the ready-made clothes more expensive, thus affecting sales.
Technology is King
Without the information gap, many textile companies are studying technology and striving to achieve “what others don’t have and what I have”. After all, if only a few people can make a product, it will naturally be able to sell at a high price. Nowadays, many textile companies think this way, so fabric technology is developing very fast. When I attend textile exhibitions in the past two years, I can always see some eye-catching black technology fabrics, and there are also many very beautiful fabrics that I have never seen before. Patterns are also the result of the continuous efforts of textile companies.
The era of making money by relying on poor information is gone forever in China. If textile companies want to survive better in the future, they still have to find their own path.
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