Global Spread Of The Epidemic, Market And Supply Chain Constraints: How Should Textile Foreign Trade Face Challenges?

According to the data released by the General Administration of customs and trade from January 2020 to February, the export volume of textile and clothing decreased in the first two months of the year, and the magnitude of the export volume was larger than that of the total export volume. So what is the confidence of our textile and garment enterprises to expand their overseas markets? What measures can effectively reduce the impact of the global epidemic on China's foreign trade?

Global spread of epidemic situation

Export confidence is challenged

In March 7th, the General Administration of Customs released the national export volume list of commodities from 1 to February in 2020, showing that the export volume of textiles, yarns, fabrics and products from 2020 to February was 96 billion 230 million yuan, which was 18.7% lower than that of the same period last year. The export of clothing and accessories was 112 billion 260 million yuan, representing a decrease of 18.7% over the same period last year.

For China's textile and garment export enterprises, ensuring orders, protecting the market and ensuring compliance are the biggest challenges at the moment. The premise of all this is to steadily promote orderly resumption and resumption of production.

At present, with the help of a series of policies from the state, the export textile enterprises are achieving an orderly resumption of production. However, reporters have learned that some enterprises have strong technical capability, and the medical and control materials such as the transformation of production masks will have a higher rate of resumption of production and recovery. Some enterprises still mainly rely on traditional businesses, and the situation of resumption of production is relatively not optimistic.

Zhejiang, a European market leader and chief export operator of men's jackets, said that Europe is becoming a new center of the epidemic. The closure of multinational routes led to poor logistics and serious disruption of exports. At the same time, the epidemic situation in European countries is continuing to spread, residents' lives are affected, local clothing consumption market demand is sluggish, orders decline significantly.

Under the double attack of Sino US trade friction and the new crown pneumonia epidemic, a carpet exporting enterprise from Shandong felt a lot of pressure. The head of the company said that the United States is suffering from more serious epidemics. The exhibition is postponed and the tourism industry is stagnant. The demand for carpet products for local hotels and conference centers is greatly reduced. The newly built hotels may be postponed or shut down, and the original meeting rooms will not be replaced with carpets. The field share is compressed again.

At the same time, although export textile enterprises have a higher rate of return, most enterprises still face many difficulties, such as shortage of workers, lack of synchronization in the upstream and downstream industries, lack of protection resources and so on.

At present, there is great uncertainty in the development trend of the global epidemic. The smooth operation of the market is bound to go through a long recovery period. Therefore, export textile enterprises' confidence is frustrated.

Stabilize the Southeast Asian market

Enhance intelligent manufacturing

At present, the spread of the epidemic in Southeast Asian countries is less than that in the European and American countries. Southeast Asian countries are heavily dependent on China's supply of textile raw materials, and the outbreak affected the supply of raw materials once. As China's export textile enterprises gradually resume production and resume production, protecting and stabilizing the market share of Southeast Asia has become the top priority of export textile enterprises in foreign trade.

For example, the textile and garment processing industry is one of the main economic pillar industries in Kampuchea, providing a large number of jobs. More than 60% of the industry's accessories are imported from China. With China's excipient enterprises resuming production and speeding up production, Kampuchea's shortage of raw materials has been gradually solved, and further consolidate the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries. "The textile industry is a labor-intensive industry. Although the textile enterprises in various regions have been gradually resuming their work, even if all the employees return to their posts smoothly, they will not be able to assemble and start operations on a large scale. The production and operation of the enterprises have not returned to normal level, which has provided a good window period for the transfer of our textile industry to Southeast Asia." Experts say Vietnam, Laos and other countries have many well run industrial parks and preferential tax policies. At the same time, these countries are also constantly improving the industrial chain and infrastructure. In response to the epidemic, China and Southeast Asian textile industry should strengthen cooperation.

Experts pointed out that in order to rationally allocate capacity during the epidemic period, textile enterprises should give full play to the advantages of intelligent manufacturing. A salesperson from a Fujian export textile company through remote cloud supervisor recently rescued a Japanese order worth 1 million yuan. After the outbreak of the factory, the factory production schedule lags behind. The salesman explained the actual situation encountered with the Japanese customer, and opened the system to check the delivery date, production condition and machine parameters of the order. With the help of system data, the 160 machines will be added to the original number of machines to cooperate with the order. Thanks to this intelligent system, the order was finally saved.

Proper consideration of internal and external trade

Using foot network to expand orders

Some experts suggest that in the current situation of effectively curbing the spread of the epidemic in China, textile and garment export enterprises may give due consideration to the domestic market. In the short term, foreign trade can also be transferred to domestic trade. While sticking to our original position, we can properly develop domestic trade customers, so as to develop and maintain two errors. This will also keep the enterprise running, and it will not be difficult to continue because of no order.

A person in charge of a children's clothing business in Guangdong said, "nearly 5 of our businesses are in European countries. If the European epidemic continues to spread, businesses will certainly be affected. Now we are considering whether to adjust the ratio of domestic and foreign trade and focus on domestic."

Some experts suggest that although the outbreak of new crown pneumonia has spread to many countries around the world, there are not many large-scale outbreaks, which can shift the focus of foreign trade sales to areas where the epidemic is lighter or no epidemic, and open up overseas markets.

In addition, with the spread of the epidemic, more and more international exhibitions have been postponed or cancelled. For foreign trade enterprises, orders are life, and a large number of new orders come from all kinds of exhibitions every year. An export textile manufacturer from Huzhou, Zhejiang, said that in the past year, the enterprise orders had already been discharged to June and July, but the order after April this year is not yet available. He is eager to participate in the exhibition.

For this reason, recently, the Zhejiang provincial council for Trade Promotion (CCPIT) has actively organized enterprises to participate in a number of international exhibitions online viewing services provided by the CALSEE system. Exhibitors can communicate with customers at the exhibition site at any location through the network to get customers' demand information, solve the problem of failing to get famous exhibition business stalls, and being affected by epidemic factors and so on.

Although the current epidemic is spreading all over the world, many textile and garment exporting enterprises are full of hope: "as long as the epidemic is controlled, China's complete industrial chain will attract overseas orders. The current difficulties are only short-term and temporary."