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When it comes to Putian shoes, what do you think of first, "counterfeit shoes"? "Shanzhai shoes"? There is a joke circulating on the Internet - how to judge whether the NIKE shoes you bought are real or fake? The products that have been put on glue for one year are authentic, and the products that have been put on glue for three years are Putian products. Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.

It can be seen that Putian shoes have formed a unified and clear understanding in the minds of consumers with "high quality", "high imitation" and other labels, which is also a controversial place. In order to reverse the embarrassing situation of Putian shoes, the Putian government has increased its efforts to crack down on counterfeits in recent years. In April this year, the collective brand "Putian Shoes" was registered, which is the name of Putian "Shoe City". However, the collective brand of "Putian Shoes" has a high threshold for authorization. Just because of one of the conditions, "enterprises must have their own brands", the vast majority of small, medium and micro shoe enterprises are blocked out.

The lack of private brands, coupled with high raw material and labor costs, has made the profit space of Putian small and medium-sized shoe enterprises continuously compressed. The track of domestic footwear products is close to saturation, and the market is fierce. This year, the epidemic situation in various parts of the country has been repeated, showing a trend of multiple sporadic and frequent outbreaks. The domestic sales difficulties faced by footwear products cannot be alleviated in the short term due to the above reasons. For small, medium-sized and micro shoe enterprises, it is undoubtedly a good choice to expand overseas markets.

In fact, some large, medium and small shoe enterprises in Putian have been working in the overseas market for many years, and some enterprises mainly focus on export. Let's take a look at the export data of Chinese footwear products in 2021.

The volume and price of China's footwear products will rise in 2021

For a long time, the import and export trade of footwear products in China has always maintained the trend of export exceeding import. In 2021, as the impact of the epidemic weakens, China's footwear exports will rise rapidly, with 8.732 billion pairs of footwear exported throughout the year, up 18.1% year on year. In 2021, China's footwear export prices will continue to rise by 15%. Driven by the price increase, the footwear export volume will not only rise rapidly, but also reach a new high in nearly four years. The total annual footwear export volume will be 47.935 billion US dollars, up 35.3% year on year.

Fujian Province is a major footwear manufacturing and export province in China, and footwear industry is one of the pillar industries in Fujian Province. In 2021, the footwear industry of Fujian Province will seize the opportunity of overseas demand recovery, order backflow and other opportunities to increase exports, and the export scale has comprehensively exceeded the pre epidemic level. According to the import and export data of Huacheng, Fujian Province will export 2.49 billion pairs of footwear products in 2021, with a value of 79.77 billion yuan, an increase of 22.6% and 26.3% year on year, respectively, and an increase of 3.5% and 2.9% compared with 2019. In 2021, Putian exported 330 million pairs of footwear products, worth 14.82 billion yuan, with year-on-year growth of 40.2% and 37.3% respectively. At present, the United States, the European Union and ASEAN are the main target markets for footwear exports, and remarkable achievements have been made in developing emerging markets such as Russia, Chile and South Africa.

The export of footwear was strongly supported by the government

At the beginning of this year, the spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce, Shu Jueting, said that for labor-intensive industries such as shoe making, the Ministry of Commerce, in response to the difficulties and demands faced by enterprises, has issued a series of targeted policies and measures, including identifying a number of national foreign trade transformation and upgrading bases for footwear products and increasing cultivation efforts, holding overseas brand exhibitions of footwear products to help enterprises expand international markets, and promoting the relief of international logistics pressure. The Ministry of Commerce will spare no effort to implement the policy of stabilizing foreign trade, encourage traditional industries such as shoe making to speed up the development of new formats and new models, and promote the high-quality development of traditional export industries.

In 2021, Putian Customs formulated and issued ten measures, involving enterprise certification, export customs clearance, regulatory reform, brand protection, fault tolerance and law enforcement, to support Putian shoe enterprises to improve their export competitiveness. Putian Customs extended the scope of "early declaration" to Putian shoe enterprises under general credit management, guided Putian shoe enterprises to apply for customs pre ruling on export origin in advance, and determined trade costs as early as possible. In response to the requirements of new products, new materials research and development, new processes and regional brand creation testing projects, Putian Customs organized research on testing common technologies and key technologies, and expanded the testing scope to 1062 projects for 65 products in 6 categories, so as to achieve full coverage of items required for Putian footwear testing.

With the policy support of governments at all levels, Putian footwear enterprises have more guarantees to move towards overseas markets. The RCEP has been officially implemented on January 1, 2022. The free trade zone with the largest population, the largest economic and trade scale and the greatest development potential in the world has been officially launched, which will become an accelerator and new engine for the growth of foreign trade of China and even the entire RCEP members. The official entry into force of RCEP has brought Putian footwear enterprises significant development opportunities overseas. RCEP region will become an important export market for footwear products, Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.

Unlike large shoe enterprises with abundant funds, rich foreign trade experience and sufficient manpower, small, medium and micro shoe enterprises often fall into a confused and passive situation when developing overseas markets. Among them, the biggest obstacle is getting customers. How can small, medium-sized and micro shoe enterprises break through the dilemma of obtaining customers through foreign trade?

According to the observation report of Huacheng import and export data, the current mainstream channels for foreign trade customers include exhibitions, B2B foreign trade platforms, independent station building, search engines, social platform marketing, etc. Many domestic and foreign trade exhibitions have been cancelled or postponed indefinitely due to the spread of the epidemic. In addition, the cost of participating in the exhibition is high. In addition, the cost of accommodation and transportation is at least more than 100000 yuan, so small enterprises generally do not have this budget. However, the B2B platform products represented by Alibaba are seriously homogenized, the competition is becoming increasingly fierce, the cost of customer acquisition is rising, hundreds of thousands of dollars are often required, and the quality of inquiries is low. The process of independent station construction is complicated, and more effort is invested in the early stage, such as promotion and drainage, with a long effective period. Self search through Google, Sohu and other search engines not only has high time cost and low efficiency, but also is tedious and difficult to adhere to for a long time. Through the social platform and short video platform marketing represented by WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Facebook and TikTok, to achieve results, there are high requirements for the accumulation of fans and the operator's Internet marketing thinking.

If you want to open the international market, you can get twice the result with half the effort with the help of big data customer acquisition software. Huacheng Chuangzhi has been focusing on Putian footwear industry for many years, and is committed to helping small manufacturers successfully sell their products overseas. Relying on big data and AI in-depth mining technology, we integrate 508 mainstream search engines and 25 general search engines in 187 countries around the world, provide massive customs data and global enterprise directory data, so that our foreign trade customers can quickly find accurate information about potential customers, take the first step to develop overseas markets, and Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.