Baigou, The City Of Bags, Has A Large Amount Of Money. In Fact, Libo Is Just Two Words -- Brand?

There is a small town in Hebei Province called Baigou, which is "the same as Beijing, where motor vehicles are restricted by two tail numbers every day.". In order to travel conveniently, Baigou people often have two cars. Most of Baoding's luxury cars are bought by Baigou people.

It takes more than one hour to get to Baigou station by high-speed rail from Beijing. Baigou is close to xiong'an New District, which is a sub County town under the jurisdiction of Gaobeidian City, Hebei Province. In 2010, it became the "Baigou new city" directly under the jurisdiction of Baoding city. With a total area of 54.5 square kilometers, Baigou new town is the production and marketing base of bags in China.

Over the past 40 years, Baigou town has gathered about 4000 production enterprises and 4000 network suppliers, forming a mature industrial chain integrating raw material production, luggage design, processing, production and sales. The products are mainly women's bags and backpacks. On average, every 10 bags sold on the market, of which 4 are from Baigou.

Baigou has a permanent resident population and nearly 80000 employees from all over the country, with an annual output of nearly 1 billion bags and a sales volume of more than 50 billion yuan. The sales revenue of a LVMH in 2019 is more than 50 billion euro (1 euro is about 7.6), more than 10 billion euro, and the market value is more than 200 billion euro.

These "exquisite bags", which can not be estimated from the appearance, are transported to the secondary wholesale markets in Beijing, Guangzhou, Yiwu and Yongkang, and then sold to consumers all over the world through e-commerce channels such as Taobao, Jingdong, pinduoduo, Ali international station, Amazon, and other physical stores, large and small, all over the world.

It is provided by 4000 websites, and the express fee is only 1.8 yuan per order

Every afternoon, the busiest people in Baigou are concentrated on a street stretching nearly kilometers from east to west and 800 meters deep from north to south.

Starting from "Furun Jingdian" and "Tiancheng Jiayuan" in the neighborhood of the town government, the signboards of network supply continuously extend to the South and North at each intersection. The east-west direction is called Junsheng road and Manfang Road, the north-south direction is called Fuqiang street, and there is also a nameless Road, which is collectively called "Wanggong Street" by local people.

The current price of commercial housing in the neighborhood is about 10000 yuan / m2. In the early planning stage of xiong'an New District, it soared to 30000 yuan / m2 overnight, but it was quickly stopped, and Baigou people's money was not frozen on their houses. The annual rent of street shops varies from 20000 yuan to 100000 yuan depending on the location and area. In the core area, the annual rent of a 100 square meter shop is less than 100000 yuan.

There are about 4000 stores supplying online stores and nearly 40 logistics express companies.

From 4:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., the peak time of delivery is that narrow lanes are filled with trucks, trucks, private cars and three jumpers. Every day, 700000 orders of express are sent from here to all cities above the county level in China, and even exported to more than 130 countries and regions.

One evening in early July, when I walked into the street, almost every shop was piled with goods to be delivered. Yellow tape wrapped the package tightly, with a piece of white paper on it, indicating the consignee, delivery address, package style and quantity, etc., waiting for the express delivery brother to pick them up.

Random walk into a few online supply shops, talk to the owners and find that this huge group is roughly composed of three groups of people: traditional bag factories with supply of goods, foreign entrepreneurs who understand the operation of online stores, and "Hedao international" file merchants who master the resources of wholesale channels.

More than a decade ago, the main sales channel of the factory was the wholesale market, or the Canton Fair. When it comes to the Internet, the factory owner thinks it is a liar. To Taobao shopkeepers who come to order, they are only willing to sell some overstocks and tail goods. Alibaba sent people to Baigou to train e-commerce business for free, but no one was willing to go.

In this century, Baigou merchants moved from the open-air market into Baigou box City, and then to the current "Hedao international". The business environment is getting better and better, but the business of offline channels is getting worse and worse. The reason is that, in addition to fierce competition and price war, "trading places have moved from traditional markets such as physical stores to online markets," local people said.

The change happened in 2009. Gong Fu was born in Xi'an. After graduating from University, he opened an online store called "wheat bag". In the first year, he sold more than 700000 bags and made 10 million yuan.

One person makes money, the whole town craves, and the local people follow suit.

Soon, online orders continue to flow, shop owners order more and more to the factory, the factory began to accept the Internet. However, factories and professional market merchants often do not retail, only wholesale, and online stores to take goods one by one.

In 2011, some people found business opportunities, opened the first online supply in Baigou, took goods in batches from factories, and then distributed them to many online stores - which changed the industry practice that online shop sellers ordered from factories and wholesalers with a minimum order quantity and did not include after-sales service. If the online shop seller can find the network supply with the ability of "one piece delivery", the business operation will be simpler.

In those years, Baigou was full of stories about getting rich overnight.

College graduates who don't understand products and have no experience can earn one million yuan a year as long as they can play with computers. With the help of the supply of goods provided by the network, a large number of small white Taobao shopkeepers rose from the ground“ At the very beginning, they didn't need to be promoted. If you put the bags on the cement floor, take a photo and upload them, they can sell well, "recalls a factory.

From the first online supplier in 2011 to now, this street has become a fertile land for the growth of 4000 online suppliers. The annual sales volume of the merchants who are good at management and can make money has already reached hundreds of millions of yuan. The rapid growth of network supply has led to the express logistics industry, and the express fee per single has dropped from 7-8 yuan in 2015 to 1.7-1.8 yuan at present.

Over the past decade, online stores and online supply businesses have been constantly migrating on the major e-commerce platforms, becoming business people living by traffic. Han Yaochen is a typical flow hunter. In the past seven years, the main business platform has changed one wave after another.

Today, his annual sales scale of nearly 100 million yuan - his own shop, but also to other online stores supply. The team consists of dozens of people. There are more than 100 stores in the whole network, spanning tmall, Jingdong, pinduoduo, vipshop, Shuo Yin and other platforms, and has maintained cooperative relations with more than 1000 factories vertically.

When it comes to the magazine, he lightly mentions the process of testing and exploding online products: "develop 10 models by yourself, find 100 models on the platform, put them in the store to test the data, put thousands of ads, increase the investment in the links with good data, and ask the factory to produce in reverse, and the explosive money will come." The general knowledge of the industry is that links that sell tens of thousands of pieces a year are small pop items, and those that sell tens of thousands in January are big hits. These Han Yaochen have experienced, "behind the big pop money are thousands of measured out.". In Korean shops, the retail price of women's bags with a cost of 30-50 yuan is often more than 100 yuan.

This year, he sold seven stores at vipshop.

"*" not bad. Since last year, vipshop has made great efforts to attract business outside of its own business, and has undertaken businesses flowing out of other e-commerce platforms due to high traffic and low traffic. " Every vipshop shop now brings in millions of dollars a year, he said.

In contrast, for a large-scale local factory, the gross profit of women's bag is more than 50%, but the traffic cost of tmall accounts for 30%“ After 2015, the traffic of Alibaba platform has been declining rapidly. I have dozens of stores in Alibaba, Taobao and express. I spend money to buy traffic and die. If I don't buy it, I will die. " He said, "Ali is the kind of guy who's stuck in your neck and has only one breath left."

In the past two years, the factory quickly switched to the fast-moving e-commerce, supplied the anchor, and seized the excess in the live broadcasting room, and the annual sales rapidly approached hundreds of millions of yuan. According to the data, the transaction volume of all kinds of e-commerce in Baigou new town will exceed 15 billion yuan in 2020.

Compared with the popularity of online supply and live delivery with goods, the business of stall merchants is not very good“ In the past two years, the entity is not easy to do, and the sales volume has dropped by more than half, which is all taken care of by the old customers, "said one stall merchant. There are many stalls that are not opened every day, and there are also idle shops.

In order to reduce the cost, most of the vendors only present samples for display, not for inventory, and are trying to open up new channels, for example, starting online supply, supplying goods for online shop sellers or live broadcasting bases / anchors.

Just transformed network for the file mouth or factory, often from the settlement of baoniuniu, 17 network such as B2B luggage trading platform to start. With the continuous transformation of factories and file outlets, the online supply market has been flooded, which unexpectedly ignited these B2B luggage trading platforms“ The advertisement of baoniuniu has been arranged for several months. "It has been estimated by some businessmen that the advertisement of baoniuniu is more than 10 million yuan per year.

This is the case in the market. In the turbulent waves, some people have been eliminated and smart people have found new business opportunities. With a 10 billion level market and 500 new models on a daily basis, online supply has taken over from factories and vendors, and has become a leading role in the luggage industry in Baigou.

Factories are getting smaller and smaller. There is a cruel truth behind the popularity

Chengjun luggage factory in a three storey building, similar to the rural homestead housing. Walking through the iron gate, there are more than 20 rolls of "pearl cotton" (a kind of packing material for bags) lying on the concrete floor. There is a faint sound of sewing machine rolling from the upstairs.

Not long ago, the boss Wang Xuebin received a large order of 20 million yuan. After signing the contract, he immediately picked up the phone and contacted the factory outside. Wang's factory has only a dozen people. It can produce up to one or two hundred packages a day, and deliver hundreds of thousands of pieces in two months. This is almost impossible and needs to be sub contracted to other factories.

After several phone calls, more than 20 million orders were quickly split into dozens of factories, as close as Baigou and surrounding counties, or Handan and Tianjin, as far as the prison factories in Northeast China.

More than a month later, Wang Xuebin delivered the goods in full.

Most of the luggage factories in Baigou are family workshops. The large factories with hundreds or thousands of people are slowly shrinking and almost disappearing. Receive large orders, like Wang Xuebin quickly subcontract, efficient and flexible.

In Baigou, you can easily find all kinds of materials needed for a bag. Baigou luggage raw and auxiliary materials trading center and hardware and leather city, with an operating area of 640000 square meters, is the largest bag raw and auxiliary materials market in North China.

Buyers place orders from here, and often ask the seller to send the leather directly to the processing plant, where they add patterns to the leather. The hot stamping leather is quickly sent to the cutting plant, where the whole piece of leather is cut into several pieces needed for a single bag. The former is to flatten and thin the leather parts that need to be laid, so that the two pieces of leather can fit better; The latter is to make the exposed leather edge smoother and smoother. Then, the sewing factory is responsible for sewing and assembling, cutting off the excess thread ends, hanging the tag, sealing with paper, and a finished package is made.

Most of the workers who complete these tasks are not full-time workers, but "holiday workers"“ The workers are from the village. When the order comes, they will take the machines to the village. Whoever is free will come to do it. On the basis of working procedures, the workers will pay for 10 processes. " Han Yaochen's description is exaggerated, but it is true.

That was not the case 10 years ago.

Around 2010, Baigou was full of factories with more than 300 employees, and each family was trying to get more land and build bigger factories.

Wang Hongwei is the founder of zishang leather goods. His father was one of the first businessmen to do women's bags in Baigou. In the era of changing centimeters for rice and noodles, they often went to Beijing on business. When they saw that the Beijing factory was producing bicycle leather cushions, they pulled back some leather materials from Beijing and processed them with their own sewing machines.

Since the 1980s, every household in Baigou produced leather bags and sold them at baifurong market stalls in Baoding. The black leather bag with "Beijing souvenir" is the first bag produced by Baigou. By the early 1990s, Baigou had built a huge bag production base, with 56 Enterprises above the scale and 42000 individual processing enterprises.

The town quickly gathered wealth and attracted a group of people from Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other places to start businesses in the north. Most of them are the directors or team leaders of ODM factories such as time group and Macintosh leather goods, and they have been international OEM manufacturers.

After the 1990s, international luxury brands such as parada, Hermes and Chanel gradually transferred OEM to Guangzhou and Shenzhen, which seized the opportunity. They have a strong sense of scale production thinking and genes. Under their influence, Baigou gradually stepped out of the "family workshop" mode and gradually established a factory with dozens or hundreds of people.

With the rapid development of e-commerce, consumer demand is becoming more and more personalized. With the help of online supply, large orders have been broken up and replaced by small and scattered orders.

The owner's wife of a stall in riverway international knows the most clearly. In the past few years, most of her customers were wholesale orders of thousands of bags, but in the past two years, they have become orders of hundreds to dozens of bags. Business is not good this year. She even sold 10 bags in a single order.

Without large orders, the factory can not support a large number of workers; After the epidemic, the factories whose sales have been depressed dare not raise them, which forces the big factories in Baigou to become smaller and smaller.

Of course, factories are also happy to be smaller and smaller“ If I develop a new trolley case, I need 1.8 million yuan to produce and develop myself, but if I allocate it to five companies and ten companies, each responsible for the pull rod, wheel, box type, plate, etc., the investment of each becomes very small, * * " Li Hongwei said.

At the stage when live e-commerce is popular, this "quick response" mode is even more popular.

"In the agent system, the factory should put the whole batch of goods into the warehouse and then sell them out; Later, to do Taobao tmall, we need to make sample drawings first, and then mass produce, do inventory, and promote explosive money; Now doing live broadcasting requires a very high response speed for the factory, and the sales volume changes in real time. " Wang Hongwei said, "now temporarily more than 300 bags, whether it can be done, 10 seconds to decide.".

Not long ago, he received a temporary order for 1000 pieces of single and double colors, which should be delivered within 7 days“ This speed can only be achieved in Baiyun District and Baigou district (Guangzhou), but the factory in Baiyun District has to arrange the goods, which may be half a month to one month later, and Baigou can do it immediately. " Wang pointed out that the live sale of goods within 24 hours, once more than 7 days, take 1000 orders, you have to refund 800 orders.

Of course, "small" factories also bring disadvantages - their digital supply chain systems are almost blank. For example, most enterprises under 20 million in Baigou do not have a basic purchase, sales and storage system, but rely on the traditional "excel + Baidu network disk cooperation" to maintain warehouse operation.

However, it is a little gratifying that many of them have realized this point and began to understand ERP services“ Service providers in Baigou to have customer benchmark, they (referring to Baigou boss) to believe. Generally, they don't want to pay for it. They prefer free services. " The first batch of network using ERP system in Baigou was mentioned by the boss.

10 brands signed 10

Another 100 brands if not enough

***The space is constantly squeezed. Don't people in Baigou want to be a brand, increase the added value of products and improve the space of the city? I want to, but I don't really want to. Because it's really hard, some people really hit the wall.

About 20 years ago, the boss of the foreign trade factory, Mr. Li, once founded his own brand. The State Bureau of technical supervision came to the factory for random inspection. As a result, all the six boxes were unqualified. They asked Li to send six more for re inspection, but he didn't take it seriously. Now, he says, "there was no concept of quality at that time.".

Soon, the news 30 minutes program broadcast, "XX brand selling unqualified products..." for a long time, Li was dealing with the return of shopping malls and supermarkets.

There was once a counterfeit factory in Hedao international. After the brand company sued, all 5.6 million goods were confiscated and fined“ The turnover of that factory is gone for half a year. " Wang Xuebin said, "check strictly, fake products of ADI, Nike, Jordan and other brands are basically not done here now."

Wang Xuebin's Chengjun luggage factory has also opened a file, mainly marketing mountaineering bags, business bags and backpacks in China. Because there are more and more factories, the gross profit is reduced from 30% to 15%. Every time he meets a big client bidding, he has to fight a price war with his peers, "even if I don't make money, I also want to put the list next. As long as I don't lose money, I'll do it. " He said.

In 2008, Li Hongwei participated in the Canton Fair for the first time. Her Trolley Case Factory "tianshanghang" was successfully transferred from domestic trade to export. The first order was 8 containers, with a value of nearly 2 million yuan and a gross profit of nearly 20%. But good luck doesn't last. Within two years, she found that there were more and more factories in the Canton Fair, and the gross profit was reduced to only 5%.

In 2008 Olympic Games, most Baigou manufacturers did not make money“ At that time, when we said that Beijing was preparing for the Olympic Games, we were very happy and felt that business would be better. I didn't expect that in half a year from the preparation to the end, all the polluting factories in Beijing's Fangyuan 500 Li were shut down. " Li Hongwei said.

Now, what makes Baigou owners even more uncertain is whether the establishment of xiong'an New District next door is good or bad for their business.

An interesting phenomenon is that Baigou people buy more luxury cars than hire drivers. The local people said very implicitly, "boss Baigou is conservative.". People from other industries have pointed out that "in fact, Baigou people do not have the concept of paying for services", which can be summarized in high-level terms as "low value-added gene".

Until now, Baigou did not have a completely self-developed new package“ "Avoiding high imitation" is the basic ability that every manufacturer, online supplier and online store need to have. In the women's bag area on the third floor of Hedao international, each stall is covered by screen curtain to prevent peer copying. There was once a Taobao shop with an annual sales of nearly one million yuan. Because it didn't know how to avoid high-end imitations, the store was shut down by the platform within a week after the product was put on line. After being unsealed, it was immediately reduced to its right, and the flow of the shop declined rapidly.

The birth of most new models is either customized by customers, or drawing design elements from Caihong design website or from foreign crowdfunding websites“ Bags and clothing, today to change a fabric, tomorrow to change a print, the day after tomorrow to lengthen a little, do not need a very professional designer Han Yaochen said so.

Many Baigou people feel aggrieved by the reputation of "fake and shoddy"“ You think it's a fake, but it's not necessarily true. It's just that you feel like this. "Some customers just want 20 yuan to buy 20000 yuan bags." many businesses complain to Yibang power.

When Han Yaochen just came to Baigou from Beijing to start his own business, he was eager to build a brand, develop original new products, and spend money on advertising... But the market did not recognize it. Tens of thousands of bags costing 20-30 yuan were overstocked and sold for 2-3 yuan.

In the road of independent brand construction and original design, baigoutou enterprises and government departments strongly agree, and have had some gratifying achievements.

Wang Hongwei began to supply Taobao brands "jianbaige" and "aza" in 2007. They were still on Taobao's top women's bag list at that time, and their daily orders reached 3000-5000. Seven years later, in 2014, he founded his own brand "omaska", which means "crystal", which is sold in the Middle East and Africa, and now sells more than 20 million yuan a year.

This year, Baigou even set up a new trademark registration window in the local area to synchronize with the business of Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce in real time, so that businesses can register trademarks without going far. But the question is, is there a brand with a trademark? If there is sales, is it a brand?

Wang Hongwei holds more than ten or even dozens of "brands". He divides the operation team into more than ten groups, with three or five people as a team, focusing on one "brand" and attracting customers separately, with an annual sales target of 10 million and 20 million“ Small teams are more likely to survive, "he said.

Some time ago, several anchors asked him to sign a supply contract. Wang Hongwei agreed without hesitation“ I can sign 10 brands for 10 brands, and another 100 brands if not enough. Different brands, consumers will not compare prices, but it is actually a plate of goods. " He said.

Strictly speaking, there is no mature bag brand in the soil of Baigou nearly 100 billion industrial belt. Now, the more serious problem faced by the factory is that the local workers in Baigou are more and more expensive and more difficult to recruit.

"Baigou local recruitment at least five or six thousand yuan, Shandong, Henan and other foreign workers only need 3000 yuan." Li Hongwei said that young people are more and more reluctant to enter the factory. In Baigou Town, which is only 2km away from xiong'an New District, it is more difficult to recruit workers.

The personnel manager of a company removed his home in the morning and resigned in the afternoon. Colleagues have heard that her family is divided into 4 suites and 7 million cash. Such a phenomenon is not uncommon. Local people say that a total of 35 villages have been demolished in Baoding this year.

Compared with the clothing under the same fashion category, the luggage category is subject to low repurchase and strong accessories, so it is more difficult to grow a brand. In the hot live broadcast market, there are many women's bag anchors with thousands of strokes per live broadcast, but there is no head anchor for women's bags, while there are many big anchors for clothing, such as lie'er baby, Zhang Dayi, Sydney, etc.

Back to Beijing's high-speed rail, "what's the future of Baigou?", Naturally, the thought flashed in my mind, just like the flying stars outside the window and the mixed landscape of urban and rural areas.

It is not a smooth road to be a large-scale and famous brand. For Baigou, luxury brands such as LV are too far away. It lacks ambition and cultural soil to be a brand, even never will be.

Looking at mobile phones habitually, Samsonite, an American luggage brand, released its annual performance data for 2020: sales fell 57.8% to 1.537 billion US dollars, gross profit rate dropped to 46%, and annual net loss was about 1.278 billion US dollars.

Such financial performance should be related to the epidemic situation: xinxiuli has more than 40000 sales outlets in the world, and the offline passenger flow has been greatly reduced, and the epidemic situation has also inhibited the demand for tourist bags. But even in the calm year of 2019, its sales revenue will be about 3 billion US dollars, and the * * rate will not be high.

Perhaps in the field of luggage, it is too difficult to be a brand, and the road is too long. The requirements for belief and ability have exceeded those of "workshop merchants". However, with the increasing labor cost, the long-term survival logic of Baigou enterprises can only be "in such a large market, there must be someone who needs low-grade goods"? I don't think so.