One Pair For Every Five Pairs Of Sneakers In The World Comes From Here

The annual output of sports shoes exceeds 1 billion pairs, and the annual output value of finished shoes exceeds 50 billion yuan. One pair of every five pairs of sports shoes in the world comes from here... 38.84 square kilometers of land, gathering more than 7000 shoe enterprises and upstream and downstream supporting enterprises, has bred many domestic top sports shoes brands, such as Anta, Tebu, 361 °, etc. This is Chendai Town, Jinjiang City, Fujian Province.

Relying on the belief of "love competition and win", Chendai people created the largest sports shoes industry cluster in China, and realized the magnificent transformation from a beach fishing village to an important shoe manufacturing town.

　　 "Three idle" starts from scratch

Shoes City Road, Shoes Textile Avenue, Shoes City E-commerce Park... In Chendai, many place names are related to shoes, which also reflects the deep origin of town and shoes.

Minnan people have always had the tradition of going to the South, and Chendai Town is also "ten families and nine overseas Chinese". In the early years, many overseas Chinese would send money and goods back home. Among them, "foreign shoes" sent across the sea were still rare in the 1960s and 1970s, so Chen Dai people had the idea of "making shoes by themselves".

The spring breeze of reform and opening up has swept the town, setting off an upsurge of entrepreneurship. In 1979, Lin Tuqiu, a villager in Yangdai Village, Chendai Town, transformed his stone house into a factory building, with 14 villagers, each contributing 2000 yuan. Starting from a few nails, scissors and a few household sewing machines, he set up Yangdai Clothing, Shoes and Hats Factory.

Successful entrepreneurship! Regardless of material and style, you can sell as many shoes as you produce. One family leads one village, and one village leads one town. At that time, small shoemaking workshops sprang up in Chendai Town, and the sound of tapping the soles resounded through the streets of Chendai Town.

Zeng Shuixiang, director of Chendai Town's Economic Development and Reform Office, said that the success of Chendai's footwear industry could not be separated from "three idleness": the idle houses left by overseas Chinese, the idle funds sent back and the local idle labor force. With "idle houses" as workshops, "idle people" as workers, and "overseas Chinese capital" as starting funds, Chendai people set up shoe factories of all sizes.

The shoes produced by Chendai are favored by consumers and attract dealers from all over the country to rush to buy them. Some dealers even live in the home of the owner of the shoe factory and get the goods at the first time for the sake of being close to the water.

By the mid-1980s, Chendai had more than 700 township enterprises, with a total industrial and agricultural output value of 110.27 million yuan, becoming the first "100 million yuan town" in Fujian Province.

This is the Sijing Shoe Material Street of Chendai Town in the 1990s (data photo). Shen Jizhong

　　 Industrial agglomeration from small to large

Orders are flying to Chendai Town like snowflakes, and the demand for shoelaces, uppers, soles and other auxiliary materials is also booming. More and more shoe material stores are opened, gradually forming a four boundary shoe material street.

The popularity of Chendai's shoe making has gradually become known and attracted the attention of international brands. A large number of OEM orders poured into the town, and Chendai's footwear industry continued to develop at a high speed.

However, although the number of OEM orders is large, the profit is very small. In 1997, when the Asian financial crisis broke out, Chendai Town's foreign trade orders shrank sharply, and many small and medium-sized shoe factories relying on OEM survival closed down.

Chen Dairen realized that if the order was not in his own hands, he would be subject to others. Since then, Chendai shoe industry has started to take the road of brand and drive the gradual improvement of industrial ecology.

Shoes design, fabric research and development, e-commerce live broadcast... Chen Dai's shoes industry chain continues to expand upstream and downstream. Chendai Town now has 421 shoe enterprises on the scale, laying a solid foundation for building a professional market.

The former "Four Borders" shoe material street can no longer meet the industrial development. The local planning and construction of Jinjiang International Shoes and Textile City, with an investment of 8 billion yuan and an area of 1000 mu, will create a one-stop purchase platform for shoes and textiles. At present, more than 1000 shoe material merchants have settled in, and they can collect all the raw and auxiliary materials needed by the upstream and downstream of the shoe industry chain within half an hour.

On the intelligent sneaker production line of Tebu Group, workers are rushing to make orders. Photographed by Wei Peiquan, reporter of Xinhua News Agency

　　 Seeking "wisdom" to "new" from big to strong

The shoemaking industry is a labor-intensive industry. However, in Chendai Town, intelligent production lines are no longer rare, and many enterprises have built their own innovation laboratories. "Making a pair of shoes as a scientific and technological product" has become the consensus of Chendai shoemakers.

Entering the production workshop of Fujian Huabao Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., the cutting machine automatically cuts cloth pieces of different specifications, and the glue brushing machine can finish painting a pair of shoes in more than ten seconds... A series of intelligent production processes make people dizzy. The person in charge of the company said that, through the application of visual identification technology and mechanical arm, the number of workers was reduced by about 30% compared with traditional production lines.

This is the "space running shoes" displayed in the Anta Group Museum. Photographed by Wei Peiquan, reporter of Xinhua News Agency

Foot scanner, plantar pressure test track... In the sports science laboratory of Anta Sports Goods Co., Ltd., many professional instruments and equipment have redefined "a pair of sports shoes", and also enabled Anta's various shoe products to accompany Chinese athletes to the Olympic podium, and to follow the crew of Shenzhou 12 astronauts to enter the Tianhe Core Module

In order to make a good pair of running shoes, Tebu Group has set up a scientific laboratory X-lab for shoe testing, design and R&D as early as 2015, which provides scientific and technological support for product innovation by applying 3D motion capture system, sports mechanics analysis system, etc.

From upstream materials to terminal products, from entrepreneurship to innovation, and from "intelligence" to "innovation", Chendai shoes industry is full of vitality, and Chendai people who love to fight and win create one industry after another.

In just 40 years, Chendai shoes industry has gone through the process of growing from scratch, from small to large, from large to strong. Xu Zhuyun, the mayor of Chendai Town, told reporters that Chendai will continue to work on new materials, new designs and new intelligent manufacturing, expand traditional advantages while strengthening the chain to supplement the chain, and create a cluster advantage that cannot be transferred or moved.

(Source: Xinhuanet)