Pay Attention To The Category And Standard Of Old Clothes Export

Today, the average life span of a piece of clothing is less than three months for the young people living in the city with high rhythm. A large number of old clothes are either discarded at will or piled up in some corner of the home, causing a great waste of resources.

Based on the purchase price of the automatic recycling machine for waste and old articles in a certain district of Shanghai, the purchase price of all the recycled materials, including old clothes, is 0.8 yuan / kg. Then, in 2020, the direct recovery value of discarded old clothes will reach 40 billion yuan. In addition, the backlog in previous years and the related industrial chain after used clothes recycling are added, A 100 billion scale market has taken shape.

If the old clothes are treated as garbage, they can only be burned or buried. This is not only a great waste of resources, but also increase environmental pollution.

"In fact, none of the old clothes are rubbish. All the old clothes are treasures." Wang Jincheng, founder of Shandong Chengxin garment sorting factory (hereinafter referred to as "Shandong Chengxin"), said, "even if the old clothes have been broken into rags, they can also be used to produce thermal insulation cotton, environmental protection gloves, mops, sound insulation cotton and other products in vegetable greenhouses. And more advanced old clothes, such as a chiffon dress, may be taken home by African users for $7 after they are exported from China to Africa

At present, the recovery rate of used clothes in China is less than 10%. The whole industry is in a very early stage, but a set of industrial system with reasonable layout and clear division of labor has been formed.

With the extension of the industrial chain, nearly 30% of the used clothes are exported to Africa, Southeast Asia and other regions, and the remaining 70% are mainly used for domestic recycling.

Around a certain category or industrial chain of the used clothes industry, many professional recycling centers have been formed spontaneously in China.

For example, Shandong Yishui and Weifang mainly recycle black material and white cloth for reuse; Puyang, Henan Province, specializes in purchasing down garments for processing down quilts and related down products.

Obviously, the recycling of old clothes is not only an environmental protection industry, but also has great commercial value. Recycling of used clothes can not only stimulate a large number of employment, but also drive some specific industries in Africa and Southeast Asia.

In 2020, our research team began to contact practitioners in the used clothes recycling industry, trying to understand the industry in depth.

By a very accidental chance, we met Wang Jincheng and Qu Chengfeng. They have a factory specialized in sorting and exporting used clothes in Tengzhou, a county-level city in Shandong Province, with an annual sales volume of more than 50 million yuan, which has a certain influence in the industry.

On the eve of the Spring Festival in 2021, we went to Tengzhou for on-the-spot visits and face-to-face interviews, which finally revealed the mystery of the industry and gave us a glimpse.

01 globalization of an old dress  

Looking for the source of goods

In 2009 when Qu Chengfeng and Wang Jincheng just started, the old clothes recycling industry was very immature, and more than 95% of the market was in a blank state.

Without suppliers, Qu Chengfeng and Wang Jin made a city by city run. Finally, in Shandong, Yunnan, Hebei and Henan, Qu Chengfeng and Wang Jincheng began to break the deadlock.

After accumulating the first batch of goods, we finally made the first business. As a result, their initial investment of more than 200000 yuan was lost in the first business.

"At that time, we mainly purchased raw materials, sorted and sold old clothes according to the requirements of exporters. Our factory has just started, the workers are all new recruits, the quality control is very unstable, and the exporter's requirements for the goods are very high, and the price is extremely low, so we will lose the first order. " Qu Chengfeng recalled.

After summing up the lessons, Qu Chengfeng and Wang Jincheng realized that, in order to have enough space, in addition to the supply of goods, two things must be done well: strengthening internal control and sorting well; Grasp the market channel and export by ourselves.

Categories and standards of used clothing export

There are very clear categories and standards for China's used clothes exported to Africa. The basic standards for exporting used clothes from China are that they are not broken, dirty or rotten, do not affect their second use, and do not allow any defects.

The front end of the used clothes recycling industry is the waste recycler. In China's major cities, many migrant people take their families as the unit to engage in this work.

Waste recyclers usually collect old clothes at the price of 0.4-0.6 yuan / kg. About 500 kg is collected and sold directly to large recycling stations. They don't need to bear the pressure of inventory, and the monthly recovery is usually 20-30 tons, with the amount of RMB 400-800 per ton.

The price of old clothes purchased by large recycling stations from waste recyclers ranges from 800 to 1200 yuan / ton. These large recycling stations usually have their own warehouses and can carry out simple primary sorting of old clothes.

Large recycling stations need at least one vehicle to deliver to downstream factories. The standard of this magnitude is basically: within 800 km from the downstream plant, 10 tons; More than 800 kilometers, 25 tons. The larger the size of the goods, the cheaper the freight.

The sorting factory will conduct sampling inspection, grade the whole vehicle according to the quality of the goods, and pay different prices according to different goods.

As a sorting factory exported to Africa, Chengxin, Shandong Province, can get 10000 yuan per ton of summer clothing, followed by shoes, ranging from 3000 to 7000 yuan.  

Fine sorting

For the old clothes recycling industry, especially for the old clothes export industry, the sorting level is the main index to measure the capacity of a factory, and also the main basis for determining the export price of the factory goods.

The monthly export volume of Shandong Chengxin is about 2000 tons, which is specially used to sort the summer goods for export. The sorting workshop covers an area of 5000 square meters, which is divided into three areas: raw material area, production area and finished product area. There are 4 assembly lines and 3 compressors in the whole sorting workshop. The capacity of each production line is 20 tons per day.

More than 60 workers in the sorting workshop are middle-aged women from surrounding villages. Du Zongju is specially responsible for "feeding" at the beginning of the production line, uncovering the old clothes wrapped with sheets one by one and putting them on the assembly line.

Other workers stand on both sides of the assembly line, each with a fixed division of labor, responsible for sorting a certain category. After layer by layer sorting, T-Shirts, underwear, casual pants, jeans, backpacks, leather bags, dresses, scarves, etc. in the summer uniform will be put into different boxes, with more than 100 categories.

After sorting, the quality inspection personnel will check the sorting results, and no damage or stain is allowed. After quality inspection, it is weighed, and then pushed to the "packing area", which is compressed into regular cuboid by hydraulic packer. The weight of each package is determined according to the requirements of customers.

The packing was done by two workers. They will print out the category list of each category with A4 paper in advance and put it on the surface of clothes to be packed, so that customers can clearly see the information of each package after the goods arrive in Africa.

The whole package of clothes is wrapped with transparent packing materials and bound with plastic steel strapping, and then stacked in the finished product area of the workshop, waiting for export.  

Export to 20 countries in Africa

If you want to do export business, you should have someone who knows English to communicate with foreign customers. On the recommendation of friends, Qu Chengfeng and Wang Jincheng got to know Wang Kai. Wang Kai is engaged in foreign trade business in an old clothes factory, and has strong English communication skills.

"Wang Kai is the person we need. He has foreign orders on hand, but we have sources of goods. Such cooperation is very important." Wang Jincheng said. After Wang Kai joined, only a month later, Shandong Chengxin completed the first export to Africa.

With the export business growing, the company is on the right track. In 2014, Qu Chengfeng, accompanied by Wang Kai, visited customers in Uganda.

"We've been doing export business for so many years, and we haven't figured out how Africans actually sell our old clothes. Therefore, another very important purpose of that trip was to thoroughly understand the sales channels and methods of used clothes in the African market. " Qu said.

At the same time, developing new customers is also an important purpose of this trip. Qu Chengfeng and Wang Kai carried two bags of old shoes, hoping to make some attempts on the export of old shoes.

In the coffee shop of Uganda's five-star hotel, Qu Chengfeng met with the wholesaler of used shoes in advance.

"At that time, we just poured out the shoes, and we were in the coffee shop of the hotel to discuss which kinds of shoes could meet the requirements." Qu said. After communicating with the wholesaler of used shoes, the old shoes were sold out before they left the hotel.

Located in eastern Africa, Uganda is one of the least developed countries in the world, and also an African country with a large import volume of second-hand clothing. There is a huge old clothes market in Kampala, the capital of China. It is full of used clothes stalls like rural markets in 1980s.

The first grade wholesalers who import used clothes from Chengxin, Shandong Province, do not do retail business. They directly distribute the goods to the second tier wholesalers in Uganda. The second level wholesalers sell them to all levels of distributors according to the "package". From the city level agent to the county level agent, the second level wholesalers have to go through at least four levels and finally appear on the market stalls.

It's the most exciting thing to unpack. It's like scraping a prize. No one knows what's inside before opening. The quality and style of the clothes inside the package determine the final quality of the package.

The merchant will sell them by piece. First, the price will be $6, and the user will pick out the ⁃ brand, and the rest will be priced at $5. Then, the user will be allowed to choose. Then, the price will be reduced from $4 to $3, from $2 to $1 until all the clothes are sold out.

"When the first-class wholesalers import goods, the price is $1.2 per kilogram. A package of 100 kg goods has about 600-700 pieces of women's T-shirts, while the customs clearance fee for a container of goods (20-30 tons) is more than 30000 US dollars, which is close to the value of the goods. From wholesalers to distributors, then to distributors, and finally to the bottom of the merchants, their total value is about 1.5 times. "

African consumers can basically accept all the old clothes from China, including underwear and underwear. Fu Feifan is from Cameroon in Central Africa and currently studies economics and finance at Shanghai University. He was born in a very wealthy local family, but still used to buying second-hand clothes.

"In my memory, my mother often goes to the market to pick up second-hand clothes for us. Before 2010, 50 yuan can buy clothes for a child for a whole year, and can buy two or three sets." Fu Fan said.

For Qu Chengfeng and Wang Jincheng, the gain of the trip to Africa is that the logic of the whole export business has been completely changed.

"In the past, we just wanted to hand over the goods to the customers, and strictly implemented everything according to the requirements of the customers. After the inspection, we began to understand how to protect our own goods and how to grasp the quality of goods that customers can accept. " "In fact, for African Importers, price is the most important factor," Wang said. As for the overall quality, in the past we always required ourselves according to 90 points, now we appropriately adjust it to 70 points. In fact, for users, there is no big difference between the perception of 70 and 90 points, but for us, the space of * * is quite different. "

Relying on word-of-mouth and quality, Shandong Chengxin has opened up the entire African market. At present, there are more than 30 customers with long-term cooperation, covering more than 20 countries and regions in Africa.

02 old clothes recycling going online?  

In recent years, the share of China's used clothes in Africa has increased year by year, mainly focusing on price and service. In terms of price, Chinese used clothes are obviously lower than those in Europe and America. In terms of trying to meet the needs of African customers, Chinese enterprises are also far more flexible than those in Europe and the United States.

In the African market, the old clothing category of * * is dresses, especially silk and chiffon dresses. The export price is as high as 38000-39000 yuan / ton.

In the export container of used clothes, it is impossible to have only one single category, because it is too difficult for the factory to collect goods and the cost is too high. At the same time, African customers also like good goods and poor goods together to meet the consumption needs of different classes.

If customers want more skirts, domestic manufacturers will increase the proportion of skirts, while European and American manufacturers usually ignore such requirements. Therefore, more and more African customers choose to cooperate with Chinese enterprises.

A greater change will take place in 2020. Affected by the new crown epidemic, the used clothes of European and American countries, Japan and South Korea become unsafe. African used clothes wholesalers quickly turn their orders to China, and China's used clothes industry ushers in a blowout growth.

Shandong Chengxin's orders have been arranged to three months later, other factories also have similar situation, the whole industry is facing a large number of shortage problems.

This may be an opportunity for China's used clothes industry to surpass the market share of European and American countries, Japan and South Korea in Africa's used clothing market, but it is also a challenge. At present, the most urgent thing is to solve the problem of domestic supply.

Therefore, Wang Jincheng and Qu Chengfeng began to lay out the online recycling mode. The team established chuangxinyi renewable resources company, focusing on online recycling business, and expanding the source of goods by adopting the mode of online platform + partnership.

At present, the small program "Chuangxin clothes recycling" developed by the new company has been online. The user can select the corresponding category and fill in the weight of the items to be recycled, and then make an appointment for the time of on-site recycling.

The door-to-door recycling personnel are the city partners who develop in the way of joining in. In this way, the used clothes recyclers in various cities can use this small program to collect and collect a truck of goods, and then directly sell them to Shandong Chengxin.

Wang Jincheng said: "through the Internet platform, we can let more people participate, and at the same time, we can skip the middlemen and let the city partners and factories directly connect. This mode enables City partners to become first-hand recyclers, and there is no longer a link for middlemen to earn price differences. Although they are hard-working, they are more impressive than before. "

City partners are divided into provincial agents, municipal agents, provincial capital city agents, prefecture level city agents and district and county level agents according to their regions. They will carry out business in corresponding cities. The southernmost cities have developed to Guangxi, Guizhou and other provinces, and will gradually cover the whole country.

At present, Chuangxin garment recycling small program can reach about 1000 tons per month, and is expected to exceed 4000 tons per month by the end of the year. With the help of small programs, we can control and understand the recovery of all franchisees.

On the innovation mode of online recycling, domestic Internet companies are also trying to explore, with the birth of such recycling platforms as flying ant, white whale, gull swallow and Dangdang, and the second-hand trading platform of idle fish has also carried out relevant business.

In 2020, the recycling industry seems to be riding on a rocket, flying into the sky, more and more people into the industry.

If the recycling of old clothes in the future can be developed into a meituan mode and receive goods from the whole country, it can cover the whole country. This mode is the development direction of the old clothes recycling industry, but it needs a lot of funds and professional team to do it. At that time, cities, even every county and county in the country will have their own recyclers.

03   How long is the road to standardization  

The old clothes recycling industry provides a solution, but there is still a long way to go*** The problem is that there is no relevant cleaning and disinfection links, but simply sorting and packing.

"Because the magnitude is too large, cleaning and disinfection will cost a lot of manpower and material resources, and cleaning will cause further pollution to the environment." Wang Jincheng said.

"We hope that the state will give this industry a normal and reasonable tax amount, and then support this industry to do better and more standardized." Wang Jincheng said frankly, "due to the large amount of water coming in from overseas, our account was also sealed by the bank, and it was unsealed after finding out the reasons. Factories are all in the form of individual businesses. It is suspected that money will be laundered if funds are directly put into personal accounts. We hope that this industry can be treated equally. "

There is also a phenomenon in this industry that the damaged waste clothes that can not be used for export will be reprocessed by downstream factories to produce greenhouse insulation cotton and other industrial raw materials. This processing process is prohibited by the environmental protection department, once found, it will be investigated, but the insulation cotton produced in the market is normal circulation.

At present, manufacturers engaged in reprocessing can only operate in secret. They hope that the relevant departments of the state can standardize the machines, personnel, workshops and environment, and formulate relevant rules and regulations to restrict them, so as to make the industry more transparent and standardized

The global reuse of an old garment has led to a huge industry. It has a very detailed division of labor in each link, showing the orderliness of the industry.

Although these processes are still a little immature compared with large companies, we should not forget that this is a new industry with only a decade of development history and is in a period of rapid development.

In this 100 billion level market, there will be giant companies and new entrepreneurs in the future. They may be Wang Jincheng and Qu Chengfeng, or other entrepreneurs.

This is the era of the Communist Party of China. It is the same for Qu Chengfeng and Wang Jincheng, as well as for all entrepreneurs who are committed to creating value.