According to statistics, the number of students enrolled in China's nine-year compulsory education is 15.8 billion, plus kindergartens, high schools and secondary vocational education, the total number of people exceeds 200 million. Each student has as little as 2 sets and as many as 6 sets of school uniforms, and the market size of the school uniform industry in the country is close to 100 billion.
Hui'an County, a county seat under the jurisdiction of Quanzhou, Fujian, is the holy land of school uniforms in the country. One-third of the country's school uniforms are produced here, and the hands of hard-working Hui'an mothers flying between the sewing machines have created generations of Chinese aesthetic wear in their student days.
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A small factory with 11 people earns 100,000 yuan a yearLuoyang Town, Hui'an, Fujian Province, has a strong business atmosphere, and tens of thousands of school uniforms are sent to the whole country every day. It stands to reason that the circulation of goods is so prosperous, as a rookie post station in the express delivery industry, it is like selling shovels to gold diggers, and should be blessed, but the people of Luoyang Town did not give them the opportunity to make the difference.
There are all kinds of large and small school uniform factories here, and each of them has directly signed cooperation with major express delivery by virtue of its shipment advantage. So much so that ordinary townspeople are more willing to send and receive express delivery in their neighbor's factory than to go to a rookie post station or express delivery station. Not only is it cheaper, but it's also more convenient – there is a school uniform factory every few steps, and almost every household has someone working in the school uniform factory. This is a small benefit for them as the family members of the employees of the school uniform factory.
In 2023, when young people are always in chaos, Lin Yunqing, a 48-year-old townman, has achieved his small goal since setting up the factory: a turnover of more than 500,000 yuan and a net profit of 100,000 yuan.
For young people who have been wrapped in the average sales of more than 100 million yuan per live broadcast and the grand business narrative of listed companies for a long time, this income is not much. But for Lin Yunqing, it is not easy to achieve such benefits.
Lin Yunqing's education level was only in elementary school, and he dropped out of school at the age of 16 to work as a garment worker in a factory, and worked in a "big factory" for more than 20 years. Her factory can only be regarded as a small workshop, mainly for the large school uniform factory to do outsourcing and processing, a total of 11 employees, most of them are housewives part-time, there is no fixed working time.
Mothers in southern Fujian often need to take on the big and small affairs of the family, sending their children to school in the morning, rushing back to cook for the family at noon, and picking up their children from school on time in the evening. In addition to family affairs, women also have to take on the responsibility of making money to support the family, after dinner, some employees will volunteer to work overtime, Lin Yunqing, who has just changed from a housewife to a female boss, understands this very much, and welcomes it.
Figure |When the female workers working overtime in Lin Yunqing's factory were preparing to open the factory, Lin Yunqing was already 43 years old, which is too old for entrepreneurs. But at that time, the husband's income as a contractor had plummeted, and the family's two daughters were in college and high school, respectively, which was the time when the small family needed money. With more than 20 years of experience as a garment worker and moving bricks on the construction site, Lin Yunqing felt that he could endure hardship.
Lin Yunqing's self-confidence is still the same as looking at people. Previously, when rushing for the goods of the former owner, it was often necessary to recruit temporary workers. The female worker Lin Yunqing found was down-to-earth and excellent, allowing her to earn favors at both ends of the boss and co-workers. She has always done this "headhunting" job with ease, but she does not have any additional income except for favors.
In 2019, Lin Yunqing, who has always had the "spirit of benefiting women", resolutely devoted himself to entrepreneurship. She chose the site of the factory in the adjacent Nan'an City (Quanzhou City manages the county-level city), because her husband's work is in Nan'an, she has also followed her husband to live here for many years, and is relatively familiar with the environment.
Lin Yunqing wrote a "Recruitment Revelation (Thing)", printed it on pink colored paper, ran to the vegetable market, and sent it to familiar vegetable sellers and aunts, asking them to help publicize it. The notice reads, "No experience required, no charge for the church, 100 yuan for coming", this kind of propaganda is really like a scam advertisement today, and it wants to take you to Ka waist in northern Myanmar.
Fortunately, the local people are simple and have the most basic trust, and there are sporadic people who come to apply for jobs. The first three people who came were real whites, Lin Yunqing kept his promise and gave each person a red envelope of 100 yuan, and began to teach how to use the electric sewing machine. Under the spread of the three, more and more people came to apply.
Among the many applicants, Lin Yunqing finally screened only 6 people. First, she is the only one who acts as a master and can't teach her. Second, the start-up capital is limited, and it has cost 30,000 or 40,000 yuan to rent a factory and buy a second-hand electric sewing machine, and the cash on hand cannot pay too much salary. Considering that the order volume is not too large, you have to buy sewing thread at your own expense, and 6 people are the best configuration.
The processing plant has developed to the present, in addition to the 6 veterans, there are 5 people in Nan'an and Hui'an respectively "home office", Lin Yunqing needs to send the fabric to their home, and then pull the finished goods back to the hands of various manufacturers in Luoyang Town. In order to save money for hiring people to pull goods, Lin Yunqing went to learn to drive and get a driver's license among a bunch of young people.
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How do Fujian people do school uniform business? The money-making genes of Hokkien people are engraved in their bones. Especially on the track of shoes and clothing, there is a taste of the continuation of its clan bloodline. Jinjiang's Anta, Xtep, and Hongxing Erke families occupy most of the domestic sports shoes and clothing, while Shishi people undertake the upstream and downstream of Jinjiang shoes and clothing, and their earning ability is not far behind.
Hui'an County, which ranks third in GDP in Quanzhou City, is one of the pillar industries of a more subdivided track, school uniforms.
In the 80s of the last century, Hui'an, with more people and less land, poor materials, people have left their hometowns to go out to "go supply and marketing" to make a living, and Hui'an people who found business opportunities for school uniforms in other provinces returned to the province and began to mobilize family relatives to recruit workers and build factories, and gradually developed into a complete industrial chain today.
Hokkien people value clan relations the most, and the school uniform industry in Luoyang Town is also built on this. Through relatives to relatives, friends to friends, most of the people in the town are now engaged in positions related to school uniforms.
Lin Yunqing has 6 brothers and sisters, all of whom work in school uniform factories, and his younger brother Lin Yuncong works as a supply and marketing clerk in other factories, and in 2023, he will run primary and secondary schools in Anhui all year round. As a major education province, Anhui is almost the second hometown of Hui'an people.
Generally speaking, the boss is responsible for contacting the leader and dredging the relationship, and the supply and marketing staff is responsible for running the school to contact the principal and class teacher to measure the students. As a front-line personnel, Lin Yunqing has seen the most real business war in the school uniform industry, and competition is used to the extreme, such as gift-giving, reporting competition, malicious smearing, and giving kickbacks. The trick to getting an order is how to apply the above means to moisturize things silently.
Different from the earlier way of relying on favors to get orders, now, the procurement of student uniforms needs to go through bidding, the channels are open, and the space for operation has become smaller.
The water is big and the fish is big, so that the Fujian people who know how to be flexible have their own ways to deal with it. Lin Yuncong once saw a company register 3 shell companies in succession before the bidding, bidding for the same school's school uniform procurement project, and 4 of the 5 shortlisted companies monopolized, and finally won the bid. After learning the truth, another shortlisted company directly sent a report letter to the Commission for Discipline Inspection. The results were scrapped during the publicity period and the bidding was re-tendered, and neither of these companies won the bid.
Figure |The supply and marketing battle of the upstream of the textile women workers in the large factories is so fierce, and the order competition of the middle and downstream processing factories is also serious.
Lin Yunqing has 5 order channels, of which 4 are the factories of his cousin, cousin, cousin, and righteous brother, and one is the newly expanded school uniform factory in Shishi City at the end of 2023.
School uniform processing is like tourism, there are off-peak seasons. During the peak season (the end of May to the end of June, September to October), orders poured into this small factory of 11 people like snowflakes, and everyone had to rush to work overnight; In the off-season (January-March), it is time for Lin Yunqing to show his skills in interpersonal relationships.
Even if it is a relative, the order is not given in vain, Lin Yunqing has more than one source of goods, and these big factories naturally have more than one processing factory. During the New Year's holidays, Lin Yunqing always has to prepare 4 gifts and domestic chickens and ducks to give to the four factory directors to contact their feelings.
After that, she first asked for orders one by one, and after the other party told her that "there is no goods recently", she directly "killed" to other factories, inspected a circle of freshly prepared goods, and directly asked, "Let me do these (goods)". When the other party doesn't agree, he lowers his posture and says, "It's okay to cut it in half and give it to me."
Due to the good work in the early stage and the kinship, Lin Yunqing can generally get the order smoothly to ensure that the employees are not lost.
In addition, Lin Yunqing also has to face problems in daily work.
In May last year, a batch of orders from my cousin went awry. The factory matched the ribbing of the neckline of the school uniform with the wrong color, and the employees who were not familiar with the situation directly took it and made it. When the finished product was delivered to the factory, the director of the factory was furious and asked, "I didn't see such an obvious color error."
Lin Yunqing believes that all three parties have made mistakes, using the Internet jargon as "information misalignment", but in order to appease the anger of the factory director, she came up with a "best of both worlds" solution: school uniforms are reworked, at least 3 yuan each. She took over the work of rework, asking for 2 yuan per piece, and subsidizing the employees with 1 yuan per piece of rework, so that the factory's losses were minimized, and she and the workers also earned.
The money earned is recorded in the accounts, and arrears are extremely common in this industry. The supply and marketing staff are in arrears to the manufacturer, the manufacturer is in arrears to the processing plant, and the owner of the processing plant is in arrears to the employees, and the bookkeeping cycle is always infinitely extended.
Especially in the 3 years of the epidemic, Lin Yunqing felt that it was not easy for his small factory to survive. There were more voices around him, "XX's factory has fallen", "Are you still recruiting workers here?" ”
Despite struggling to survive, she was eventually affected. Previously, the husband took matters into his own hands and vouched for a kindergarten uniform factory. As a layman, he didn't know the door of the school uniform industry, thinking that his wife had business dealings with him, so he signed a loan guarantee of 300,000 yuan.
During the epidemic, the kindergarten uniform factory could not deliver the goods, resulting in too much inventory, and finally the capital chain was broken and went bankrupt. The bank sued Lin Yunqing's husband to the court together for debt collection, and almost entered the dishonest list.
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Hui'an school uniform, one of the three points in the worldA generation has a generational school uniform. In the common memories of the post-90s, the school uniforms of junior and senior high schools always do not match the beauty, and the fear of being dominated by sportswear has continued from the student days to the present.
Hui'an County, which accounts for one-third of China's school uniform production, is the first to complete every change of school uniform system.
From sportswear to high-end suits and ties, pleated skirts, and school uniforms, to now, school uniforms have returned to pragmatism again, without the funny sense of sportswear that turns into a French bread in seconds with a down jacket, and the jacket with warm function has become a popular style for autumn and winter school uniforms.
Lin Yunqing's former owner, Lin Chunshan, was one of the first manufacturers in Luoyang to smell the changing trend of school uniforms, and last year, he built a large villa in the village that everyone envies, becoming one of the top entrepreneurs in the village.
Last autumn and winter, the fire of the jacket, his business vision was once again verified. As early as two years ago, Lin Chunshan judged that the declining birthrate would become a trend, and the school uniform industry would soon fall into involution, and decided to comprehensively transform into a jacket, covering primary and secondary school uniforms and ** styles, and only retaining a small part of other styles of school uniform production lines.
At the beginning, I was complained by my peers that the school uniform was not as high-end as **, but now looking at their newly renovated villa, the silence of my peers is like thunder.
Lin Yunqing admires the long-term vision and decisiveness of her former employer, but she knows that opportunities always come with risks. Although Lin Chunshan's factory has received a large number of orders for jackets and school uniforms, the money earned is more on paper, and the factory's receivables are as high as tens of millions, and today's cash flow is supported by loans. Once there is a problem with one link in the capital chain, the collapse of the building is a matter of moments.
In Luoyang Town, there are many school uniform manufacturers like Lin Chunshan. Jacket school uniforms are not a novelty, "national tide" and "new Chinese style" have also begun to appear on the stage, peers roll up the style began to roll fabrics, in the fabric exhibition hall of Fujian Xintongxing Needle Textile, there is even a clothing fabric made of corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, wheat and other starch-rich crops.
The "involution" of industry players is inseparable from Hui'an County's measures to promote the development of the school uniform industry.
As a traditional pillar industry and an important livelihood industry in Hui'an County, the school uniform industry has driven the employment of 150,000 people, and the average annual output value of school uniforms in Hui'an County in the past three years is 25 billion yuan, accounting for more than one-third of the national school uniform market share. Hui'an school uniforms have become famous, and gradually ranked with Huinu, Huidiao, and Huijian, becoming another gilded business card of Hui'an.
In April 2022, Hui'an County invested in the construction of a school uniform base industrial park in Luoyang Town, and at present, 50 upstream and downstream enterprises in the school uniform industry chain and nearly 100 textile and accessories sales enterprises have been settled in the first phase.
Figure |In October 2023, the people of Hui'an County issued the "Notice on Several Measures to Accelerate the Development of the School Uniform Industry in Hui'an County" to provide financial support and incentives for enterprises. Encourage the school uniform association to organize school uniform enterprises to participate in the school uniform exhibition activities sponsored by the competent departments or industry associations at or above the provincial level, so as to provide good services for school uniform enterprises to participate in domestic exhibitions to expand the market and grab orders. ”
The success of an industry with local characteristics is inseparable from the promotion of local customs and culture. The importance of Hokkien people to clan kinship has made the school uniform industry from the end of Qingping in the early years develop rapidly, benefiting most people in Hui'an.
The "Hui Nu", who is hard-working and thrifty, forms an unknown screw in the industry. They are more likely to be unemployed mothers or housewives, and in between family responsibilities, they are part of a large number of industrial workers. They are the real core of Hui'an's school uniform industry.