The recently aired TV series “That Year the Flowers Bloomed and the Moon Was Full” is coming to an end. There are many plots about the cloth business in the film, which inspired the author who is also a textile person.
The story in the play takes place in Jingyang, Shaanxi. At that time, homespun cloth was popular in Shaanxi, so most businessmen were engaged in the homespun cloth business. However, as time progressed, foreign cloth from Jiangsu and Zhejiang became popular in Shaanxi. The heroine Zhou Ying saw the market for foreign cloth and decided to start a machine weaving company to produce foreign cloth. Zhou Ying ignored the opposition of others and invested all her wealth in machine weaving. Although the process went through a lot of hardships, the final result was unexpected.
Homespun cloth, also known as “coarse cloth” and “home-woven cloth”, is a coarse cloth spun with a hand-made spinning wheel. Foreign cloth was machine-woven plain cloth imported from abroad at that time. The contrast between the two cloths is sharp, that of hand versus machine. At that time, a large number of woven foreign cloths entered the domestic market through different channels. In 1894, foreign cloth accounted for nearly 15% of the national cotton cloth supply, causing a great impact on the homespun cloth market. The textile handicraft industry in the Mainland is experiencing many crises. The rural cottage industry has begun to decline. Large handicraft workshops have been differentiated and reorganized to adapt to economic development. Therefore, the development of the machine-powered textile industry is the general trend.
Isn’t the current textile industry in the same situation? At that time, Shaanxi’s textile industry needed to transform from manual to machine, which was essentially a transformation from low-end to high-end. Today’s textile industry also needs to transform from low-end to high-end. It can be seen from this that no matter in which era, the development of the textile industry from low-end to high-end is the general trend.
Environmental protection regulations have intensified, and low-end industries are no longer adaptable to the environment
Since the large-scale renovation of water-jet looms this year, the production capacity of the textile industry is undergoing a major migration. Environmental protection measures in coastal areas will become increasingly intensive, so the low-end textile industry is no longer suitable for local ecological development. Water-jet looms have been eliminated this year, and many small and medium-sized weaving companies have closed as a result, which has greatly reduced the production capacity of the textile industry. The printing and dyeing industry has also been hit hard this year. Due to environmental protection regulations, it has become a “switch factory” in the mouth of cloth bosses, which also affects the production capacity of the textile industry. In such a situation, companies must either relocate production areas or transform low-end products into high-end products. There are only two ways to go.
Increased costs such as manpower, pollution, taxes, etc., squeezing profits
Nowadays, labor costs, sewage costs, tax costs and other expenses in Jiangsu and Zhejiang are getting higher and higher, making the originally low-profit low-end products more likely to have zero profits. Forced by rising costs but no increase in sales prices, companies’ profits are very small or even loss-making, so some textile companies can only move to other areas with lower costs. Today’s textile companies are everywhere, facing high competition pressure, and being hit from both sides by shrinking market demand and rising operating costs. my country’s textile industry is experiencing cost difficulties. Therefore, companies must transform if they want to survive.
Textile production capacity shrinks, mid- to high-end textile machines replace water-jet looms
Since the announcement this year that water-jet looms will be phased out in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, textile machinery equipment has naturally shifted to mid-to-high-end textile machines such as air-jet looms and rapier looms. Therefore, the idea of ”water to gas” came up. However, the feasibility of “water to gas” is worth pondering, and few companies have used it in their own machines. So should we spend high prices to buy better machines and invest in production like Zhou Ying? The author believes that this requires entrepreneurs to make their own judgments and use unique vision to complete this gorgeous transformation. In the future, textile production capacity in coastal areas will shrink sharply and is being transferred to other surrounding areas.
The plot of “That Year the Flowers Bloomed and the Moon Was Full” reminds modern textile people that the secret of success is only one word “change”, which is transformation! Textile people, while watching the TV series, don’t forget to learn from the successful stories in the TV series, which will definitely bring you unexpected results!
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