2009-05-18
Since the last quarter of 2008, the entire markets show deterioration in leather sector, the growth rate in sales and profits fell sharply, but the sale margins begin to rise, this is because brand products gain more market shares that original belong to these bankrupted small sized enterprises.

Current global markets are still weak, production capacity is surplus, and competition becomes even worse. In other light industries, many sectors have shown big drops in the profit growth rate or shown negative growth, the sale margins also saw fall compared with that of previous year. The numbers of loss-making enterprises and amount of loss are further expanded.

Therefore it is hard to say the leather industry begin to recover, because the world economy has no sign of better turning, leather industry in China should have a full preparation for handling great difficulty in the future.

2009-05-18
U.S. Department of Commerce said American companies is striving on reduction inventory, avoiding the declines of order and production. No hope for manufacturers to increase sale price, the retail sale value in April was drawn down 0.4% by less consumption. The retail price of shoes in April was down 0.4% in America.

2009-05-22
Yesterday afternoon HTL Group signed an agreement on the investment of high grade leather sofa production in Huai An Economic Developing Zone. Following the investments of Foxconn and Darfon this is another Taiwan big investment worth of US$ 1 million come from Shanghai’s Kunshan. The president of HTL Group said on signing ceremony Huaian is a full of hope city, and they are confident on their investment.

HTL Group was found in 1978, its branch companies spread over Singapore, Malaysia and Kunshan, Yangzhou in mainland China. The investment in Huaian mainly processes high-end leather sofa for markets in EU, America and Southeast Asian countries. The construction will be completed in September of this year, and it is estimated to achieve sale income of CNY 2 billion at that time.

2009-05-25
Despite the local economic growth in Guangdong shows sluggish, export of leather goods in Guangdong’s Shilling Town continues to grow 17.95% by value in the first quarter.

Compared with the increase of 30.12% in the same period of last year, the first quarter export of leather goods in Shilling Town posts a 17.95% increase in value. The analyst said the increasing attributes the expansion of new emerging markets like in Panama and the Russian. On their next strategy Shilling Town will target the markets in Central and South America, and then the whole Americas.

Although these exported leather goods sell at low and medium end markets, but with foreign markets contraction more and more consumers put their eyes on the competitive Chinese leather products, to a certain extent it boosts the demand of leather goods made in Shilling Town.

2009-05-25
China's annual gross domestic product growth in the first quarter was around 6%, down from 6.8% in the fourth quarter, a government researcher said on Wednesday.

The comments give a clearer indication than an earlier report by the website of the official Shanghai Securities News, which said that growth in the first quarter was between 6.0% and 6.8%.

Asked what GDP was in the first quarter, Fan Jianping, director of the economic forecasting department of the State Information Centre, told reporters: "Around 6%."

The Shanghai Securities News website reported earlier that growth slipped to a record low in the first quarter, but that the quarter-on-quarter increase might point to a recovery.

The National Bureau of Statistics will announce GDP growth and other economic data for the first quarter at 0200 GMT on Thursday. Despite signs that economic activity is picking up, Fan said that it was too early to say the economy was about to recover.

2009-05-27
Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology releases the latest data for leather and fur, feather and down and their products in the first four months.

The production for main products like light leather fell by 11.3% to 170.995 million square meters, leather shoes and boots down to 3187 million pairs, fell 9.2%; leather clothing slow to 10.67 million pieces, shrank 10.4%; leather bags decline to 209.92 million pieces, down 10.3%.

The sale value for the same products totaled CNY 165.43 billion, with a growth of 6%; rate of production and marketing remained stable at 97.7%.

2009-05-31
The Bloomberg Eurozone Retail Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) shows that Eurozone retail sales continued to fall in May. The seasonally adjusted PMI registered 47.1 in May, compared with 48.4 in April, showing a slightly faster rate of decline. Any PMI figure below 50 signals a contraction of monthly sales.

Footwear and clothing sales declined sharply in May following strong annual growth the previous month.

For the fourth month running, all three countries included in the survey (Germany, France and Italy) registered lower month-on-month retail sales:

Germany posted the steepest overall fall in monthly sales. The index fell to 46.3, remaining in negative territory for the twelfth successive month. This signalled a rate of decline that was faster than in April but slower than in the preceding five months.

Italy recorded a drop in monthly sales of similar severity to that seen in Germany. The current sequence of decline now stretches to 27 months. However, the rate of contraction stabilised in May at a weaker pace than those indicated during the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. The index registered 46.5, almost flat with April's 18-month high of 46.8.

France registered a fourth straight monthly decline in retail sales. The rate of contraction accelerated compared with April, but to a lesser extent than in Germany. The index was slightly lower at 48.3 compared with 49.2, indicating a modest rate of decline.

2009-05-31
Taiwan economic authority department announced that the domestic sale in Taiwan manufacturing industries represents 50.23%, and overseas sales accounts for 49.77%, the domestic sale rate fell by 1.14% compared with previous period of last year.

The authority department further pointed out that significant falling sector is being seen in leather sector representing decline of 7.59% year on year.

2009-06-01
Mr. Waterman, founder of world leading lady’s shoe brand based on Germany, disregarded his 70 year old age and flew to Wenzhou for discussion of the cooperation with Aokang Group on May 19.

This is not the first trip for Mr. Waterman to come to Aokang Group, after many round discussions and inspections both sides finally come to an agreement on cooperation of production and technology. Based on the agreement Waterman placed their first processing order of 300,000 pairs of lady’s shoes on Aokang Group, and indicated the shoe should be adopted the light and soft sole made by Aokang Group.

Aokang Group based on Wenzhou City has an annual capacity to produce 10 million pairs of shoe, their export value in the first four months rose 35% and profits up 15%. Its powerful capacity on research and production had attracted many world leading shoe brands to cooperate with them.

In April of this Year Aokang Group also signed an agreement with GEOX to remove its research center to Aokang production base. Furthermore Aokang Group has cooperated with the other Italian shoemaker of VALLEVERDE this year, on this cooperation they changed the relationship of OEM processing to deepening cooperation.

2009-06-10
In April the scale enterprises with annual sales revenue above 5 million yuan in leather sector achieve a growth of 3.5% in the industrial output value, registered a 4.7 percentage points slow from previous month.

The total industrial output value for the first four months in the scale enterprises shows an increase of 6.3% year on year to 157.5 billion yuan, the growth rate fell 15.6 percentage points from same period of last year.