Fast And Steady? China's Children's Clothing Industry Must Walk With Many Legs.

Fast development

"In the last one or two years, children's clothing is the fastest growing category in clothing category, and sales brand with annual sales of over 1 billion has emerged." Xie Qing, Deputy Secretary General of China clothing association, summed up the development trend of children's clothing industry in 4 words: "rising in the ascendant".

Why is children's clothing growing so fast? The quality analysis report of children and infant products released at the meeting pointed out that in 1990s, the large-scale emergence of clothing consumption led to the rapid development of clothing brand, and the good development of domestic textile and clothing also made the development of children's clothing in China entered a new development period. Children's clothing industry was developing rapidly, and a large number of children's clothing enterprises emerged. From the start of decentralized and family workshop production scale, several large scale children's clothing industrial clusters have gradually formed.

After years of development, China's children's clothing industry has formed a clear cluster trend, and mainly gathered in the southeast coastal areas with relatively developed economy. It forms a new pattern with the focus of Guangdong Foshan and Zhejiang Zhili as the center, Fujian Shishi, Zhejiang Yongjia and Jiangsu Changshu as the main bases, with Shanghai, Beijing and Beijing as the main brand. "This cluster pattern is conducive to the integration of all scattered children's clothing enterprises or brands, giving full play to the cohesiveness and competitiveness of regional brands, and enhancing the impact of the whole industry."

Children's clothing industry cluster has developed rapidly, and has strong potential for growth and growth. Some experts predict that in the next 10 years, the demand for children's clothing market will show a steady upward trend. By 2015, the size of children's clothing market in China can reach 140 billion yuan.

At the same time, it is noteworthy that although China has made great progress in the clothing industry and the trend of popularity, only the children's clothing industry, widely agreed that the market is wide, has not made significant breakthroughs in designing research and leading the trend. Although many international brands have their own children's clothing series, in our country, the design and production of children's clothing are far less concerned than adults' clothing.
 

Heavy quality

"Children's wear industry is developing rapidly, the design and production of children's clothing has attracted more and more attention, but the quality problem can not be ignored." Xie Qing said that the quality control of children's clothing involves many aspects, such as accessories, design, production, processing and circulation.

In Xie Qing's view, China's children's wear industry has a bright future, but still faces many problems. The technology and management level of large enterprises is generally high, and the quality control of their products is relatively in place, and the quality of products has always maintained a high level. Because of lack of funds and relatively low level of equipment and inadequate quality control, small and medium-sized enterprises have resulted in low qualified rate of products, resulting in low overall quality of textile products for children and infants.

At present, the pattern of Chinese children's wear market is that about 30% of the enterprises in China have their own brands, and about 70% of the enterprises are on behalf of processing. The phenomenon of generation processing is very common, that is, the production units and sales units are not the same enterprises, while sales units generally pay attention to marketing. They are relatively less concerned about standards, product quality requirements and product defects, and there are loopholes in the quality requirements and product quality checks of production enterprises, and products are prone to quality problems.

For this reason, the AQSIQ has always regarded children's clothing as the focus of quality supervision, and has continuously followed up spot checks. According to the person in charge of the product quality supervision department of AQSIQ, since 2006, the AQSIQ has continuously organized 6 children's and infant clothing nationwide supervision and spot checks. Especially after 2007, the number of spot checks increased year by year, and reached more than 100 batches in 2010 and 2011. The pass rate of products also increased year by year, and remained between 85% and 90% after 2008.

In the continuous national supervision and spot check, on the important basic safety items, the detection items of decomposed carcinogens and aromatic amine dyes are all qualified; the phenomenon of formaldehyde content exceeding standard has occurred frequently, and some of the exceeding standard ranges are large. The pH value exceeding the standard will appear in every national supervision and spot check. It is the most unqualified item with the highest frequency.

Compared to the 6 spot checks, the results showed that after the implementation of the national mandatory standards in 2006, the supervision and spot checks and follow-up inspections increased, and at the same time, it greatly promoted most production enterprises, and enhanced the awareness of product quality, especially the safety performance of products. Unfortunately, a small number of enterprises have not improved and the quality of products is still at a low level.

"If enterprises want to break through the quality bottleneck that bound their development and go further on the road of industry development, we must do quality, responsibility and integrity." The director of the division pointed out to the enterprises that the quality is the foundation for enterprises to settle down, and hope that they will enhance their sense of quality, sense of responsibility and sense of integrity as a long-term task, and strictly enforce the "Three Customs" (i.e. raw material procurement, production process control and finished product clearance). At the same time, we must attach importance to standards and strictly enforce the standard requirements. If we check the unqualified enterprises, we must seriously find and analyze the reasons and actively and conscientiously rectify them.

Standard basis

"Standards are the best teachers, some enterprises use the wrong standard, resulting in product failure." Xu Jian, the Secretary General of the national garment Standardization Technical Committee, recommended that children's clothing manufacturers must "read" standards, understand their technical requirements, and effectively avoid quality risks.

According to the briefing, the new version of the national basic safety technical specification for textile products (GB18401 - 2010) (hereinafter referred to as the "specification") will be formally implemented in August 1st this year. The implementation of the code will have a major impact on the production and sales of garments and textile products. Among them, the need for enterprises to understand is that the main technical content has changed as follows: the age of infants has changed, the application range has been adjusted from 0~24 months to 0~36 months; under the condition of reduction, the list of aromatic amines is not allowed to be decomposed, and the azo dye has been added to the "4- azobenzene", so that the banned azo dyes have reached 24 kinds; the range of pH value of direct contact with textile products is changed from 4.0~7.5 to 4.0~8.5; the limit value of decomposable carcinogenic aromatic amines is increased to less than 20mg/kg; the sampling requirements of color fastness, formaldehyde, pH value, and decomposition of carcinogenic aromatic amine dye are increased.

For enterprises, standardization is a long-term accumulation process. At present, the technical quality of some employees is relatively low, and the importance of national standards and related product standards can not be fully and accurately understood. In addition, the production equipment and technology are backward, the management level and technical strength are poor, and the quality of products is not valued. In order to reduce costs, purchasing quality and low price surface accessories, resulting in the quality of products can not be guaranteed.

In the view of Xu Jian, standardization work only takes root in the enterprise and runs through the whole process of industrial development, so as to drive the whole children's wear industry to develop better and faster. Therefore, we should strengthen the implementation of quality standards, mandatory standards, and related laws and regulations for children and infant clothing products, and enhance the awareness of product quality, so that manufacturing enterprises really realize the necessity of improving the quality of clothing products.

With the pace of transformation and upgrading of China's textile and garment industry, the state has gradually improved the quality, safety and environmental protection requirements of the country, and the relevant standards have been constantly revised and perfected. The "12th Five-Year plan" will raise the safety of consumer goods to a new height. We will further increase the formulation and improvement of the standards of garment industry. Enterprises should strengthen the standard collection and pay attention to the change of standards. Regarding the formulation of future standards, Xu Jian said that, combining the development status of the industry, we should focus on some safety issues and constantly improve the standard system.