时间会证明一切
I have been living in China for well over 10 years now and in all this time I have never seen the ceramic companies in this Country as worried as they are now about the future of the industry. The present time is extremely challenging already as difficult as it has ever been and the future, at least the near future like the next one to three years doesn’t look so good and the companies are openly talking about this.
我已经在中国生活了10多年,在这些时间里,我从未见过这个国家的陶瓷公司像现在这样担心行业的未来。眼前的情况已经非常具有挑战性,面临前所未有的困难。未来至少有一到三年持续如此不容乐观的状况,公司们都在公开的谈论了。
Typical topics of conversation, discussions and brainstorming among some of the well-known brands are innovation, internationalization, anti-dumping, India manufacturers threat, automation, trends, slabs or big size and so on.
一些知名陶瓷品牌的对话、讨论、集思广益的论坛,都围绕着创新、国际化、反倾销、印度制造商的威胁、自动化、趋势、大板等代表性的话题。
There is without a doubt a situation in the domestic market, Country, economy, industry, international markets, number of anti-dumping cases and new policies that make the present time so difficult and challenging that even some of the bosses of the top brands in our industry are saying that people should take this very seriously and consider themselves to be on a “Survival Mode”.
毫无疑问,国内市场、国家、经济、工业、国际市场、反倾销个案的数量、新政策等都使当前形势相当严峻、充满挑战,以至于业内一些顶级品牌的老板都说,人们应该严阵以待,并把自己放到“生存模式”中。
Recently I had the chance to see, meet and hear some of the top brands bosses in Italy and some others in China where they clearly expressed their big concerns of the topics I mentioned above and in my opinion they are doing the right thing in creation some sort of clear open communication, benchmarking and brainstorming channels to discuss about how to deal with all of these problems.
最近,我有机会在意大利和中国见到一些国内顶级品牌的老板,听到他们的意见并和他们交流,他们都清楚地表达了对上述话题的极大关切。在我看来,他们正在做正确的事情:建立清晰公开的沟通、标杆管理和集思广益的渠道,针对怎么处理这些问题开展讨论。
There is no need to get into the details but we all know how the production capacity has decreased in all of the different ceramic manufacturing provinces like Shandong, Fujian and Foshan to name some and in some cases has decreased as much as 40% and the other obvious thing is how soon the factories have stopped this year and how late they are going to open making this time gap the biggest one we have ever seen. Some of the factories stopped early this month and they will not start until April making an incredible 4 month stop that is hard to believe.
我就不再详述细节了。同时我们知道所有省份陶瓷产区的产能都在下降,像山东、福建、佛山等等,有些甚至下降了40%。另一个明显的现象就是,今年的工厂早早停工并且明年迟迟开工,这样的停工间歇前所未有。有些工厂本月初停工,直到明年4月份才会开工,要停4个月真是难以置信。
Anyway one of the most interesting topics the companies are discussing and FINALLY paying more attention to, is on how to make the Chinese Ceramic manufacturers more international. In other words, historically and specially with the new digital technology the international markets typically see China as a place where they make DECENT looking tiles at a very LOW price. Two very important words I use in the last sentence DECENT and LOW. Let me explain in more detail these words as they are expressed by foreigners that come here to China to buy. DECENT: They see China as a place that is making good looking tiles with good level of design but the designs are not necessarily the best (Number of faces used, colors available) and the different finishes are limited. Why is that? Because the finishes that are ok in China are the polished ones even though the way the polished is done is different than Italy making the Chinese wavier compared to Italy and not as strong surface because one uses glaze while the other use “granilla”but the result is ok and the pricing is much lower. Another issue is the matte or structured finish. China has made a lot of progress in the last few years but still is a couple of steps behind Italy and Spain regarding these finishes. The other word is LOW;and yes China has good pricing but it is no longer considered as a place where you can get the super low pricing anymore. Costs have been consistently going up and while China is still an option where you can come to buy good decent looking tiles at a good price the new king of decent looking tiles at LOW price now belong to India. In my personal and the opinion of many foreigners that are familiar with Indian market manufacturers India in most cases is still far behind from China in multiple aspects: Reliability, quality consistency, communication, easiness of logistics and design in general. India is now ahead of China in price, low price I mean for comparable items.
无论如何,陶瓷企业们讨论的最有趣话题之一,并且最终更关注的是如何使中国陶瓷制造走向国际化。从过往历史来看,特别是随着新的数码喷墨技术的应用,国际市场往往把中国市场看成是生产非常低价而“适宜”的好看的瓷砖的地方。我在上句中使用了两个非常重要的单词“适宜”和“低价”。让我再详细解释一下这两个词语,因为它们是来中国采购的外国人所期待的。首先,“适宜”:他们把中国看作一个设计水平较高,可以制造出漂亮瓷砖的地方,但设计不需要是最好的(设计面的数量、可选择的颜色),不同质面的选择也有限。为什么会这样呢?例如,中国全抛产品的效果是不错的,但是处理方式与意大利不同。中国生产的产品表面会有波浪纹,相比意大利的产品没有那么坚固,因为一个使用釉料,而另一个使用“干粒”。但是中国的效果还是不错的,价格也相对低得多。另外一个例子是亚光和凹凸质面的效果,中国在过去几年里已经取得了很大的进步,但仍然落后于意大利和西班牙。第二个单词是“低价”:没错,中国的价格的确很好,但不再是一个你可以享受超低价的地方。随着成本的持续上升,虽然中国仍然是一个可选项,你还是可以来这里买到好看且价格便宜的瓷砖,但现在新的“好看低价瓷砖之王”属于印度。在我个人和许多熟悉印度市场制造商的外国人看来,印度在很多方面如可靠性、质量一致性、沟通、物流和设计总体上都远远落后于中国。印度现在在价格优势方面胜于中国,我这里的意思仅仅是同类商品对比来说。
China is still the best place to buy when you want design and good price, it is without a doubt the place to get the most for the money you pay but……The situation has changed and this apply only to certain group of products now. The list is now more limited and apply to certain sizes and finishes (At least for the countries that have existing cases of anti-dumping with China).
当你想同时兼得设计和价钱的时候,中国仍然是最好的采购选择。毫无疑问,它是你花钱最物有所值的地方,但是……随着情况的改变,现在这些仅仅适用于某些类型的产品。这个清单变得有限,仅仅适用于某些尺寸和质面(至少对于那些对中国有反倾销的国家而言)。
If we take Mexico as an example the entire country and customers stopped buying soluble salt products 60x60 and 80x80 because of the anti-dumping case and they moved ALL these items to India. But Mexico still buys the higher value products like double loading items and larger sizes glazed porcelain from China, and when I say larger sizes I mean 60x120, 75x150, 90x80 because if you go larger then again the balance moves to India. But the world is too big and different countries have different taste, size needs, pricing needs and they may have or not ant-dumping cases with China or different tariffs.
如果以墨西哥为例,整个国家和客户由于反倾销都停止在中国购买60x60CM和80x80CM的渗花砖,他们把这些产品全部转移到印度采购。但是墨西哥仍然从中国购买高价值的产品,如微粉砖和大尺寸的釉面砖,我说更大尺寸指的是60x120、75x150、90x80CM的瓷砖,因为如果尺寸再大一点,他们就会转向从印度采购了。但是世界太大了,不同的国家有不同的口味、尺寸需求、价格需求,与中国有无反倾销案件的牵连,不同的关税都是影响因素。
The truth is that China is slowly or rapidly moving and staying away of cheap looking and low end pricing products where the ceramic companies are making very little or no money to better added value products and sizes like glazed porcelain or polished porcelain in larger sizes with digital design and multi-faces.
事实是,中国企业正在或逐渐或快速地,开始远离获利甚少的廉价外观、低价位的产品,逐渐转型为增值更高的产品和尺寸,如尺寸更大、数码喷墨设计和多面设计的釉面砖或抛光砖。
I think finally the best companies are realizing several things considering the others are a given like service, communication, logistics and reliability. They realized that they need to pay more attention to Quality over Quantity, they need to pay more attention to design and trends, they realized that they need to make products that offer something extra and not just a low price that lead to very little or no profit and finally and most importantly they need to innovate and not copy. Innovation is change that unlocks new value!
我认为,最好的公司已经开始将其他因素加以考虑,比如:服务、沟通、物流和可靠性。他们意识到他们需要更多地关注质量而不是数量,他们需要更多地关注设计和趋势,他们意识到他们需要制造能够提供额外价值的产品,而不仅仅是低价导致产品很少或没有利润,最后且最重要的是他们需要创新而不是抄袭。创新是开启新价值的变革!
Ask yourself the following question: What are you offering your customers besides the product?
现在,反问自己以下问题:除了产品,你还能为客户提供些什么?
When you start giving the list of answers you may be surprised that you need to do a lot more than simply the decent product at a competitive price!
当你开始列出答案时,你可能会惊讶地发现,你需要做的远远不止是简单地,以有竞争力的价格销售适宜的产品!
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