Belle says moving production inland works
28/02/2014
Belle said its policy of moving manufacturing facilities to inland locations had helped it keep labour costs down. It still runs footwear factories in Shenzhen and Dongguan, both in Guangdong province, and in Jianhu in Jiangsu province. These are expensive locations, with Guangdong occupying the number-one position of all 31 mainland provinces and autonomous regions in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), and Jiangsu is second.
However, for some years now, Belle International has also run footwear production facilities in Zigui in Hubei province and Suzhou of Anhui province respectively. These provinces occupy the ninth and fourteenth places respectively in China’s GDP ranking, but Hubei’s GDP is around 60% lower and Anhui’s almost 70% lower than Guangdong’s.
Belle said moving production to inland areas had helped it “improve stability in the manufacturing labour pool”, especially in light of what it called “a shortage of labour supply in southern China”, as well as seasonal disruptions.
As well as selling fashion shoes under its own Belle, Teenmix, Tata, Staccato, Senda, Basto, Jipi Japa, Millie’s, Joy & Peace,15MINS and Mirabell brands, the company distributes Bata, Clarks, Hush Puppies, Mephisto, Merrell and Caterpillar shoes in China. It runs a network of 19,077 stores across mainland China.
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