City now makes 20% of sports shoes sold globally

More than 500 firms from countries including the United States, Germany and Japan are expected at the Jinjiang Footwear International Exposition from April 18 to 21 in East China's Fujian province.

Jointly sponsored by the provincial government, the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and the China National Light Industry Council, the trade show in its namesake city Jinjiang covers 50,000 square meters and will host a total of 1,700 exhibition booths, the most in its 15-year history.

Exhibits will range from shoes and other footwear items to bags and even publications covering the sector.

The exhibition has nine sections including shoe machinery and other technology, and a showroom for small and medium-sized enterprises.

A highlight of this year's event, the industry technology area will show visitors the design process of new products from top brands.

And innovative materials on display show how advanced technology makes products with better traction, comfort and safety.

Footwear capital

Famed as the country's "footwear capital", Jinjiang is home to companies that make 20 percent of the sports shoes sold globally and supply 40 percent of the domestic market.

The success story has its roots in small family workshops that produced cheap sandals and slippers in the early 1980s.

Over the next two decades, the sector grew into an economic pillar of the city. Today more than 2,000 factories turn out 300 million pairs of sports shoes a year.

In the city's small towns of Chendi, Chidian and Xiyuan, shoemaking is a major source of income for locals.

A complete industrial chain has sharpened the city's competitive edge, with all the materials needed for making a pair of shoes available within its boundaries.

Jinjiang also has a street with hundreds of stores selling textiles, accessories and plastics used to make shoes.

At the end of the avenue, a sprawling mall is home to wholesaling businesses, while both large and small shoemaking factories are just a few miles away.

Covering 721 square kilometers with a population of about 3 million, the city has 3,000 footwear companies with a combined 300,000 employees.

Brand building

Today the footwear capital has a group of local brands that have grown into top national names, including Anta, Xtep and 361.

A pioneer in brand building, in 1999, Anta invited world table tennis champion Kong Linghui to endorse its products.

The bold marketing campaign soon made the brand famous nationwide. Other companies followed suit with celebrity endorsements. They too became nationally known.

A number of Jinjiang shoe companies spent heavily in China Central Television's auction for primetime advertising slots in 2009.

The 361 brand became the sole sportswear supplier for the CCTV sports channel with a 158 million yuan ($25.5 million) bid, while Xtep bid 156 million yuan to be the sole partner during live broadcasts of sports events.

With ads from more than 10 Jinjiang-based brands airing at the same time on CCTV, the sports channel was nicknamed the "Jinjiang Channel".

In recent years, the companies began bringing their brands onto the global stage.

Global expansion

In 2011, Jinjiang-based Septwolves bought Kenna Hangzhou, an international agency for luxury goods in China, while Anta acquired Belle International's Fila sportswear franchises for 357.7 million yuan in 2009.

The addition partly contributed to Anta's income of 8.9 billion yuan in 2011, a rise of 20.2 percent over 2010 even amid the global economic slowdown.

Jinjiang companies now have 47 overseas sales agencies in addition to more than 30,000 exclusive dealerships or direct sales shops on the Chinese mainland. To date, 41 companies from the city have listed on domestic or international stock markets.

Following the theme of this year's expo, Jinjiang's shoemakers have paid increased attention to innovation and creativity to enhance their business performance in both domestic and global markets.

In 2005, Anta invested 20 million yuan to start the Sport Science Lab research and development institute. Among its innovations is a technique to record and simulate the movement of athletes' feet, enabling the development of footwear suited to their dynamics.

The company established an 8,000-square-meter national technology center in 2009. Its R&D expenditures now exceed 3 percent of revenue each year.

In 2007, the Sports Equipment Research and Development Center, part of the China Institute of Sport Science, opened at Jinjiang's Fujian Sidelong Sporting Goods Co.

In an earlier interview with China Daily, Liu Wenru, mayor of Jinjiang, said that it is time for Chinese footwear makers to emphasize innovation and design in addition to enhancing marketing to differentiate themselves and compete with high-end foreign brands.

The expo is an important event not only for sourcing, buying and networking in the international footwear industry, but also for celebrating the technological innovation and boosting exchanges in the sector, Liu said.