Zhejiang Province has an early development of fastener industry and a good foundation. It has a number of nationally renowned professional hardware markets. In recent years, the advantages of "speed for market" and "cost for capital" in Zhejiang fastener industry have been weakened, only the ability to create price differences, but lack the ability to create product differences. This situation determines the 'make' attribute rather than the 'create' attribute of the fastener industry. The production mode of 'big but not strong' and lack of core competitiveness has been difficult to sustain under the increasingly fierce market competition. The fastener industry has entered the bottleneck period of development and is facing new challenges.

Challenges in internal and external markets

The domestic consumer market is shrinking severely. Real estate has been the biggest driving force for domestic demand since 1998. As long as Chinese people buy a new house, they will certainly buy new TV sets, refrigerators, furniture and so on. Naturally, the demand for domestic fasteners will also become stronger and stronger. However, since December 12, 2009, when The State Council introduced the "Four Rules", the government has not relaxed its control over the real estate market. According to the latest data from the provincial Bureau of Statistics, sales of commercial housing in Zhejiang fell 5.9 percent in the first three quarters of this year, from 4.2 percent growth in the first half. The downturn in the real estate market has actually caused a contraction in the domestic market, resulting in a significant reduction in the domestic market demand for hardware fasteners.

Demand in foreign markets is also waning. Until now, the shadow of the financial crisis has not gone away, and it is unlikely that the European and American markets will recover in the short term. Moreover, the fiscal crisis in Spain, Italy and other European countries continues to spread this year, resulting in the economic downturn and sharp decline in consumer demand in these countries. The European and American markets are the main export places of Zhejiang fastener products. In Jiaxing Haiyan, a major domestic fastener production base, many small and medium-sized enterprises have seen orders drop by nearly 40 percent. This is not only due to the decrease of external demand, but also because of the increasing risk of export, rising costs, lack of working capital and other reasons that enterprises dare not take orders.

A way to try

We need to move the market from the outside to the inside as soon as possible. After the third quarter of 2008, the provinces and regions with good development are the internal and external markets are more balanced, and those under greater pressure are the provinces with a relatively high degree of external dependence. Therefore, in the next ten golden years, the fastener industry in our province needs to be transferred inward, which is even more critical than industrial upgrading. We used to work hard and exploit labor to make the best products to the Americans, now is it possible to sell the best products to the Chinese people, we are worth thinking about.

Fastener and other traditional industries with the new economy, new technology and the Internet. In 2010, China's e-commerce transaction volume was about 3 trillion yuan, and the total retail sales of consumer goods in China was about 18 trillion yuan, indicating that 1/6 of the transactions were realized through e-commerce. Even high-efficiency products such as flowers and bento can now be traded online. Therefore, for Zhejiang fastener enterprises, the time when an enterprise can build an industrial park has passed, and a new era has arrived. In the future, a large number of hardware fastener manufacturing enterprises in Zhejiang Province will embark on the mode of 'e-commerce + professional company + small manufacturing', which is also the general trend.

The innate geographical conditions of "seven hills, two rivers and one field" in Zhejiang province make it difficult for Zhejiang fastener industry to become one of the world's top 500 enterprises in the near future. By the end of last year, the base scale of the World's top 500 companies was 100 billion yuan, while the base scale of Jinyi Industrial, the country's largest fastener manufacturer based in Jiashan, Zhejiang Province, was only 4-5 billion yuan, far from 100 billion yuan. By the time you have 100 billion enterprises, the threshold of the Fortune 500 May be 200 billion. So, it's really important to get your bearings. We do not blindly cultivate the world's top 500, but focus on cultivating a number of hidden champions. These hidden champions dominate the domestic market, but they don't have to be known to the world. For Zhejiang fasteners, supporting and cultivating one thousand hidden champions is more important, more realistic and more valuable than cultivating one of the world's top 500 fasteners.