Temperatures across the country dropped sharply last week. Friends in the north have begun to buy winter clothes, and snow boots are naturally one of them.
Every October, girls who want to buy snow boots will ask for a place online: Sangpo Village .
Picture source/Douban
This remote village in Mengzhou City, Henan Province has become increasingly prosperous in recent years. In the circle of snow boots, there is even a saying: Australian snow boots sell 5 million pairs a year, while Sangpo Village’s snow boots can sell 20 million pairs.
The most prestigious snow boots brand UGG Australia, the world's largest foundry - Longfeng Fur Company, is located in Sangpo Village. Longfeng takes over UGG 80% of the snow boot products.
Picture source/UGG flagship store
The snow boots you bought from the United States and Australia are likely to come from Sangpo Village.
This small village with a population of less than 7,000 people is home to more than 42,000 sheepskin product shops of various sizes. Most of them have also opened online stores. During the peak season, the village's daily shipment volume exceeds 60,000 pieces, with monthly sales reaching 300 to 400 million yuan. The total transaction volume in a year exceeds 62 billion yuan.
Picture source/Beijing News
01
Success is also Xiao He, failure is also Xiao He
The relationship between Sangpo Village and sheepskin products began in the Qing Dynasty. At that time, there was a saying among the people that "only Sangpo is known, but Mengxian is not known". Mengxian is today's Mengzhou City.
According to the records of Sangpo Village, there were many famous sheepskin products shops in the village at that time, such as Quan Xinghe, Yishunhe and Xingshenglan.
It is rumored that at that time, southern women were unwilling to get married if they did not receive a "Xingshenglan" fur coat as a dowry.
People in Sangpo Village have been working hard in the fur industry with the skills passed down from generation to generation. Sheepskin procurement has also gradually shifted from Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia to Australia, where sheepskin quality is the best.
Source/Henan Youth Times
In 2007, Sangpo Village had more than 130 fur processing companies, processing up to 15 million sheepskins a year, and it has become the largest fur sheep shear production and processing base and distribution center in Asia. They make sheepskins imported from New Zealand and Australia into finished products and export them to Russia, the United States, Japan and other places.
In 2007, when the annual per capita income in rural areas was only more than 4,000 yuan, the monthly salary of villagers in Sangpo Village was 2,500 to 5,000 yuan.
Because of sheepskin, people in Sangpo Village make a lot of money.
Xiao He is also a success, and Xiao He is a failure.
Sangpo Village imports raw sheepskin from Australia, which must go through more than a dozen processes to tan the mature skin. This process requires hundreds of kilograms of water, and a variety of chemical agents must be added.
Picture source/"Great Manufacturing"
Every year, tens of millions of sheepskins are processed in Sangpo Village, which brings considerable profits to the villagers and also plunges the village into a huge pollution crisis.
People from nearby villages often say: As long as you see shredded sheepskin on the ground and smell the smell of sheep mutton, you will know you have arrived at Sangpo Village.
In 2009, CCTV Chaowen Tianxia exposed the pollution situation in Sangpo Village in a program: The river water was black and smelly everywhere, and the smell when walking on the bank was almost suffocating. These turbulent sewage will eventually flow into the Yellow River more than ten kilometers away.
Under the supervision of various parties, Sangpo Village built a sewage treatment plant. However, more than 100 companies in the village only relied on one sewage treatment plant to improve the situation, which was a drop in the bucket.
Picture source/Henan Youth Times
In the past few years, in order to control the amount of sewage emissions, companies have repeatedly closed down, and the fur output value of Sangpo Village has dropped sharply.
In 2018, 135 fur companies in Sangpo Village were ordered to suspend operations for rectification. Only 19 companies in the entire village were able to operate normally. The annual output value dropped from the peak of 2.5 billion yuan to 1.5 billion yuan. The "Leather Capital of China", which is famous throughout the country, is in turmoil.
02
Earning 2 million a year is not a legend
During the years when environmental pollution was controlled, Sangpo Village had a very difficult time. A batch of leather washing factories were closed one after another. Many people simply changed careers and started other businesses.
Lao Bai did not give up the craftsmanship left by his ancestors, and began to take orders from some leather shoe factories to barely make ends meet.
Around 2008, a friend gave Lao Bai a pair of "ugly" fur boots, saying that the shoes could be sold for one to two thousand a pair. Those are the shoes produced by Longfeng Fur Company for the snow boots brand UGG Australia.
Picture source/UGG flagship store
Not long after, Lao Bai discovered that many factories in the village began to produce UGG snow boots of the same style, and everyone’s sales were pretty good. Lao Bai didn’t think much and joined the array.
At this point, the name Sangpo Village snow boots has been secretly circulated in the circle.
2017 is a turning point for Sangpo Village.
That year, Longfeng Fur Company was revealed to be the OEM of UGG Australia - the secret spread.
Since 2018, many outsiders have appeared in the village. Most of them want to pick up the UGG Australia snow boots produced by Longfeng, but they return empty-handed. Therefore, purchasing agents have set their sights on Sangpo Village snow boots workshops and shoe stores that also guarantee genuine leather and are of high quality and low price.
Picture source/"Great Manufacturing"
At that time, for the villagers of Sangpo Village who were looking for new ways out of 135 companies that had been shut down, snow boots were hot food. People have picked up the craftsmanship left by their ancestors, and a large number of snow boot workshops have appeared in the village.
"Ordinary wool slippers cost less than 70 yuan, and the popular snow boots currently cost one to two hundred yuan depending on the complexity of the workmanship." Most of the snow boots taken from Sangpo Village by purchasing agents are priced at 300 to 400 yuan, and there are many who can earn tens of thousands from one trip.
The fame of Sangpo Village snow boots has spread throughout the country under the influence of purchasing agents.
Picture source / TMT New Observation
In 2020, the number of physical stores selling shoes in Sangpo Village has soared from the original dozen to more than 1,000, and has long become an open source of snow boots in the purchasing circle.
Each store is supported by multiple snow boot workshops. There are dozens of different snow boots in the store, most of which are imitations of UGG styles. Many stores directly hang "UGG" on the LED screens in the store, and many merchants even have UGG logos nailed on their snow boots.
"There are no fake UGGs here, they are all real. You can tell customers directly that it is Sangpo UGG."
"We use whatever materials the official uses."
Picture source/UGG flagship store
By the end of 2020, the number of snow boot shops in Sangpo Village is approaching 2,000. Almost every household is doing the snow boot business, and most shops have also opened online stores. Over the past year, the output value of e-commerce alone has exceeded 1.6 billion yuan.
Mr. Li, a local businessman, also took advantage of the opportunity and opened a fur shop with tens of thousands of dollars he had saved previously. At first, I also supplied goods to purchasing agents all over the country. Then I thought, why not sell them myself?
While running his main business, Mr. Li spent the rest of his time starting his own micro-business career online.The results were unexpected. In 2020 alone, Mr. Li made a net profit of 2 million!
Sangpo Village’s fur products are making money at a speed that has refreshed history.
03
Only by building your own brand can you hope
The global epidemic is raging, but it has not affected Sangpo Village at all, but has brought greater traffic to it.
Purchasing agents have lost their way to purchase overseas, and Sangpo Village has become their top priority.
In previous years, Sangpo Village only entered the peak season in September. Now, there is business in the village every day, and it is still brightly lit at 10pm. Merchants were busy packing goods, and courier tricycles surrounded the entire street.
Picture source/International Brand Observation
The hotel in the village is always full. The price has increased from 100 to 200 yuan a night before to 300 to 600 yuan, but there are still agents who can't book a room, so they can only return on the same day.
The live broadcast trend has hit, and Sangpo Village has built an "Internet Celebrity Live Streaming E-commerce Center" on the roadside of the bustling shopping mall for anchors to broadcast live all night long.
Picture source/Ninth Street
Although Sangpo Village is now very popular, there is a lot of thunder behind it - the brand problem has always existed. At a time when intellectual property rights are becoming increasingly strict, Sangpo Village is in urgent need of change.
In recent years, many local companies have begun to explore their own brands of snow boots, such as Big Brother Longfeng, whose official website displays many of its own brand of snow boots.
Picture source/Longfeng official website
The Li family, which has always been in the fur business, also opened a Taobao store in the past two years. Li Shuangshuang hired a designer to build his own brand. After a difficult beginning, the new brand of snow boots slowly became popular online. On Double 11 in 2019, all 10,000 pairs of shoes in the store were sold out instantly.
Li Shuanghuan said: "Now when people ask me to buy UGGs, I give them the boots I designed."
Picture source /Seller
In August 2020, the Mengzhou Municipal Government vigorously built Sangpo Village and registered "Sangpo Memory" with the logo "SS". It was connected to Tmall , Jingdong , Pinduoduo and other e-commerce platforms, which shows the strong publicity.
"This is our own domestic product, and the quality is no worse than that of international brands." This is what Li Shuanghuan often says to his customers.
I think this is what the people in Sangpo Village want to tell the world the most.
Super Rural Research Institute
Sangpo Village comprehensive rating:
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Reference:
[1] After eating 80% of Australian sheepskin and challenging the international big-name UGG, why can a small village in Henan counterattack?
[2] "The No. 1 Village of Snow Boots": Purchasing agents and anchors "earn 50,000 to 60,000 yuan a month", transforming into fans behind the prosperity
[3] Why are half of the micro-businessmen in your circle of friends begging for help from this "little broken village" of 6,000 people in Henan?
[4] After 135 factories closed down, I started a micro-business in the village and made a small profit of 2 million a year!
[5] Sangpo, Henan in the year of the epidemic: the number of merchants in the village tripled that of last year, with more than 1,500
[6] The entire village was exposed for fraud, which is a good thing for the "No. 1 UGG Village"!
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