Why is it difficult to find 700gsm+ towels in China?
According to UN Comtrade Database, the biggest exporter of towel linen is China in the year 2017, the total export value in the year 2017 from China is $2,759,176,361 and 271,911,401kgs. But why it is so difficult for you to find a vendor who can supply 600gsm or 700gsm towels, not even to say the Egyptian quality towels?! Here are 3 reasons you may find them interesting after looking into 50+factories.
First. Machines. The best machines and technique are from UK, USA and Japan. As we all know, the textile industry revolution began in the United Kingdom. In 1900, the United States succeeded the United Kingdom as the world textile center. After World War II, Japan replaced the United States as the world textile center. And then China became the textile center after 2001, the join of WTO, China has cheap labor, and cheap machines. They can produce towels with cheap price for the low-end market.
Most of their machines are less than 10,000USD, and a family can afford 5 to 10 machines to start a small mill. There are totally 98 villages here producing towels, 50% of them are in this style, and 160,000workers are working in these factories. These machines can only weave 200-450gsm cloth. 500-700gsm grey cloth definitely need to be weaved by a more complex machine which is usually imported from Italy,UK,USA or Japan costs 100,000-200,000USD/set. There are only less than 100 factories who owns such machines.
Secondly, color & design, as you can see most of the towels from EU&USA are simple solid color, dark color accounts 50%, while what you can see from China is light color with complicated Chinese style. So even the factories with good machines which can produce 700gsm, they won’t produce the order for you. They know if they produce these styles with dark even black color, they will have risk for keeping the overly produced stock, they can not sell to the domestic market, nobody will buy.
Thirdly, there are more 5 thousand strings for a complicated towel weaving machine needs to be adjusted from 400gsm to 700gsm, that means 3-5days’ work load for one worker, and means 3-5days’ stop working for this machine, they will lose at least 5,000USD profit for the adjusting, and if your order value is less than 100,000USD, they can not afford it. If you order is just 50,000USD, they lose 3-5days to adjust machines, and the weaving only takes 10-20days, and then your order is finished, they need another 3-5days to adjust back to their domestic orders which are 400gsm!!
Does that mean you can not find a supplier of 600gsm /700gsm/ solid color towel from China? No!! You can definitely find what you need with 20% lower cost than your current supplier from Turkey/Portugal. I will introduce how in my next article
