Case Studies, China: Industrial Parks and Industrial Clusters
Box 5.1 Roeblan: From Hand Workshop to Custom Tailor to the U.S. First Lady The black high-heel shoes worn by the U.S. first lady, Michelle Obama, at her husband’s 2009 inauguration, became a popular item; 500,000 pairs were sold within a short time. The shoes were produced by Roeblan, a footwear enterprise in Chengdu. It took more than a decade for Roeblan to grow from a small family workshop to a modern company. In the early 1980s, Wu Deguo was the director of a state-owned shoe factory in Sichuan Province. After three years, he left to sell clothes at a local wholesale market. Then he set up a shoe factory in Fujian Province in southern China. When he returned to Sichuan years later, private enterprises in Chengdu were booming. Considering the convenience of setting up a factory in his hometown, he moved his business back home. In 1997, he established Roeblan with a small workshop and a few dozen workers, a typical pattern at the time. Roeblan expanded and opened a factory in downtown Chengdu. In 2000, because of rapid urbanization, shoe factories started moving to the suburbs. Roeblan did, too. It shifted from manual to mechanized production and modernized its management. The ensuing difficulties remain fresh in Wu’s mind. He recalls that, over 1999–2003, the company lost money each year, with losses as high as several million yuan. After inspecting firms in Fujian, Guangdong, and other coastal provinces, he realized that the only way to survive was to standardize his production line. Yet, orders were scattered, and it was difficult to standardize production and management. “It was a difficult period of time,” he recalls. “Many friends tried to talk me out of this attempt.” However, he was determined to experiment with the reform. “It’s like going across a mine field. If I could cross safely, then others would follow. If I failed, I would be the only one to die.” Wu decided to introduce a mechanized assembly line, becoming the first company to do so in Chengdu. Using the assembly line meant that the company had to dump the old equipment and techniques and had to train workers in new skills. However, it ensured stable quality in the shoes, which generated orders from large overseas wholesalers such as Paramount Footwear Co. In the meantime, with the sponsorship of the local government, company representatives attended expositions overseas to promote their products. Roeblan’s turnaround was complete by late 2003; the firm has earned a profit ever since.
Technology. Even before the reforms, state-owned shoemaking factories
in Chengdu had developed to some scale and thus provided a source of skills and expertise. Today’s shoemaking enterprises in Wuhou are mainly local private companies, some of which were set up and developed by the former management and technical personnel of stateowned factories. In recent years, companies from the coastal areas and overseas have brought not only investment funds, but also the latest technology and concepts in business management and marketing. Human resources. Sichuan is one of China’s most populous prov-
inces, with a large labor force of both skilled and unskilled workers. A third of the front-line workers in shoe enterprises across China are from Sichuan. The rapid development of Chengdu’s footwear
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