There are 600 e-cigarette manufacturers in two remote streets, Shajing and Fuyong, Bao 'an District, Shenzhen, with a block of 10 square kilometers, producing 90% of the world's e-cigarettes, which is a veritable "fog valley" in the world. Now, Fog Valley seems to have suddenly stopped breathing.
The Tobacco Monopoly Bureau and the General Administration of Market Supervision 165438+ 10 1 issued the Notice on Further Protecting Minors from E-cigarettes, requiring all market entities not to sell e-cigarettes to minors, and urging e-commerce platforms to close e-cigarette shops and take off e-cigarette products.
With the decrease or even "partial disappearance" of e-cigarette orders, the whole industry chain of e-cigarette industry, from brands to foundries, from foundries to upstream suppliers, is experiencing the pain of life and death.
savage growth
Over the years, the e-cigarette industry has developed wildly in Shenzhen. Because of the strong demand, e-cigarette industry is a typical seller's market. Orders from all over the world poured into two streets in Baoan, Shenzhen, where they became production capacity, and the production capacity expanded wave by wave, and people followed the pace of market demand.
Relying on the rapid and strong demand for e-cigarettes in Europe and America, Shenzhen e-cigarette industry has developed step by step. Many factories have grown from a few hundred people to a peak of 2000 people, and foreign trade is still the mainstay.
Shenzhen Huaqiangbei electronic cigarettes dealer
This kind of factory is easy to find in houses in Shajing and Songgang streets. Large and small factories are in these two streets, and some are still in Dongguan. They are in high-rise buildings in the city and in dense villages. Some of them occupy a small courtyard in the industrial zone, and some occupy a corner of the office building. You can't tell from the name that it is an e-cigarette manufacturer. They have technology in their names, or the words "fog" and "steam". This is another name for e-cigarettes, just like a joint code that only people in the industry can recognize. If it is not necessary, they hope that people outside the industry will never come to them. There is no centralized electronic cigarette industrial park here, and there is no leader. Everyone basically goes his own way.
Wang Xiaohua has been engaged in the sales of electronic cigarette batteries for 8 years. In the first nine months of this year, the factory where he worked increased by 30% year-on-year, and his life was very good.
However, as the industry turns cold, the e-cigarette industry is like a sudden narrowing of the track, and the whole train can't be controlled to tilt and derail.
"Just like a happy person, he was suddenly splashed with water." Wang Xiaohua said.
There is a transmission process in the market. First of all, the brand is in direct contact with the market. If the business is good, it will send orders to the processing factory, otherwise it will reduce the orders. Followed by processing plants, followed by batteries, cigarette oil, plastics, data lines and other upstream.
Now the link that affects communication is mainly in the processing factory. The Securities Times reporter came to the factory located at Dongmei Road, Fuyong Street, Baoan District, Shenzhen, which is a leading e-cigarette processing enterprise in China. The new factory started production last year, which is part of a series of new factories in McWeir. In a year, the number of workers here increased to more than 1000, and now it is reduced to 500 to 600.
Now employees rest at 5: 30 pm and work 8 hours a day, while in the past it was 14 hours. Because they can't work overtime, workers can only get a basic salary, only two or three thousand yuan. It is difficult to support themselves in Shenzhen, and some workers left involuntarily.
This factory hasn't hired anyone for two months. There used to be six people recruiting employees at the door.
Ou Junbiao, president of china electronic chamber of commerce E-cigarette Industry Committee, described the plight of small and medium-sized e-cigarette enterprises with "corpses lying everywhere".
His observation object is the head enterprise that produces e-cigarettes. According to his rough statistics, more than 10 thousand people are unemployed. He believes that this situation is very serious, because the head enterprises did not accept small and medium-sized orders before, and now they have to make hundreds of thousands of orders because the orders are not saturated. Head enterprises are not saturated, and small and medium-sized enterprises can only "die everywhere".
"I don't know how many small factories have died behind this." He said.
Because a top-ranked e-cigarette company laid off 1.500 people, the laid-off people were dissatisfied, which also attracted the attention of the local street office and investigated the stability of various e-cigarette companies.
Luo Haibo, general manager of Shenzhen Zhuomeirui Technology Co., Ltd., welcomed a wave of government workers at the beginning of this month. He sent out a questionnaire and wrote down the reasons for the changes in the industry, hoping that the company would pay wages on time. Luo Haibo said, of course, the company paid wages on time, but there was no order and all employees left. At the peak, there were more than 2000 employees in their company, and now there are only 500 people left.
Ou Junbiao's own factory, which used to be more than 1000, has now been reduced to more than 300.
There are rumors that 40,000 people in Shajing District will be affected, and it is estimated that more people will be affected in Luo Haibo. He said that many industries have been depressed in recent years, so e-cigarettes are better. Electronic cigarette factories in Shenzhen are everywhere, and amateurs keep breaking in, but now the situation has suddenly changed.
Double-click inside and outside
Li Han, a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner from the northwest of China, invented the electronic cigarette in 2004, thus starting an industry. Li Han is an old smoker. The original intention of inventing e-cigarettes is to treat addiction and reduce the harm of traditional cigarettes. The main cause of cigarette addiction is nicotine, and the harm of cigarettes is mainly tar and carbon monoxide produced by tobacco burning.
Although the first electronic cigarette was invented, produced and sold in China, it has been difficult to break the China market. At first, brands started with the concept of quitting smoking, but later, as long as they publicized quitting smoking, they would go into a dead end.
Later, e-cigarettes entered the "foggy haze" era, and cigarette oil could be added by themselves. At that time, there were various types and shapes, but this product was only liked by experienced lovers and was easy to be popularized in nightclubs and other scenes.
The revolutionary change came from the tobacco giant JUUL, who invented "nicotine salt", and "little cigarette" appeared, with changes in taste and shape, which was convenient and quick. Ordinary consumers also participated in it, and little cigarette occupied most of the market.
E-cigarettes look simple, but in fact, the industrial chain is very long and the division of labor is very fine. Some products have thousands of kinds, which need many links to cooperate. From 2065438 to 2008, a large amount of capital was invested in the e-cigarette industry, which showed the huge potential of Xiaoyan and JUUL's tens of billions of dollars valuation. Driven by these capitals and guided by some outsiders, the e-cigarette market in China has been opened. The market is developing rapidly, especially attracting young people.
The change began in September this year.
First, the American market. On September 15 local time, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced an "emergency executive order" prohibiting the sale of flavored e-cigarettes. Trump has announced that it will ban the sale of non-tobacco electronic cigarette products to control the trend of young people smoking electronic cigarettes. Trump said at the time: "We will make some very strong regulations to prevent teenagers from indulging in nicotine."
The United States is the world's largest e-cigarette market and an industry vane. After the US market freezes, many people are also watching.
The domestic market has also changed. The Tobacco Monopoly Bureau and the General Administration of Market Supervision 165438+ 10 1 issued the Notice on Further Protecting Minors from E-cigarettes, requiring all market entities not to sell e-cigarettes to minors, and urging e-commerce platforms to close e-cigarette shops and take off e-cigarette products.
This is a bolt from the blue. Originally, the sales momentum of e-cigarettes in China was good, which could alleviate some of the pressure. Now the domestic and foreign markets are not good.
Before, many brands prepared a lot of goods to prepare "double 1 1". It is said that a large electronic cigarette company expects that the sales of "Double 1 1" will exceed 1 100 million yuan.
In order to adapt to the business growth of various new brands in China, McWeill has been expanding and even building a new factory for a brand. According to industry insiders, all these orders from China are gone now, and the factories are resting.
Practitioners are also watching the actions of the US and China governments. Luo Haibo believes that the United States will take action this week and will definitely relax the control of e-cigarettes.
Many domestic practitioners said that the problems in the US market have nothing to do with e-cigarettes, mainly because cannabis was added to e-cigarettes, and other diluents were added to dilute sesame oil, which had adverse effects on the health. They believe that the United States will find out these problems. Last week, the United States announced that a potential toxin, vitamin E acetate, had been detected in biological samples of patients with lung injury. These findings directly prove that the main cause of lung injury is vitamin E, which occurs in patients all over the United States. 1 1, Trump said on social media that he would meet with advocates in the e-cigarette industry to discuss future plans.
Internally, when Luo Haibo came to the neighborhood office for investigation, he filled in "Don't make a one-size-fits-all decision" on the demands of enterprises in the questionnaire.
Reporter's observation: there is no debate about whether to control tobacco, and the standard scale is the key.
E-cigarette is an electronic product, a similar cigarette or a medicine? In fact, everyone's cognition is different, and there is no unified cognition. However, the enterprises visited by reporters all believe that it is necessary to control e-cigarettes, but the key is to have standards and not to enforce the law excessively in the management process.
Just after the government required that e-cigarettes could not be traded online, many places began to require offline e-cigarettes to be removed from the shelves, and the law enforcement was too strong, including Nanjing, Chongqing, Chengdu, Shiyan and other places, forcing operators not to sell e-cigarettes. Later, the superior issued an urgent notice, including "Don't force e-cigarette products to be removed from the shelves to prevent negative public opinion".
In view of the excessive enforcement in many places, Ou Junbiao, president of china electronic chamber of commerce Electronic Cigarette Industry Committee, said that they had submitted a report to the higher authorities, hoping to protect the legal living space.
Zhuang Runsen, vice president of Shenzhen Tobacco Control Association, said in an interview with the Securities Times reporter that e-cigarettes are addictive to nicotine. Besides nicotine, there are some ingredients that are not good for the health. These are all objective. If the form of spraying is harmless, it will be fine as a toy, but misleading minors now will make smokers younger.
Zhuang Runsen believes that the inclusion of e-cigarettes in Shenzhen's smoking ban regulations is based on the harmfulness of e-cigarettes. In fact, the reason why e-cigarettes have developed vigorously in recent years is because all countries are banning smoking, and e-cigarettes have taken advantage of publicity.
He believes that the government prohibits the online sale of e-cigarettes, mainly to prevent minors from buying them. He believes that there is no problem with traditional cigarettes off the assembly line, and electronic cigarettes can also be used. "Now the government has not controlled the sales of e-cigarettes, but more from the perspective of protecting minors."
Xiang Jie, deputy general manager of Zunyipin, also believes that the notice issued by the government later not to excessively enforce the law means that it is not a matter of killing the industry with a single blow, but a matter of degree.
Regarding the government's sudden policy, an e-cigarette head enterprise executive said that the regulatory policy should be compliant, pay attention to scientific law enforcement and scientific supervision. For example, if you can't sell online, you must give all parties a buffer time, otherwise enterprises and employees will suffer great losses, and consumers also have rights to protect. If given a month or two to digest, all parties have time to react and the government can control it.
In China, some groups have become loyal consumers of e-cigarettes. Yesterday, in Huaqiang Electronic Building in Huaqiang North, Shenzhen, the reporter met a young couple who came to York for monopoly. They have been smoking e-cigarettes for several years, so they go to the scene to buy them because they can't buy them online. York has 9 stores near Huaqiang North. Yesterday afternoon, the reporter also met a Hong Kong tourist named Xu. He bought it from Hong Kong. He said that the e-cigarettes smoked before were too expensive. My friend came to Shenzhen to buy e-cigarettes and bought more than a dozen boxes at a time.
Theoretically, after the online demand is suppressed, it will turn to offline without data support. Most of the demand is difficult to convert to offline, and the coverage of physical stores is limited and the number is not large.
People in the industry call for the rapid introduction of standards, which can be done according to standards.
In an interview with the Securities Times reporter, Ou Junbiao expressed the hope that Shenzhen e-cigarette manufacturers and industry associations would have the opportunity to participate in the formulation of industry standards.
He said that at present, they have not had the opportunity to participate in the formulation of industry standards, nor have they been consulted by institutions. E-cigarette Industry Committee was established on 20 17, and the output of member enterprises accounts for more than 90% of e-cigarette exports.
There is no public standard in the e-cigarette industry, and the company conducts research and development according to market demand. It is said that there are tobacco subsidiaries currently formulating standards.
According to industry insiders, the most critical part of the industry standard is cigarette oil, which will also be encountered in other fields such as batteries, and the standard is relatively easy to formulate. Others, including plastic cases, can easily learn from other industry standards, but the core part of e-cigarettes is the composition of cigarette oil and atomization standards, but it is difficult to learn from them.
There is another important question. The composition of tobacco oil may be harmless, but it may be harmful after atomization. In addition, it is unscientific to talk about harm without dose, so it should be related to intake. However, domestic research in this field has been relatively lacking. Some insiders said that they often take foreign research as a reference.
In 20 17, china electronic chamber of commerce Electronic Cigarette Industry Association formulated General Specification for Electronic Cigarette Atomizer and Specification for Electronic Cigarette Atomizer.
"I hope that the standards will be formulated soon, so that our industry will strictly abide by them and even do better than the standards. Such a big industry always refuses to give itself identity. With identity, the industry will not say that wind is rain now. You should see the value of e-cigarettes to China 1 trillion yuan or even 10 trillion yuan. " Ou Junyi said.
(Article source: Securities Times)
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