Taipei’s Wufenpu Garment Wholesale Area (五分埔) has suffered this year, and almost 200 out of the area’s 1,100 stands have closed or changed hands, vendors said.
The area used to be a popular destination for tourists and young shoppers. However, vendors now face rising rents and a general decline of the Taiwanese garment industry, forcing them to engage in price wars and depend on cheap imports from China or South Korea for 80 to 90 percent of their inventory.
Association for the Advancement of Wufenpu Business District president Hsieh Lung-chang (謝龍昌) said the garment industry’s “broken supply chain” is to blame.
Hsieh said that 30 years ago, Taiwan-made clothes were qualitatively on par with or superior to garments produced in China and South Korea today.
However, over the past two decades, the garment industry focused too much on fashion design, to the detriment of tailors and domestic production, Hsieh said.
The result has been an abundance of fashion ideas, but a dearth in capacity to put them in to production, he said.
Hsieh said that rapid changes in fashion and competition from other garment venues exacerbated Wufenpu’s woes, forcing its wholesale and retail vendors to survive on profit margins as small as 0.5 percent, by reducing prices and importing garments.
One vendor, surnamed Lin (林), agreed that a lack of domestic supply is a problem, saying that he only imported from foreign producers because he could not find locally made products.
“Those tariffs add up quick,” he said.
A former vendor, surnamed Wu (吳), said she was forced to closed her stand because of low profits and high rents.
In the past 15 years, rents had tripled from NT$3,000 per ping (33.1m2) in 2000 to as much as NT$10,000 per ping this year, she said.
Wu said she closed her garment shop and now runs an online store, and several acquaintances work as international purchasing agents for garments and accessories.
To help Wufenpu vendors, Taipei’s Office of Commerce section head Lin Chien-wen (林建?) said that the city government plans to open community workshops to coordinate strategies, as well as programs to advise vendors.
The city government will deal with the empty spaces left by closed stands and improve the district environment to help keep customers going to Wufenpu, Lin added.
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