80% of the UGGs you buy from the United States come from this small village in Henan

The temperature across the country dropped sharply last week. Friends in the north have already started to buy winter clothes, and snow boots are naturally one of them.

Every October, girls who want to buy snow boots will ask a place online: Sangpo Village .

Picture source/Douban

This remote village located in Mengzhou City, Henan Province has become more and more prosperous in recent years. In the circle of snow boots, there is even a saying: Australia sells 5 million pairs of snow boots a year, while the snow boots in Sangpo Village can sell 20 million pairs.

UGG Australia, the most prestigious snow boot brand, and the world's largest OEM factory - Longfeng Fur Company, are located in Sangpo Village, and Longfeng has monopolized 80% of UGG's 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 has more than 2,000 large and small 13z sheepskin product stores, and most of them have opened online stores at the same time. Up to 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

图源/新京报


01

成也萧何,败也萧何

桑坡村和羊皮制品的渊源,始于清代。 At that time, there was a folk saying that "I only know Sangpo, but I don't know Meng County", and Meng County is now Mengzhou City.

According to the records of Sangpo village, there were many famous sheepskin products shops in the village at that time, such as Quanxinghe, Yishunhe and Xingshenglan.

According to folklore, women in the south at that time were unwilling to get married if they did not receive a leather jacket from "Xingshenglan" as a dowry.

The people of Sangpo Village have been working hard in the fur industry with the craftsmanship handed down from generation to generation. The purchase of sheepskin has gradually shifted from Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia to Australia, where the quality of sheepskin is the best.

Photo Source/Henan Youth Times

In 2007, Sangpo Village had more than 130 fur processing enterprises, processing as many as 15 million sheepskins a year. They made sheepskins imported from New Zealand and Australia into finished products and exported them to Russia, the United States, Japan and other places.

In 2007, when the annual per capita income in rural areas was only over 4,000 yuan, the monthly wages of villagers in Sangpo Village were between 2,500 and 5,000 yuan.

Because of the sheepskin, people in Sangpo Village earn a lot of money.

Success is also Xiao He, and failure is also Xiao He.

Sangpo Village imports raw sheepskin from Australia, which must go through more than a dozen processes to tan mature hides. This process consumes hundreds of kilograms of water, and many chemicals must be added to it.

Source / "Great Manufacturing"

Every year, tens of millions of sheepskins are processed in Sangpo Village, which brings considerable benefits to the villagers and also plunges the village into a huge pollution storm.

People in the nearby villages often say: As long as you see broken sheepskin on the ground and smell the smell of sheep, you will know that you are in Sangpo Village.

In 2009, CCTV Zhaowen Tianxia exposed the pollution situation of Sangpo Village in the program: the river water was black and smelly everywhere, and the smell was almost suffocating when walking on the bank. These rushing sewage will eventually flow into Yellow River more than ten kilometers away.

Under the urging of various parties, Sangpo Village built a sewage treatment plant, but more than 100 enterprises in the village rely on only one sewage treatment plant to improve the situation, which is tantamount to a drop in the bucket.

Photo source/Henan Youth Times

Over the past few years, in order to control the amount of pollutants discharged, enterprises have repeatedly shut down, and the fur production value of Sangpo Village has dropped sharply.

In 2018, 135 fur enterprises in Sangpo Village were ordered to suspend work for rectification. In the whole village, only 19 enterprises remained in normal operation. The annual output value dropped from the peak of 2.5 billion yuan to 1.5 billion yuan. The famous "Chinese leather capital" is precarious.


02

Earning 2 million a year is not a legend

During the years of environmental pollution control, Sangpo Village had a hard time. A batch of leather washing factories were closed one after another, and many people simply switched jobs and started other livelihoods.

Lao Bai did not give up the craftsmanship left by his ancestors, and began to take orders from some leather shoe factories to make, barely maintaining.

Around 2008, a friend gave Lao Bai a pair of "ugly" fur boots, saying that the shoes could sell for one or two thousand pairs. That is the shoes produced by Longfeng Fur Company for the snow boot 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.

So far, the name of 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 foundry of UGG Australia - the secret spread.

Since 2018, many outsiders have appeared in the village. Most of them wanted to get the UGG Australia snow boots produced by Longfeng, but they returned empty-handed. Therefore, purchasing agents have set their sights on the snow boot workshop and shoe store in Sangpo Village, which also guarantee genuine leather and are also of high quality and low price.

Picture source/"Great Manufacturing"

At that time, for the villagers of Sangpo Village whose 135 enterprises had been shut down and were looking for a new way out, snow boots were a hot item. People picked up the craftsmanship left by their ancestors one after another, and a large number of snow boot workshops appeared in the village.

"Ordinary wool slippers cost less than 70 yuan, and the current popular snow boots cost one or two hundred yuan depending on the complexity of the workmanship." Most of the snow boots taken from Sangpo Village are priced at 300-400 yuan Yuan, there are not a few people who can earn tens of thousands of dollars in one shipment.

The fame of the snow boots in Sangpo Village has spread all over the country under the influence of purchasing agents.

Source / TMT new observation

202In 2000, the number of physical stores selling shoes in Sangpo Village soared from the initial dozen to more than 1,000, and it has long become the open source of snow boots in the purchasing circle.

There are many snow boot workshops behind each store. There are dozens of different snow boots in the store, most of which are imitation UGG styles. Many stores directly hang "UGG" on the shelves On the LED screen in the store, the snow boots of many merchants are even nailed with the UGG logo.

“我们这边没有假UGG,都是真的。你可以直接告诉客户就是桑坡UGG。”

“官方用什么料,我们就用什么料。”

图源/UGG旗舰店

到了2020年底, the number of snow boot shops in Sangpo Village is approaching 2,000, and almost every household is engaged in the business of snow boots. Most of the shops also have online stores at the same time. After one year, the output value of e-commerce alone exceeded 1.6 billion Yuan.

Mr. Li, a local businessman, also followed the opportunity and opened a fur shop with the tens of thousands of dollars he had saved before. At the beginning, I also supplied goods to purchasing agents from all over the country. Then I thought, why not sell them myself?

While running his main business, Mr. Li also started his micro-business career online in the rest of his time. The result was unexpected. In 2020 alone, Mr. Li made a net profit of 2 million!

The speed at which fur products in Sangpo Village make money broke history.


03

The global epidemic is raging, but it does not affect Sangpo Village at all, but brings more 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 started to enter the peak season in September. Now, there are businesses in the village every day, and the fire is still brightly lit at 10 o'clock in the evening. Merchants are busy packing their goods, and express tricycles surround the entire street.

Photo Source/International Brand Observation

The hotels in the village are always full of customers. The price has increased from 100 to 200 yuan a night before to 300 to 600 yuan, but there are still some purchasing agents who cannot book a room and have to return on the same day.

When the trend of live streaming hits, Sangpo Village built a "Internet Celebrity Live Streaming E-Commerce Center" on the side of the bustling shopping mall, for the anchors to live broadcast all night long.

Photo Source/Ninth Avenue

Although Sangpo Village is very popular now, there is a lot of thunder behind it— The brand problem has always existed. At the moment when intellectual property rights are becoming more stringent, Sangpo Village urgently needs to change.

In recent years, many local companies have begun to explore their own snow boot brands, such as Big Brother Longfeng, whose official website displays many snow boot products of its own brand.

Picture source/Longfeng official website

The Li family, who has been in the fur business for a long time, also opened a Taobao store two years ago. Li Shuangshuang specially hired designers to build his own brand. After a difficult start, the new brand of snow boots was launched Famous halls are also slowly being sold online. On Double 11 in 2019, 10,000 pairs of shoes in the store were sold out in an instant.

Li Shuanghuan said: "Now that someone asks me to buy UGG, I will give them the boots I designed."

Source/Seller

In August 2020, the Mengzhou Municipal Government vigorously built Sangpo Village, registered "Sangpo·Memory" with the logo "SS", and connected with e-commerce platforms such as Tmall , Jingdong , Pinduoduo, etc. It can be seen that the propaganda is strong.

"This is our own domestic product, and the quality is not inferior to international brands." This is what Li Shuanghuan often says to customers.

I think this is what people in Sangpo Village most want to tell the world.


Super Rural Research Institute
Sangpo Village Comprehensive score:

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Reference materials:

[1] Eat 80% of Australia's sheepskin, challenge the international big UGG, how does Henan Xiaocun counterattack?

[2] "The No. 1 Village of Snow Boots": Purchasing agents and anchors "earn 50,000 to 60,000 yuan a month", and the bustling backside has transformed into a fan

[3] Why do half of your micro-businessmen in your circle of friends beg for this 6000 in Henan People's "little broken village"?

[4] After 135 factories closed down, I started a micro-business in the village, making a small profit of 2 million a year!

[5] Henan Sangpo in the year of the epidemic: the number of merchants in the village tripled to last year, over 1,500

[6] The fraud in the whole village was exposed, which is a good thing for the "UGG No. 1 Village"!

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