Suzhou, in the manor of the headquarters of Su Qin Textile Company, many senior managers from Su Qin Company gathered together, not only members of the Qin family, but also several senior managers invited by them with high salaries.

One of them, a middle-aged man in his forties wearing a scribe's robe, was pointing to the design on the drawing board on the left side and introduced: "This is the design we commissioned from Dangtu Machinery Company with a large sum of money."

A water-powered loom uses water power. The production efficiency of this water-powered loom can be forty times that of a manual loom."

"With the production efficiency of hydrodynamic spinning machines, we can obtain dozens of times more cloth production capacity than before with the same investment."

"However, according to our early experiments, the cloth woven by the hydrodynamic loom is stronger. This is because the cotton yarn spun by the matching hydrodynamic spinning machine is stronger and thicker, so the texture cannot be compared with today's.

Compared with the cotton yarn woven by artificial spinning machines, the cloth woven can only be made into coarse cloth."

"The market acceptance of selling these coarse cloths in this way in the future requires further research!"

"However, mechanical production is the big trend in the future."

"In the past year, the salary levels of skilled weavers and spinners have increased. Now too much money has been invested in the textile industry, and the competition is becoming more and more intense. We must not follow the market and adopt price reduction measures. At the same time, in order to stabilize sales channels

We also gave a lot of profit concessions. As a result, our ex-factory price has dropped by a full 30% compared to three years ago."

"However, the costs in all aspects have not decreased, but have increased. Due to the boom in the textile industry, the supply of cotton on the market has become increasingly tight. In order to stabilize the supply of cotton, we have to increase the purchase price.

."

"In the market, textile factories are now common in various places. When our products entered the markets in various places, they were greatly attacked. Although our products are cheaper in terms of production cost, the freight is unavoidable.

Ring, when it comes to terminal sales, it is difficult to compete with the products of local textile manufacturers."

"Selling prices have dropped, profit margins have increased, raw material prices have increased, and market expansion has been under attack. All of these have led to a further decline in our profits. According to our predictions, by next year, the gross profit margin may not be maintained at 30%. As for net profit

It’s even lower!”

"We need to continue to build sales channels, spend more manpower and material resources to open up raw material procurement channels, and continue to invest in the research and development of new machines, etc. In addition, our scale is getting larger and larger, and financial and administrative costs are also increasing!"

"If we continue like this, I'm afraid we will face the possibility of losses in five years!"

"In order to curb cost increases and further reduce production costs, the use of hydrodynamic spinning machines and even looms is a major trend in the future and is imperative."

"This is not only true for the spinning industry, but also for weaving and even printing and dyeing!"

However, some people have doubts: "I have also learned about hydrodynamic spinning machines and looms. The cost of these things is not low, and it can even be said to be extremely expensive."

"The cost of building a water-powered textile mill is so high, but the output is the lowest-end coarse cloth. When will we recoup our investment if this continues?"

"Also, can the coarse cloth produced by water-powered machinery really be sold if its quality is so poor?"

——

Due to the explosion and competition in the textile industry in recent years, Su Qin Textile Company has set its sights on hydropower in order to reverse the situation, continue to expand the market, and secure its position as the largest textile company in the country.

The second largest textile company in the country and the most powerful textile company in the former empire, Hantian Textile Company, is no exception. It is also preparing to launch a water-powered textile factory project

Just as Su Qin Textile Company summarized, today's market competition is becoming more and more intense, and the pressure is also increasing. In order to survive, they are forced to constantly find ways to reduce costs and expand production.

Only in this way can we compete with the almost massive number of messy textile factories.

That's right, now whether Su Qin Textile Company or Hantian Textile Company, their biggest competitors are no longer each other, but a large number of various textile companies across the country.

In the early years, few domestic companies adopted new spinning machines, looms, and mass-produced textile factories. Therefore, at that time, the biggest competitor of Hantian Textile Company was Su Qin Textile Company.
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Of course, this is only relative. In fact, at that time, they were competing for the top spot in the country and the competition in the urban market in the Jiangnan region.

The two major textile companies are developing and growing while competing. During this process, a large number of textile workshops that failed to embrace new textile machinery in time and still remained in early workshop-style production had extremely difficult times.

A typical fight between the boss and the second child, with the third child and the hundredth child being fucked to death...

Of course, these later textile workshops did not wait to die. After a year or two of decline in the early days, they began to transform rapidly, purchasing a large number of new looms and spinning machines, and joining the new textile industry without hesitation.

In the army.

At first it was only in a few areas such as Huguang and Jiangnan, but then it quickly spread to the whole country.

Various small and medium-sized textile factories using new textile machines have sprung up like bamboo shoots after a rain. Before Hantian Textile Company and Suqin Textile Company had time to occupy most of the urban market, these small and medium-sized textile companies all over the country took advantage of it.

Taking advantage of their local advantages, they quickly seized the market.

In just a few years, the textile industry in the Chu Empire transformed overnight from early family workshops, small-scale workshops, and primitive textile machines to a textile factory model that used new textile machines and centralized production.

According to statistics from the Department of Commerce of the Ministry of Industry, as of January of the eighth year of Chengshun, the Chu Empire had more than 3,000 large and small factories engaged in the textile industry.

Most of these factories have dozens or even dozens of employees. They are said to be factories, but in fact they are still family workshops. They are just registered in accordance with the company law.

There are not many medium-sized factories with hundreds of people, and large factories with thousands of people are even rarer.

However, these small workshops with only a dozen or even more than a dozen people have become the biggest competitors of Hantian Textile Company and Su Qin Textile Company.

In the past, when they were still using old looms, the cost of the homespun cloth they produced was high and could not be compared with the cost of new looms and spinning machines.

However, when these small workshops began to use new looms and spinning machines, their production efficiency also increased significantly.

Although large factories still have some advantages in production costs, they lack local advantages. If freight is included, the cost of transporting seemingly cheap cloth from large factories to a certain place for sale may not be more than a dozen or so in the local area.

Personal small workshop...

This makes large textile companies such as Suqin Textile Company and Hantian Textile Company very embarrassed!

If you want to talk about production costs and ex-factory prices, they are indeed cheaper...

But there are still transportation costs. If the distance is farther, the freight may exceed the production cost.

Therefore, the textile industry in the Great Chu Empire has been booming in the past two years. Various textile factories have popped up. The officials are naturally very happy. After all, the officials do not care about the life or death of individual enterprises. What they care about is the overall development of the textile industry.

.

The overall development of the textile industry is what they are happy to see, and is even the result of their years of support and encouragement.

But for large textile companies represented by Su Qin Textile Company, this market environment is not so friendly.

Shipping costs are a stumbling block and cannot be solved at all.

Unless they invest in building factories in many places, the centralized production cost advantage of large factories will be gone.

For this reason, they are trying to compete in the markets of many small places by continuing to reduce costs.

Directly lowering the cost of cloth to the point where it is beyond the reach of those small factories, then it will be cheaper than them after adding in freight.

To achieve this, it is impossible to achieve with the current production efficiency, but water-powered machinery is different.

The production efficiency of hydraulic machinery far exceeds that of manual production!

A few years ago, when the new spinning machines first came out, the manual spinning machine operated by one worker could only barely produce eight yarns at the same time.

Later, continuous improvement allowed the production of sixteen, thirty-two or even sixty-four cotton threads.

However, when the hydrodynamic spinning machine was first developed, only the experimental model could spin more than a hundred cotton threads at the same time, let alone subsequent continuous improvements.

The same is true for looms.

The production efficiency of the so-called new looms in the early years was several times higher than before, but the production efficiency of water-powered looms was forty times higher than that of new manual looms.

This substantial increase in production line efficiency gives large textile companies the possibility to break through the current siege and continue to expand their market competitiveness.

As for the high cost of water-powered textile factories...they are not short of money.

In turn, high costs can further increase market entry barriers.

This process is very cruel. Perhaps in the future, a large number of small and medium-sized textile factories will go bankrupt because they do not have enough funds to transform.

And this is also part of industrialization!

Just like in the past few years, most family workshops closed down, and a large number of family workshop workers who spun and weaved by themselves were eventually forced to enter major textile factories.

Industrialization has always been a cruel thing.

Similar situations not only occur in the textile industry, but also in the steel industry, the pride of the Chu Empire... The official government of the Chu Empire directly invested in the establishment of a large number of small and medium-sized machinery factories, and significantly reduced the price of iron products through mechanized production, so

Almost overnight, the prices of farm implements, cooking utensils, and tools on the market plummeted across the board, falling below the price of iron materials purchased sporadically by blacksmiths...

The price of hoes produced by other machinery factories is cheaper than the price of iron materials purchased by private blacksmiths!

A large number of family-style blacksmith shops that forged and sold their own iron quickly disappeared across the land of China... Countless blacksmiths, who had no worries about food and drink in the past, lost their income. In the end, they either changed their profession or accepted recruitment from various machinery factories to join the factory, becoming a

workers...

Industrialization is always so cruel!
Chapter completed!