With Chen(Intensive Employee in Faux Fur Industry)
Mr Chen is a former skilled worker at Ningbo Datong Textile Co., Ltd. where he worked for more than 8 years and witnessed many important moments in the company’s development and has a deep knowledge of faux fur industry.
The interview with Mr Chen is divided into three main sections: his experience in the industry, his assessment of the industry status and his prediction of the industry.
Mr Chen was initially a flat car worker, mainly responsible for the production of the company’s ready-to-wear samples, he has been in this position for eight years, during which time he has learned about the different processes and types of faux fur, Datong produces products that are mainly divided into four main categories (classified according to the length of the hair) covering most of the alternatives for fur animals. Now Mr Chen is the company’s technical director, involved in part of the company’s new product development and garment effect testing. In general, he is a intensive practitioner of faux fur industry.
Mr Chen gave an all-encompassing appraisal of the current state of the industry. Firstly, he emphasised that it is a volatile and growing industry, and that faux fur products have two big advantages: price and philosophy. Due to large-scale production, faux fur has a cost advantage that is unrivalled by genuine fur, while animal protectionism provides moral backing for the industry. Mr Chen mentioned that the vast majority of faux fur is also much lighter in weight compared to real one, which has won many customers for faux fur. Strangely, however, the development of faux fur has not been plain sailing, with cheapness and environmental constraints causing the industry to have its ups and downs in China. Due to publicity and cognitive reasons, in the eyes of Chinese consumers, faux fur is still not more precious than genuine fur, in such an country animal protectionism is not too prevalent, people prefer genuine one. More fatal is that Mr. Chen admitted that most of the artificial fur products have environmental pollution problems( Datong alone is currently facing dozens of fines and lawsuits related to pollution), except in recent years the application of some acrylic fibres to reverse this dilemma, but the whole industry in the field of material transformation is still a long way to go.
Talking about the industry future, Mr Chen said faux fur still has a lot to offer. Due to the continuous improvement of technology, the future of artificial fur is expected to create a more simulated and more environmentally friendly products while fur animal farming with issue of COVID-19 has accelerated atrophy. Therefore, the vacuum of the market to the faux fur industry has brought unprecedented opportunities!