Wardrobe industry: design talent is the key to the gap between domestic and foreign designers

At present, domestic wardrobe enterprises are mostly similar, lacking creativity, and mostly imitating. Moreover, China's wardrobe manufacturing industry has high output value and low added value. Most of the export products are produced by OEM, which means that few Chinese brands sell directly to foreign countries. In the face of fierce market competition, the domestic market has carried out price wars again, and foreign markets rely on low-cost comparative advantages have been struggling. The breakthrough point of the wardrobe industry is in design, and a large number of high-quality wardrobe design talents entering the wardrobe manufacturing enterprises is the key to the sustained and rapid development of the wardrobe industry.

Talent structure has not formed an echelon

Although many wardrobe companies have realized the importance of hiring designers, even if they are paying high salaries, they may not be able to get satisfied designers. According to incomplete statistics, there are currently more than 30,000 wardrobe enterprises in China, and there are fewer than 3,000 designers. In other words, there is only one designer for every 10 wardrobe companies. The number of wardrobe designers does not say the gap in the number of designers, the level of disparity of designers is also large, mature designers such as "French", more is only a "drawing staff" who can only do simple imitation, drawing work. Overall, the level of talent in the wardrobe design industry is limited, and there is no good “echelon structure”.

Domestic and foreign wardrobe designers have a big gap

Foreign designers come to grab the rice bowl. When talking about the design level of domestic designers, Shi Yan, manager of the planning department of Beijing Qumei Wardrobe Co., Ltd., believes that compared with foreign designers, most domestic designers are pursuing design concepts and individualized pursuits. And there is a certain gap in product innovation, which is the main reason for the difficulty in breaking through the design of our wardrobe. Therefore, many domestic large-scale wardrobe manufacturing companies have hired foreign experts with high salaries. For the current situation of foreign designers to grab their jobs, Shi Yan said that many companies hire foreign talents to make up for the lack of domestic excellent designers.

The employment of talent is not optimistic. According to people from the Beijing Wardrobe Association, the institutions that cultivate wardrobe design talents in China have been growing. At present, in addition to the Beijing Forestry University, Northeast Forestry University and other forestry colleges and universities to open a furniture design profession, Guangdong, Zhejiang, these large-scale wardrobe production colleges focus on cultivating furniture designers, and many training institutions in the society have also opened relevant Training Courses. It can be said that the number of furniture design talents cultivated by the community in the past two years has increased geometrically. But at present, except for the employment of graduates from a few colleges and universities, most people find it difficult to find a suitable job after completing the furniture design.

Analysis of the reasons, Chen Baoguang believes that, first of all, because the domestic wardrobe production company is mainly small and medium-sized enterprises, most enterprises do not have the concept of wardrobe design, think that it is better to hire a designer to design products, rather than the wardrobe in the foreign wardrobe store. The drawings are taken back to the factory for copy production, which can reduce costs. Secondly, many institutions often only focus on the basic skills when educating the trainees. They do not explore the cultural heritage of the wardrobe design, which leads to the cultivation of the wardrobe design talents can only be drawn. Design, so employment is difficult.

Source: China Wardrobe