According to Mr Jean-Pierre Mocho, the chairman of French Women Apparel Association and the French Garment Industry League, French garment industry will strengthen garment export to China.
Mocho, just participated in the Paris Clothing Exhibition opened on September 1, (Pr t Porter Paris,40000 visitors, 40% from the rest of the world), says that in the face of French domestic apparel market s downturn and the large number of Chinese apparel import (after resetting of quotas, despite Chinese apparel import reduced by 2% to 1.2 billion euros, but at the same time the growth of import from Hong Kong increased by 127%!), the future of French clothing industry is to strengthen export and expand foreign markets. Firstly, to strengthen and consolidate the existing but not so good markets, such as the United States and Japanese markets; on the other hand, to develop new markets, such as Russia and China, while European countries has been the main garment export market. The first quarter of 2006, export of clothing to the United States increased by 5%, while the rate to Japan declined by 7%. President Mocho points out that France is only the 14th importer to Chinese clothing market, even behind Norway, France still needs to do a lot of intensive work on Chinese market.
French garment export of the first quarter in 2006 was rather heartening. As the most important sector in French garment, French ladies garment s export grew by 12.6%, while import grew by only 7%. During the first six months of this year, French export of garment reached 3.29 billion euros, a 6% increase over the same period in 2005, while import was still 6.655 billion euros.
According to statistic, there are currently 5,000 garment enterprises in France, total annual turnover achieves 10 billion euros, of which 30% is acquired by export.
