1. Why study Zhejiang's leather, feather products and footwear

Place leather, fur, feather and down products and footwear on China's industrial map, and Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang together hold over 70 percent of the country's shoemaking capacity. For the first two, the story can usually be told through one core cluster: one city, one chain. Zhejiang is different. It is not one cluster but a string of specialised towns, each famous in its own right and none subordinate to the others: Wenzhou makes shoes, Haining makes leather garments, Pinghu makes down jackets and travel luggage, and Tongxiang's Chongfu makes fur. For almost every segment in this long category, Zhejiang can name a representative industrial city.

The scope needs stating first. This industry covers four parts: leather tanning, fur dressing, feather and down processing and products, and footwear. Fujian is defined by footwear alone, while Zhejiang has a stronghold in all four parts, with a clear division of labour and geographic dispersion, which is exactly why it deserves a study of its own. To study this industry in Zhejiang, one cannot fix on a single number, but must look at each city separately, and then at the model they share.

That shared model is the specialised marketplace plus the industrial cluster. Haining's China Leather City, Pinghu's China Garment City and Chongfu's fur market all began as a nationwide trading marketplace, around which thousands of supporting factories then grew. The marketplace gathers traffic, sets trends and moves volume; the factories take orders, build capacity and compete on cost. The two interlock, forming the most distinctive feature of this industry in Zhejiang. It is also what sets it apart from Fujian's brand-led clusters and Guangdong's export-led ones.

So this report does not seek a single provincial total, but follows the industrial cities of Wenzhou, Haining, Pinghu and Tongxiang, setting out clearly the segment each holds across leather, fur, down and footwear.

2. Wenzhou: the 100-billion shoe capital and its brand dilemma

Wenzhou is the largest piece of this industry in Zhejiang and a place one cannot go around to understand Chinese shoemaking. Named the China Shoe Capital in 2001, it has built a fairly complete industrial system across Lucheng, Longwan, Ouhai, Yongjia and Rui'an.

In scale, Wenzhou's shoe-and-leather industry has over 4,900 shoemakers and an output value that has passed 100 billion yuan, making it the city's second 100-billion cluster after electrical equipment. In 2024, the value added of its above-scale shoe industry was about 12.61 billion yuan, up about 6.7 percent year on year, and above-scale output value about 54.16 billion yuan, up about 6.5 percent. By capacity, Wenzhou makes about a tenth of the country's shoes and about a seventh of the world's women's shoes, a genuine heartland of women's and leather shoes.

Wenzhou is also one of the few places in this industry to produce several listed companies. Aokang listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2012, becoming the first A-share footwear company in mainland China, with Red Dragonfly later listing on the A-share market too. Kangnai, Juyi and Joyzee also came from here, forming the brand line-up of the Wenzhou shoe trade since the 1990s.

But Wenzhou's story is the opposite of Jinjiang's athletic-shoe surge. It represents the collective pressure on the traditional dress-shoe segment. As consumer preference shifted from formal leather shoes to athletic and casual footwear, the traditional listed shoemakers led by Aokang and Red Dragonfly broadly hit a growth ceiling. Aokang's 2023 revenue was about 3.086 billion yuan, up about 12 percent year on year, yet its core profit stayed under pressure thereafter. This is not the misstep of any single firm but the ebb of the whole formal-leather-shoe category amid changing demand. Wenzhou shoemaking's keyword now is therefore not expansion but digital transformation and breaking into new categories. Using the intelligent-manufacturing upgrade of leaders such as Kangnai as a model, the city is reshaping the China Shoe Capital toward a higher-end, more flexible direction, aiming at a world-class shoe cluster. What is worth watching in Wenzhou is precisely how a mature but pressured legacy shoe cluster mounts a second breakthrough.

3. Haining and Tongxiang: two marketplace cities of leather and fur

If Wenzhou represents footwear, then Haining and Tongxiang in Jiaxing represent the leather-processing and fur-dressing parts of this industry.

Haining is the China Leather Capital. Its core is the Haining China Leather City, a giant specialised marketplace with about 3.49 million square metres already in operation, among the largest and most influential leather marketplaces in the country. Around it, Haining gathers more than 7,600 leather-fashion firms and over 5,000 own brands, with annual revenue of the leather-fashion industry exceeding 50 billion yuan. Its dominance in leather garments is especially striking: it holds over 60 percent of the national leather-apparel market, over 60 percent of new leather-garment designs originate from Haining, and the popular saying that nine of every ten leather jackets in China come from Haining captures this concentration. Haining is on a path from China Leather Capital to fashion city, using the marketplace as a hub to convert scale into a say over design and trends.

Tongxiang's Chongfu holds the fur-dressing part and is the acknowledged China Fur Famous City. The Chongfu fur market trades several million pelts a year, its processing accounts for about a fifth of the world and about 60 percent of the domestic market, it gathers over ten thousand fur firms and operators, and its annual fur industrial output value approaches 20 billion yuan. That a small town south of the Yangtze can take a fifth of the world's fur dressing rests on the same density of marketplace plus cluster: the market sets orders and volume, surrounding factories take the processing, and a segment scattered elsewhere is gathered into scale at Chongfu.

Haining and Tongxiang fill in Zhejiang's weight in the front-end stages of leather tanning and fur dressing. Together with Wenzhou's footwear and Pinghu's apparel, they form a complete coverage of this industry from raw material to finished goods.

4. Pinghu: one city mastering both down apparel and travel luggage

Pinghu is the most singular city in this industry in Zhejiang: it reaches the national level in two seemingly unrelated segments at once, down jackets and travel luggage.

Take down jackets first. Pinghu is called the China Down Town; about eight of every ten down jackets in China come from here, with annual shipments of over 160 million pieces. Tellingly, Pinghu does not produce down itself; it relies on garment-making and marketplace capability. The Pinghu China Garment City has over 2,200 resident operators, drawing the country's down and fabric here to be made into garments and wholesaled out. In recent years Pinghu's down jackets have moved from pure contract work toward mid-to-high-end brands, with local products that sell abroad at considerable prices, another sample of a contract city breaking upward.

Take travel luggage next. Pinghu and the China Leather Association jointly built the China Travel Luggage Capital. It has several hundred luggage-making and supporting firms, tens of thousands of workers, and produces close to 100 million bags and cases a year. It stands out especially in wheeled travel cases, with luggage exports accounting for about a third of the national total, one of the main producing areas of China's travel-case exports.

That a county-level city can take both down jackets and travel luggage to the national level itself shows how fine the division of labour among Zhejiang's specialised towns is. Pinghu's strength lies not in one product but in mastering the garment-making and marketplace of a whole category, true of down jackets and of travel luggage alike.

5. The supply chain and the shared model: marketplaces gather, clusters take orders

Put Wenzhou, Haining, Tongxiang and Pinghu together and the supply chain of Zhejiang's leather, feather and footwear industry comes clear: upstream are the leather tanning and fur dressing of Haining and Tongxiang, supplying leather and fur; midstream is the garment, shoe and luggage capacity across the specialised towns, plus supporting shoe materials, soles, metal parts, fabric and accessories; downstream are several nationwide marketplaces that set trends, gather traffic and move volume. Raw material, processing and marketplace interlock close together within the province, forming a chain that can be assembled without leaving Zhejiang.

What truly sets this chain apart is its shared model of marketplace plus cluster. Haining's leather city, Pinghu's garment city and Chongfu's fur market each began as a market and then grew a cluster: the marketplace brings national and even global traffic and orders, concentrating trends and volume, which thousands of nearby factories then take up in a division of labour. The marketplace is the nerve centre of this industry; the factories are its muscle. This differs from Fujian's athletic-brand-led clusters and Guangdong's export-order-led ones, three different paths of growth. For this very reason, the moat of this industry in Zhejiang lies not in any single leader but in the density that marketplace and cluster have interlocked over the years: a high concentration of traffic, trends and capacity that outsiders cannot copy in a hurry.

For sales teams supplying Zhejiang's leather, fur, down and shoemaking factories with leather, fur, down, shoe materials, luggage parts, fabric and accessories, rather than asking after the thousands of firms across Wenzhou, Haining, Pinghu and Tongxiang one by one, use Tianxia Gongchang to filter prospective factory customers on the two dimensions of Zhejiang province plus the leather, fur, feather products and footwear industry, pull decision-makers' contact details in bulk, and turn customer development from looking for a needle in the sea into working from a map.

6. The Institute's observation

What is most worth remembering about Zhejiang's leather, fur, feather products and footwear industry is not any single total but its multi-core layout. Other provinces often run one city, one industry; Zhejiang has raised a representative industrial city in five directions, footwear, leather, fur, down and luggage, each with a clear division of labour and complementing the others. This is the result of decades of specialised-town economy settling, and the hardest thing about this industry in Zhejiang to copy.

Connect the cities and two parallel threads emerge. One is the Wenzhou pattern of pressure and breakthrough: as traditional formal leather shoes ebb with changing taste, legacy brands have entered a transformation phase, testing whether a mature cluster can re-innovate amid a category shift. The other is the Haining and Pinghu pattern of marketplace-led upgrading: using the hub status of a specialised market to convert scale, step by step, into a say over design, trends and brands. The first seeks change while holding ground; the second rises by riding momentum. Together the two threads decide this industry's future place.

Zhejiang's real confidence has never been the capacity of a single factory but the interlock, ground out over decades, between marketplace hubs like Haining's leather city, Pinghu's garment city and Chongfu's fur market, and the thousands of supporting factories around them that rise and fall with orders. Marketplaces will iterate, trends will change, individual brands will come and go, but as long as this mechanism of marketplaces gathering and clusters taking orders keeps running, Zhejiang's multi-core map in this industry will not loosen easily. It was built up town by town, bit by bit; it cannot be carried away, and it cannot be hurried.

Data sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (directory and industry data for Zhejiang's leather, fur, feather products and footwear factories)
  • Wenzhou Municipal Government portal (Wenzhou China Shoe Capital output value past 100 billion yuan, over 4,900 shoemakers, 2024 above-scale value added and output value, push toward a world-class shoe cluster)
  • Xinhua and Wenzhou-related reporting (Wenzhou makes about a tenth of the nation's shoes, about a seventh of the world's women's shoes, footwear exports)
  • China Leather Association (scale of Haining China Leather City, over 7,600 Haining leather-fashion firms and annual revenue, Tongxiang Chongfu China Fur Famous City, Pinghu China Travel Luggage Capital)
  • Huayi and China light-industry reporting (Haining over 60 percent of the national leather-apparel market, 60 percent of new leather-garment designs from Haining)
  • Fur Industry Network and Tongxiang reporting (Chongfu fur processing about a fifth of the world and 60 percent of the domestic market, annual fur industrial output value near 20 billion yuan, over ten thousand fur firms and operators)
  • Zhejiang News and National Business Daily and other reporting (Pinghu down-jacket annual shipments over 160 million pieces, about 80 percent of the national total, Pinghu China Garment City over 2,200 resident operators)
  • Pinghu Municipal Government portal and China Leather Association (Pinghu luggage-making and supporting firm count, near 100 million bags a year, travel luggage exports about a third of the national total)
  • Aokang International public annual report and public reporting (Aokang 2012 A-share listing, 2023 revenue about 3.086 billion yuan, Red Dragonfly A-share listing, pressure on the traditional leather-shoe category)