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Eyewear makers are feeling effects of falling orders amid global economic gloom

For those working in the sunglasses industry in Wenzhou, chances are that they do not need their company's product as they cast an eye over the latest profit forecasts. For there will be no figures on its pages that leave them dazzled; instead all they will see are gray, somber statistics that point to a dark year ahead. That bleak outlook is not limited to sunglasses makers, but stretches to all eyewear makers in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province. And many people, far and wide, are feeling the effects.

One such person is Michael Chang, 51, chief executive officer of Icon Eyewear Inc, a New Jersey company that is one of the largest private label suppliers of eyewear in North America. His orders from Wenzhou will be cut because of the depressed market, he says.

Chang, a Korean-American, founded Icon Eyewear in 1987. Now it employs 680 people and had a turnover of $80 million (61 million euros) last year.

Every year Chang spends about two weeks in Wenzhou looking for suitable manufacturers for his brands, something he has done since he began working with companies in Wenzhou in 1994.

"Wenzhou spectacles makers are major manufacturers for my products. But our major market is Europe, which is greatly affected by the economic crisis, so my orders have to decrease by about 20 percent compared with 2011," Chang says.

Chang's gloomy forecast is backed up by Wu Jianmin, president of Wenzhou Spectacles Industrial Association, who says spectacles makers' exports are in for a sharp fall this year.

Last year the total value of their exports was 7 billion yuan ($1.1 billion, 854 million euros), the Wenzhou Bureau of Commerce says. The city's spectacles exports account for almost one-third of that of the whole nation, the China Optometric and Optical Association says.

The bulk of those exports go to Europe and the US.

"The global economy is still reeling. As far as I know, many eyeglasses manufacturers are getting far fewer orders compared with the same period last year," Wu says.

With others, he has recently been busy working on ways to arrest the declining exports of Wenzhou optics.

On his desk lie various documents that lay the problem bare.

According to a Wenzhou Spectacles Industrial Association report issued last month, exports of Wenzhou spectacle manufacturers fell to $300 million from October to December, a year-on-year decrease of 12 percent.

In Lucheng Light Industrial Production Park, a local spectacles production hub, many companies' workshops have been closed for more than six months. The machines in many plants lie under thick coats of dust. Fluttering in the wind are a few banners with the legend "Strive to make more high-quality products" that were made to spur workers on at a time not long ago when manufacturing industry there basked in the sunshine.

Dongou Optics Co Ltd is one of the few companies in the park that is still operating, and was back into full swing soon after the Spring Festival.

Dongou, founded in 1993, employs about 350 people and had sales revenue of 30 million yuan last year.

Chen Xueyue, 28, general manager of Dongou Optics, does not hide the concerns she has about the industry's performance this year.

"The export business has never been so bad. And since the global market is still gloomy, many local manufacturers have had to lay off people to reduce costs to survive," says Chen, also president of Wenzhou Tengyuan Trade Co Ltd, which specializes in spectacles for the world market.

Zhou Jinghe, vice-secretary-general of Wenzhou Spectacles Industrial Association, says the bleak period that spectacles makers in Wenzhou will go through over the next two or three years will be worse than 2008, when the global financial crisis started.

"Exports will fall by about 20 percent this year, and almost one-fifth of the spectacles makers will go bankrupt within two years because of the fierce competition and bleak global market."