Threat or opportunity? China's eyeglasses industry VS economic downturn.

The global economic crisis triggered by the subprime mortgage failure in the United States are still on its way of spreading and deepening. This crisis is affecting China's industries in a an unprecedentedly harmful manner, including China's eyeglasses industry, as 70% of the eyeglasses produced in China are normally for export. Still as what the word "crisis" implies in Chinese language, crisis means both "threat" and "opportunity" which is coexsitent when facing crisis.Here are some examples of how the eyeglasses enterprises in China are reacting in the time of fierce economic slowdown. Based on the poll carried our at the end of 2008, 70% of the eyeglasses companies in China have been impacted by the financial tsunami. Many enterprises are trying to convert the threats to be opportunities. In Yuhuan, a county in Wehzhou city which is famous for its manufacturing of all types of eyeglasses accessories, companies like Dafa and Huaqiang are capitalizing the low price of copper to buy and hold for the future business expanding. In Danyang, as its glasses enterprises' dependency on export is not as heavy as that of Shenzhen's, Danyang companies are penetrating in depth the percentage share of China's local market. In Shenzhen, one company can spend only seventy to eighty thousand RMB to purchase an equipment which normally would cost six hundred thousand to one million. On this point it is a perfect opportunity for those companies that are going to expand in the time of economic meltdown.In Shanghai the Hydron contact lenses company has just spent 60 million RMB setting up another casting assembly of the world's most advance technology. With this new assembly line Hydron's production capacity will be up to 40 million pairs of contact lenses.In Xiamen, Quansheng company just imported machines from Italy to manufacture world's top quality of metal frames.In Wenzhou, the January's export of eyeglasse is about 77 million US dollars which is 20.76% more on the year-on-year basis. It is highly because of the affordable price and fair quality of the Wenzhou eyeglasses. Analysts told reporters that in the time of economic slowdown, consumers in the western countries tends to buy cheap but acceptable quality stuff instead of expensive things. The increase of eyeglasses export in Wenzhou reveals apparently that 2009 is the time of opportunity.