[Attention] More Than 70000 Children'S Down Jackets Have No Real Down

Recently, the news that "there is no real down in more than 70000 children's down jackets" attracted consumers' attention.

After wearing it for a few days, they ran away and lost the fuzz. After cutting the fabric, they found that the filler was not down. What was written on the label was not the same as what was actually written... This was a trouble some consumers encountered when buying down jackets. How can consumers identify genuine and fake down jackets if they can't read the label and inside?

Down jacket market is mixed

"A down jacket can only be called if the down content is 50% or more, and a down jacket cannot be called if the down content is less than 50%. Every 5% increase in the down content is a grade, with a maximum of 95%. The label does not indicate the down content, the down content is not an integral multiple of 5%, or exceeds 95%, which does not meet the requirements of the national standards for down clothing." Honorary President of the China Down Industry Association Yao Xiaoman, vice chairman of the International Down and Feather Bureau, told reporters.

The new national standard of Down Garments (GB/T 14272-2021) implemented from April 2022 changes the "down content" of the old standard to "down content", that is, the percentage of down in down and feather.

In the new national standard, the content of cashmere refers to the content of cashmere one by one, excluding cashmere. Fleece silk, also called fly silk, is a single pile silk that falls off from the root of the pile or hair piece. Its thermal insulation performance is relatively poor compared with that of the pile, and if it exceeds the standard, it is easy to cause the phenomenon of burring. A complete pile is in a divergent spherical state, which is conducive to air storage and means better thermal insulation. Marking down content can more intuitively show the quality of down, and it is also in line with the international market.

From the complaints and reports of some consumers, some unscrupulous businesses replace down with a mixture of fly silk, crushed wool, etc. Some are short in weight. For example, the cashmere content is marked as 90%, but actually it is less than 50%; Some malicious counterfeits are filled with fluffy cotton, polyester fiber, etc.

The reporter learned that the fake down jackets produced by some illegal businesses are neither labeled nor labeled, and they are not put on the market. They will be labeled when a dealer comes to pick up the goods, and will be shipped away immediately after processing. Once encountering the inspection of the regulatory authority, the company evades the supervision by means of a sidekick such as unmarked down jacket, no listing and sales.

According to the national supervision and spot check on the quality of down garment products reported by the State Administration of Market Supervision in January this year, 26 of 185 batches of products were unqualified.

Down raw material price is high, running cheap, and there may be no good products

"The goose down jacket with a price of 159 yuan sold 12000 pieces in one night in the live broadcast room." Now some down jackets on the market are absurdly cheap. Can they be real?

According to the statistical analysis made by the China Down Industry Association on the quotations of several high-quality down raw material enterprises in the main down producing areas in China, the price of down raw materials has risen sharply this year. Taking the white duck down with 90% down as an example, according to the national standard for down jacket, the current price per kilogram is about 510 yuan. If the filling capacity of a finished down jacket is 200 grams, the cost of down alone is 102 yuan, excluding production losses.

At present, only goose down and duck down are filled in down jackets. The output of goose down is far lower than that of duck down. The price of goose down with the same content of down is usually 1.8 times that of duck down. According to this estimate, 159 yuan goose down clothes may not even cost enough.

Down industry is an industry with goose and duck breeding by-products as the main raw materials. As the main raw material of down jacket, down price has been running at a high level since this year. At present, the output of down jacket has declined and the overall unit price has increased. According to the statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2023, the output of down garments of enterprises above designated size in China will be 82.21 million, down 23.8% year on year.

Zhu Wei, director of the Information Department of China Down Industry Association, said that from the end of 2023 to the spring of 2024, due to the cold weather, the sales of down jackets exceeded expectations, production and processing enterprises made up more orders, and the prices of down raw materials continued to rise. In particular, the proportion of down jackets filled with goose down has significantly increased, leading to a surge in demand for goose down, resulting in a shortage of supply in the market and driving the price of goose down to a record high.

From the perspective of the cost price of down raw materials, if the price of down jacket is too low, fake and inferior fillers may be used, containing un sterilized waste feathers or chemicals, which may easily lead to skin allergies, respiratory diseases, and potential health hazards. Consumers should not covet cheap purchases.

Eight Ways to Choose Down Garments

How do consumers identify genuine and fake down jackets? China Down Industry Association summarized the eight methods of purchasing down clothing.

First, check whether the product label information is complete. The label shall indicate the manufacturer, down type, down content, down filling amount, fabric material, product size and other information.

Second press: loosen and flatten the down clothing, let it recover naturally for 3 minutes, then press it with your hand, and then release your hand to see if it can rebound quickly and recover to the original state. If it can't rebound or rebound slowly, it indicates that the quality of filler material is poor; If there is no resilience at all, the filler is probably not down.

Three touch: touch and pinch with your hand to test the softness of the hand, whether there are too large and too thick long hair pieces, feather stalks, etc. If the handle is soft and there are complete small pieces of wool, it is an authentic product. If there are too large and too thick pieces of long hair, they feel soft but have poor resilience. They are soft pieces of hair rather than down. If there are short, coarse and hard feather shafts with soft handle, they are crushed hairs, and this kind of down products have no thermal insulation performance.

Four strokes: beat the down jacket hard to see if there is any dust overflow. If there is no dust spillage, it is a good product; if there is dust spillage, it is a fake filler such as crushed wool.

Five kneading: knead the down jacket with both hands to see if there is any fuzz coming out. If there is fuzz drilling out, it means that the fabric used is not pile proof.

Six smells: take a deep breath several times with your nose close to the down jacket, and then compare it with the general fabric to see if there is any odor or foul smell.

Seven: weigh the weight of the down garment with your hand, and look at the size of the volume. The lighter the weight, the bigger the volume is. The down jacket with more than 70% down content has a volume more than twice that of cotton with the same weight.

Eight trials: When purchasing down jackets, you must try them on. Pay attention to the moderate size of the chest circumference. Only when you feel neither tight nor loose, can you wear them properly. Only such down jackets can achieve the best warmth preservation effect.

(Source: Xinhuanet)