Cao County in Heze, Shandong Province, is located at the junction of the four provinces of Shandong, Suzhou, Henan and Anhui. Last year, Caoxian Hanfu’s online sales reached 7.215 billion yuan, accounting for 40% of the country’s market share. Netizens jokingly called Caoxian the “center of the universe.” Behind the Hanfu industry, what are the secrets to getting rich in Cao County? What are the combined forces behind the popularity of “the first dress in spring”?
Search volume for Hanfu has skyrocketed since January this year
The horse-faced skirt has become the most popular item in the Hanfu category
In an e-commerce live broadcast room, two anchors skillfully introduced the store's horse-faced skirts. Since January this year, the number of searches for Hanfu has skyrocketed. Among them, the horse-faced skirt has become the most popular item in the Hanfu category.
A Hanfu manufacturer in Caoxian County saw business opportunities and launched dozens of horse-faced skirt suits with dragon elements during the Spring Festival. In just two months, sales exceeded 30,000 sets.
Yao Chixing, the general manager of the company, was initially worried about not being able to sell the product. Once the product went online, her concern became "overselling." "With the surge in demand, we shut down sales at a certain point every day and didn't dare to start broadcasting again. The workshop is already producing non-stop."
After the Spring Festival, Yao Chixing's "happiness troubles" continue. She originally thought that the popularity of Hanfu would drop after the Chinese New Year, but what she didn’t expect was that product sales continued to grow.
△Yao Chixing
Yao Chixing from 2I started to contact e-commerce in 2014. At that time, the store mainly sold Caoxian’s local products, wood carvings, etc., and later I changed my career and started making Hanfu.
Yao Chixing introduced that he started operating Hanfu short videos in 2016. “At that time, we had seen the development trend of performance costumes and Hanfu in Caoxian County, and we hoped to drive the development of this industry through short video operations.”
In 2019, they filmed a mini-drama with the theme of Hanfu. In 2021, they officially integrated resources. In 2023, they invested 5.6 billion yuan in the integration of production, design, and processing, and started making Hanfu in an industrial park with an area of 130 acres.
"Little Yao" who took photos and retouched pictures ten years ago caught up with short videos, micro dramas, and most importantly, Hanfu, and became "Mr. Yao" smoothly.
The company's overall plan for the 130 acres of land is centered around e-commerce and Hanfu. Building 2 among the 6 buildings is specially used as a display area, displaying more than 4,000 types of Hanfu produced by various companies in Cao County. Next to it are more than a dozen enclosed Studio. Yao Chixing said that now she not only sells her company's goods through live broadcasts, but also builds a platform to "bring goods" to other companies.
Laying rural roads and transforming rural optical fiber broadband
Cao County boosts the development of Taobao industry
In 2013, a third-party organization announced the first batch of 13 "Taobao Villages" in Daji Town, Cao County.Occupied two seats. E-commerce has long been integrated into the development pulse of the county. When did the rhythm of the pulse change?
Zhang Longfei, director of the Cao County E-commerce Service Center, recalled that around 2020, many manufacturers switched from making performance clothes to Hanfu. "With the influence of national trends and costume dramas, the Hanfu industry in Caoxian County is getting bigger and bigger, and performance costume manufacturers in Caoxian County have begun to produce Hanfu. In 2023, the literary and art market heated up, and Caoxian Hanfu began to experience a spurt of growth."
The e-commerce platform has made Caoxian a success, but to get this "achievement", Caoxian must first make a success of itself.
In Daji Town, since 2013, the town government has coordinated with the transportation, communications, power supply and other departments to lay, repair, and widen rural roads for Taobao Village; it has transformed rural optical fiber broadband, greatly improved the Internet speed, and also specially set up high-power transformers for Taobao Village. , to solve the power shortage problem caused by the increase in offline processing enterprises and the increase in high-power electrical appliances; Daji Town even established a Taobao Industry Development Leading Group. Later, this leading group developed into the Cao County and Daji Town E-commerce Offices.
Yao Chixing lamented that he also grew up step by step with the support of the e-commerce office. They need e-commerce talents, and the e-commerce office will provide them with e-commerce talents from the school. They need experts and scholars to help improve the format and layout, and the e-commerce office will help introduce resources.
Perhaps because of the unreserved help he received, Yao Chixing, whose business has grown today, also wants to do his part for those who come after him. In her live broadcast room, in addition to bringing goods, she often also popularizes knowledge about Hanfu. For this industry, letting everyone understand Hanfu is obviously more important than selling one more skirt.
As of now, there are 2,282 Hanfu companies in Cao County and nearly 14,000 online stores. In 2023, Hanfu’s online sales will exceed 7.2 billion yuan.
Not only that, Caoxian Hanfu, as a "national trend" product, is gradually moving from the domestic market to overseas. In mid-January, Yao Chixing's company received the first batch of more than 100 sets of overseas orders from the UK, and the designs of horse-faced skirts overseas have also been adjusted. "Because foreign customers have relatively tall figures, we designed horse-faced skirts with seven, eight, or nine pleats."
As the Spring Festival arrives, Yao Chixing has experienced the heat of midsummer. The phones that keep ringing are either "urging business" or wanting to come and visit. In the production workshop, the sewing machines are non-stop, rushing to make orders from all over the world.
For Yao Chixing, Hanfu is not only a business, but also a career; she also believes that the popularity of Hanfu extends beyond the present and has unlimited space in the future. "What we want to do in the future is to integrate the horse-face skirt into life and make the horse-face skirt become everyone's daily clothing."
