During the Qingming Festival that just passed, among the people going out for an outing, young people wearing Hanfu could always be seen, becoming a scene in the spring. At the beginning of the New Year in 2024, the horse-faced skirt, as the "Year of the Dragon jersey", put Hanfu in Caoxian County, Shandong Province on the hot search list.
In recent years, Cao County, located in southwest Shandong, has vigorously developed the Hanfu industry and has now formed a complete industrial chain. Sales account for half of the national Hanfu market. In 2023, Hanfu sales reached 7.215 billion yuan. Why can Cao County, which has "mediocre" resource endowments, become so popular with its Hanfu?
The old path of the Yellow River is blowing the "Hanfu style"
Cao County has a total population of 1.75 million, making it the most populous county in Shandong. For a long time, Cao County, which is located on the old course of the Yellow River, has been labeled as an "economic lowland", "poor county" and "major labor export county". It is popular in the local area to describe Caoxian County as "three excesses" - there are many bachelors, many elderly people, and many left-behind children.
At the turn of the century, the "photo studio style" and "theater style" spread to Caoxian County, and local people began to produce studio clothing and costumes during the slack season. Although there was a certain market, it was not successful due to scattered customers and small demand. After the rise of the e-commerce economy, local villagers began to sell clothing through online channels and connect with OEM customers. Cao County gradually developed into the largest performance clothing processing base in the country.
In recent years, as the popularity of Hanfu culture has continued to rise, many businesses in Cao County saw the opportunity, quickly transformed, and began to mass-produce Hanfu. After more than 10 years of development, Caoxian County now has 2,282 Hanfu upstream and downstream enterprises, 13,989 online stores, 1,084 printing machines, 3,758 embroidery machines, and nearly 100,000 Hanfu practitioners. It has achieved industrial clustering within 5 kilometers. A complete industrial chain and brand incubation system have been formed.
According to Liu Xia, deputy director of the Caoxian E-commerce Service Center, if one industry prospers, all industries will prosper. Logistics, beauty and other related industries have also benefited from the development of the Hanfu industry. In the first two months of 2024, the number of Hanfu packages shipped by the Caoxian E-commerce Logistics Public Service Center exceeded 8 million. Since the center opened in 2021, Caoxian's e-commerce express parcel volume has grown at an average annual rate of over 40%.
If the company wants to develop and employees have needs, trade union services will follow up in a timely manner. The Cao County Federation of Trade Unions actively follows the development of local e-commerce and Hanfu industries. 12 e-commerce companies such as Daji Town Taobao Industrial Park and Ultimate Life Technology Co., Ltd. have successively established trade union organizations and actively explored the "e-commerce + trade union" development model to provide local services. The development of the Hanfu industry has contributed to the development of the trade union.
From "returning capable people" to skilled talents
“The Hanfu industry in Caoxian County has potential. I hope to use the short video platform to contribute to the development of this industry.Show more fire. " said Yao Chixing, general manager of Luo Ruyan Original Hanfu in Caoxian County.
Yao Chixing started the Hanfu business in 2015, and soon after starting the business, he opened a short video account featuring Hanfu exhibitions and sales. In 2019, Yao Chixing's company filmed a short drama with the theme of Hanfu, which attracted a lot of attention. Now, he has built an industrial park covering an area of 130 acres for e-commerce and Hanfu business. This industrial park not only sells his company's goods through live broadcast, but also creates a platform to "bring goods" to other companies. "Letting everyone have a deeper understanding of Hanfu is more important than selling one more skirt." Yao Chixing said.
In Caoxian County, the popularity of the Hanfu industry has attracted many young people with high education and rich entrepreneurial experience to return to their hometowns to start businesses, providing effective force for the continuous upgrading of the Hanfu industry in Caoxian County.
Hu Chunqing is a doctorate in materials processing from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Dalian University of Technology. In his view, one of the key words for the booming Hanfu industry in Cao County is "high cost performance."
"We want to make 'Hanfu that everyone can afford', ensuring that the price is affordable, while also pursuing good materials and craftsmanship," Hu Chunqing said.
In 2022, the Caoxian Hanfu Association was established, with Hu Chunqing serving as the president. He believes that the association can not only help coordinate government policies and exchange development trends of the Hanfu industry, but also promote the exchange of information between enterprises and help them solve problems in the development process, such as piracy or infringement issues. At present, Hu Chunqing and his team have also signed an AI artificial intelligence technology project with Renmin University of China, trying to use artificial intelligence technology to improve designers' R&D and design efficiency, accelerate the production and operation cycle of Hanfu enterprises, and promote the Hanfu industry to achieve a higher level of innovation. develop.
If the industry is to develop, it cannot be separated from the leadership of "capable people" and a solid foundation of industrial workers. In recent years, the Caoxian County Federation of Trade Unions has focused on the development and training of Hanfu and e-commerce talents, and selected a group of industrial talents such as Ren Qingsheng and Sun Xueping, Shandong Province model workers. In addition, the Cao County Federation of Trade Unions has increased efforts to cultivate e-commerce talents, carried out diversified and innovative vocational skills training, and built the e-commerce live salesperson skills competition into a platform to promote new careers and display new skills, providing live broadcasts for local e-commerce companies. The industry should prepare a reserve of skilled talents.
From farmers to Hanfu industry workers
The sewing machine is "smoking"! Since the Spring Festival this year, horse-faced skirts have become the top trend in Hanfu on social platforms, and Caoxian is once again out of the circle. "Orders came in in droves and the goods were sold out immediately." Liu Shenfeng, the person in charge of Caoxian Cross-Datang Chinese Clothing, said that 2023 is the fastest growing year since the company was founded, and the sales of Hanfu have increased significantly compared with 2022.
Data from the Cao County E-commerce Service Center shows that during this year’s Spring Festival, sales of clothing for the Year of the Dragon, mainly horse-faced skirts, exceeded 300 million yuan. iiMedia Research estimates that the market size is expected to reach 24.18 billion yuan in 2027.
Under the Hanfu craze, local practitioners in Cao County have become more and more popular.There are more and more people coming, and Liu Shenfeng predicts that the local Hanfu industry will at least double in 2023 compared with 2022. Liu Shenfeng believes that the rapid increase in practitioners is due to the good foundation for the development of Hanfu industry in Cao County and the complete supporting facilities for related industries.
Wei Pingan, a practitioner in the Hanfu industry, gave up his stable job in other places five years ago and returned to his hometown of Cao County to start a Hanfu business. He said: "You can make a Hanfu by walking 5 kilometers empty-handed on the fabric and accessories street. This is not so much a township as an industrial park."
"I used to work in Zhejiang and also worked in an electronics factory in Guangzhou. Later I saw that the Hanfu factory in my hometown also needed people, so I came back." Wang Li, 42, returned to Cao County from other places to work five years ago. The changes that happened to Wang Li also happened to many rural women in Cao County. The main business of Caoxian Yuanlin Clothing Co., Ltd. is to manufacture products for Hanfu online stores. According to company owner Yuan Lin, half of the employees in the factory previously made a living by farming.
The development of the e-commerce industry, which mainly features the production and sale of Hanfu, has broken the traditional concepts of local farmers, allowing them to bid farewell to agriculture and transform into workers or live broadcast practitioners. The Cao County Federation of Trade Unions timely carries out union-specific activities such as employee cultural and sports activities, craftsman appraisals, and model worker displays to villages and enterprises, creating a strong atmosphere of learning from model workers and striving to become craftsmen.
