Clothes such as Tang Dynasty skirts and Ming Dynasty horse-faced skirts that incorporate fashion elements have become popular outside the circle, forming a new national trend among young people. What many people don't know is that the quiet revival of Hanfu's colorful clothes, this contemporary legend of "clouds think of clothes and flowers think of appearance", is connected with Cao County, Heze City, Shandong Province, the largest Hanfu production base in the country.
The rise of e-commerce "Twin Stars"
Regarding Caoxian Hanfu, a set of latest data is quite eye-catching: Caoxian Hanfu from January to September this year Sales reached 5.531 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 45.22%, a record high. The Hanfu produced in Caoxian County accounts for 40% of the national Hanfu market.
The Hanfu Industry Center of Cao County is located in Daji Town and Ancailou Town, which are more than 20 kilometers away from the county seat. People call these two towns the "Twin Stars" of the Hanfu industry.
At the Aiyuncang Hanfu Base in Ancailou Town, Cao County, female anchors walked the show wearing Hanfu. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Guo Xulei
"Cao County has a permanent population of more than 1.3 million and is one of the most populous counties in Shandong. It has a weak industrial base and was once the largest county in labor export in Shandong. More than ten years ago, Daji Town Some villagers try to produce special clothing such as studio clothing and performance clothing, and travel around to sell them. Although they have certain sales, their market share is limited," said Zhang Longfei, director of the Cao County E-commerce Service Center.
Changes stem from the rise of the e-commerce economy. In 2009, villagers put these cheap and high-quality clothes on online stores, inadvertently opening the door to the booming development of this industry. Since then, Daji Town has become the first batch of "Taobao Towns" in the country, and all 32 administrative villages have been rated as "Taobao Villages".
“It is better to go home and do Taobao when traveling around.” More and more villagers no longer go out to work and stay at home to specialize in clothing production and online sales, which in turn affects Cao County and even Heze.
E-commerce has become an important way for local rural areas to get rid of poverty and become rich, and small and micro stores, mom-and-pop online stores, small, medium and micro enterprises are developing vigorously. In 2022, the number of "Taobao Villages" and "Taobao Towns" in Heze City has grown to 541 and 93, accounting for 62.5% and 46.7% of Shandong Province respectively, ranking first among prefecture-level cities in the country.
Today, Daji Town is the largest performance costume production and sales base in the country.The neighboring town of Ancailou followed closely behind.
Making Hanfu "affordable for everyone"
For many years, the Hanfu market has been "dominated" by first- and second-tier cities with strong design and marketing capabilities. Caoxian County How did it capture 40% of the country’s share in just a few years?
The reporter learned that thanks to more than ten years of development of the performance costume industry, Cao County has formed a sophisticated and complete market division of labor based on families. Within a 5-kilometer radius of Daji Town, Ancailou Town and surrounding towns, all supporting facilities from pattern making, fabrics, tailoring, printing, sewing, and ready-made garments are gathered.
At Caoxian Chenfei Clothing Co., Ltd., staff are sewing Hanfu. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Guo Xulei
“Look for designers to cooperate through the Internet. With the design drawings, you can find all the supporting facilities locally.” Li Wenchuang, who returned to his hometown to start a business in 2017, said that he led more than 10 people The team sells Hanfu, with operating income exceeding 13 million yuan last year.
Industrial clusters in towns and villages give Cao County Hanfu its advantages of low cost and fast delivery. "This asset-light entrepreneurial model can be used by everyone as long as they dare to think and do it." Yan Deyin, one of the first batch of Hanfu operators in Ancailou Town, said that more than 10 people in his team have opened independent stores and started businesses, "which is equivalent to training In the past, Hanfu was a niche product, with a set selling for more than a thousand yuan. Nowadays, a set of Hanfu in Caoxian County costs between 100 yuan and 300 yuan, which solves the problem of students and young people "cannot afford" Hanfu.
With the influx of orders, new supporting facilities and new production capacities such as digital printing and high-speed embroidery have begun to be implemented. This year, new stores have sprung up, with more than 100 digital printing factories in Daji Town, Ancailou Town and surrounding towns alone. Currently, there are 2,186 Hanfu upstream and downstream enterprises and 12,797 online stores in Cao County, employing nearly 100,000 people.
Offline experience improves quality and efficiency
In July 2022, Bai Menghan and his partners opened the county’s first Hanfu store in Ancailou Town The experience display store covers an area of 3,000 square meters and provides centralized display and sales services for more than 200 surrounding Hanfu business entities.
“This year, Xi’an Datang Evernight City, LuoYangluoyi Ancient City and others all come to us to wholesale Hanfu. If there are no offline stores to display them together, merchants can only go door-to-door to negotiate, which is very inefficient. "Bai Menghan is planning to open stores in Zhengzhou, Luoyang, Xi'an, Shanghai and other cities to bring Caoxian Hanfu to the front line of demand to facilitate the selection and purchase of large customers.
Hao Chaoliang, Secretary of the Party Committee of Ancailou Town, said , developing experience display stores is an important way for Caoxian Hanfu industry to directly face major customers across the country.
At the Youaiyuncang Hanfu base in Ancailou Town, Cao County, a female anchor is video shopping for customers to buy Hanfu. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Guo Xulei
At the same time, some larger Hanfu companies in Cao County have improved quality and efficiency by integrating the industrial chain. Yan Deyin said that they have taken half of the equity of the embroidery factory and printing factory they cooperate with, "By integrating all the supply chains, the workmanship quality and shipping speed can be improved."
In addition, the Cao County government invested tens of billions of yuan to build a Hanfu Industrial Park in Daji Town, encouraging companies to create their own brands and guiding the Hanfu industry to gather and grow. In order to avoid homogeneous competition, Caoxian County established the Hanfu Association to help Hanfu manufacturing companies establish cooperation mechanisms with design institutions, colleges and universities, etc., to form a diversified development path.
Faced with the strong demand for intellectual property rights in emerging industries, local relevant departments established the China Caoxian (Performance Clothing and Forest Products) Intellectual Property Rapid Rights Protection Center, shortening the patent application processing time from the traditional 180 days to 10 sky.
“Behind the rapid rise of the Hanfu industry in Cao County is the explosion of innovative potential of Chinese people with cultural confidence.” Hu Chunqing, president of the Cao County Hanfu Association, believes. (Reporters Wang Nian, Li Zhihao, Wang Yang)
