Because his wife likes Chinese-style clothing, Wang Ming, a man from the Northeast, started a business on Alibaba, making improved dresses from the Han and Tang Dynasties. The Tmall store named "Manqingluo" is the fruit of his love with his wife.
In the seven years since he opened the store, Wang Ming has always insisted on making original products. From design to material selection, processing and packaging, everything is completed in his factory in Guangzhou. Just hiring a professional design team to study the layout would cost Wang Ming more than 80,000 yuan a month.
Han style and Tang rhyme reproduce the charm of the East. "Manqingluo", which insists on being original, has gradually developed its own style and become an industry benchmark, and has also become the target of imitation by peers. Fortunately, the launch of Alibaba’s original protection platform allows Wang Ming’s original designs, which he has worked so hard to produce, to be better protected.
There are more than 100,000 original merchants like Wang Ming on the Alibaba platform. Alibaba is also safeguarding originality through pragmatic intellectual property protection, bringing more competitiveness to China's sustainable business growth.
Promotional image of a Chinese-style dress on the Tmall flagship store page of "Manqingluo".
“Alibaba’s original protection platform allows us to avoid being ‘copied to death’”
"My wife was an art teacher and likes Hanfu, so our store specializes in making some modified Chinese-style clothing." When talking about his original intention to open the "Manqingluo" online store, Wang Ming admitted that he was influenced by his wife.
Unlike some Chinese-style clothing stores that only purchase goods at clothing stalls and sell ready-made clothes, all the clothes sold in Wang Ming's store are designed and produced by himself. Wang Ming said this was his own insistence.
"At first, my wife wanted to do a wholesale stall. She thought it would save trouble and make money quickly. I said that no matter how good the stall is, you can only be the stall proprietress. If you build your own original brand, one day you will be an entrepreneur. "Wang Ming firmly believes that originality is the core competitiveness of the apparel industry, and only by insisting on originality can we go further.
For this persistence, Wang Ming spends more than 80,000 yuan on the design team every month - pattern makers, designers, lathes, pattern cutting fabrics, etc. all cost money. The development cost of a style of Chinese-style dress is about 2,000 yuan. , Hanfu costs more than 3,000, and about 30 styles need to be changed every month. "These are real money investments."
Just because there isWith a professional team, "Manqingluo"'s improved Chinese-style dresses take into account both beauty and practicality, and gradually formed its own characteristics and style. Coupled with the strict quality control of Wang Ming's self-built factory, "Manqingluo" became more and more popular. It has won recognition from the market and consumers in many places.
Like other original businesses, piracy and plagiarism once became a headache for Wang Ming.
"Many Chinese-style clothing stores have copied our design style. Some offline clothing stalls blatantly display counterfeit products, and some online stores even directly steal pictures." Often new products of "Manqingluo" have just been launched online. Counterfeiting appeared, which greatly affected the traffic of Wang Ming's store.
This phenomenon was completely changed last year. In August 2018, Alibaba's original protection platform was officially launched, providing all original merchants with a first-release creative protection mechanism - original merchants upload design manuscripts or pictures to the platform, and conduct electronic filing and first-release verification in the form of timestamps. If a product or idea is infringed by a copycat, you can initiate a quick removal mechanism on the platform and initiate rights protection.
Wang Ming became the first batch of merchants to settle in. He successively uploaded more than 70 original clothing related materials, which greatly alleviated the phenomenon of plagiarism and infringement, and made complaints and rights protection more smooth. “If it weren’t for the existence of Ali’s original protection platform, We may not last long before we are copied to death.”
Schematic diagram of the original design layout of the "Manqingluo" flagship store.
"I hope all platforms will pay equal attention to the issue of counterfeit goods"
Alibaba’s original intention to launch an original protection platform is to overcome the traditional model’s time-consuming and time-consuming rights certification, slow rights certification, and difficulty in predicting the effectiveness of rights protection. It hopes to support original merchants in combating copycats while also keeping up with the Internet era in quickly launching new products and pursuing hot hits. pace of.
As of June this year, more than 2,000 small and medium-sized original merchants have joined the Alibaba Original Protection Plan. All products and works of these original merchants, even if it is just a creative manuscript, can obtain an electronic "birth certificate" after going through Internet technology verification, third-party notary agency certification, electronic filing and other processes.
“Alibaba has always had an attitude of respecting knowledge and encouraging innovation, and hopes to leverage Alibaba’s technical and algorithmic capabilities through a new governance model., helping more than 100,000 original merchants on the platform operate better and achieve better protection, making the operation of original merchants simpler, more inclusive, and more creative. " said Li Xihan, director of intellectual property protection at Alibaba.
In Wang Ming’s view, just the launch of Alibaba’s original protection platform is not enough for original merchants. “The problem of piracy is more serious on some low-price online shopping platforms. On some low-price platforms other than Alibaba, There are a large number of infringing and piracy shops, but there is no way to complain and they are not dealt with at all.”
"Shops on these platforms have stolen my pictures. The products are the same from the publicity effect, but the actual quality is very different." Wang Ming explained that the reason why pirated clothing on some low-price platforms can be sold at half the price is Price sales, on the one hand, are because these stores do not spend any design costs; on the other hand, they use poor quality fabrics and simply put together garments based on copied layouts.
"I hope all platforms will take the issue of counterfeit goods seriously and the protection of originals, so that original merchants no longer have to worry about being plagiarized," Wang Ming said.
Staff in the "Manqingluo" production workshop are packing the dresses that have just been produced.
