Live streaming e-commerce is bringing Caoxian Hanfu to a broader market
Maybe you don’t have a horse-faced skirt in your wardrobe, but you must have heard how popular horse-faced skirts are.
Data from the "Douyin E-commerce Women's Consumption Trend Data Report" show that in the past year, the number of orders for horse-faced skirts purchased by female users on Douyin e-commerce increased by 841% year-on-year. Since the beginning of this year, Caoxian County, Shandong Province, a place known as "China's largest Hanfu production base", has sold more than 300 million yuan of New Year's Eve clothing, mainly horse-faced skirts, during the Spring Festival. Online sales of face skirts approach 900 million yuan.
"Horse-faced skirts have become a hot-selling New Year's shirt", "Caoxian County has sold 300 million horse-faced skirts and the supply is still in short supply", "400 college students returned to Caoxian County to sell horse-faced skirts" and other hot searches. These are The topic is like a whirlwind, sweeping the entire online world.
Under this trend, many people want to go to the scene to find out.
Caoxian Railway Station
A person who "missed the business opportunity"
The first stop to Caoxian is Shandong Jizhi Life Technology Industrial Park. This is the largest Hanfu exhibition and sales base in the country. The first impression is that it is large and majestic. It covers an area of 100,000 square meters. It not only has a building specifically for taking photos and checking in, but also covers a Hanfu exhibition hall, live broadcast base, production factory, and design center. , warehousing center, logistics center and talent apartments and other supporting facilities.
Building 2 is the Caoxian Luo Ruyan Hanfu exhibition hall (referred to as "Luo Ruyan"). The 5,000-square-meter venue displays nearly 4,000 styles of Hanfu, including various horse faces. The skirt is particularly eye-catching.
Luo Ruyan Hanfu Exhibition Hall
It was here that I met Sun Ding, who was waiting in line to negotiate with Luo Ruyan.
The popularity of horse-faced skirts during the Spring Festival has brought more traffic and business opportunities to Caoxian County. "Buying a horse-faced skirt in Caoxian County" has become a choice for many people to pursue fashion and culture. Sun Ding is one of them.
Sun Ding came from Zibo and is the person in charge of a film and television company. He has several vertical accounts on Douyin and makes short videos and short movies on a daily basis. This time I came to Caoxian County to find the source of goods, open a Douyin Hanfu store, and try to sell goods on behalf of others.
In fact, as early as October last year, Sun Ding realized the potential market potential of Hanfu. It was during the Pingyao International Film Festival. He noticed that there used to be only a few Hanfu photography studios in the ancient city, but last year such small shops had sprouted everywhere, with "more than two hundred opened."
He was very curious. Previously, Hanfu had been monopolized by southern cities such as Guangzhou, Chengdu, and Hangzhou for a long time, and the price was relatively expensive. When did it become so popular in the north?
There are many Hanfu enthusiasts born after 1995. They have been exposed to Hanfu since ten years ago, and most of the Hanfu brands they understand and buy come from the south. The purchasing channels at that time were also relatively single. Many Hanfu enthusiasts needed to buy their favorite fabrics and find a familiar tailor to make them after being recommended by their colleagues. They then paid a deposit first and described the desired style to the tailor before proceeding. Patterning and production, sometimes the pattern is wrong and you need to re-pattern and make it again.
“This way the construction period will not vary. If it is fast, it will be two or three months, if it is long, it may be a year, so in the early days, there may be situations where the top order is gone.” Sensen said, and another On the one hand, because there are few merchants and small rations, the cost is high and the price is relatively expensive. Therefore, some Hanfu enthusiasts will buy a more expensive set and then sell it on second-hand platforms after wearing it. After all, the wear rate is not high, and the discount will not be much. Sensen's first set of Hanfu was bought from a second-hand platform and cost 800 yuan.
Nowadays, there are more and more Hanfu fans. Relevant data shows that the number of Hanfu fans has expanded more than 30 times in 10 years, reaching 9.981 million in 2023. Especially empowered by short videos, the people in the camera brought Hanfu from the cloud of traditional culture into the daily lives of ordinary people. Hanfu gradually broke through the stereotypes of costumes, kimonos, and fancy clothes, and people discovered that everyone actually It can be worn anytime, anywhere.
Sensen
Cao County has added fuel to the development of the Hanfu industry. Caoxian County has the largest performance costume processing industry in China. Starting from 2019, with the promotion of Hanfu culture in film and television costume dramas and short videos, Caoxian County began to mass-produce Hanfu. By 2023, Caoxian Hanfu sales will exceed 7 billion yuan, accounting for about 40% of the national Hanfu market.
“Now the price of Hanfu has come down, and you can buy a very good one for one or two hundred, which was hard to imagine before.” Sensen said that in recent years, the Hanfu market has gradually matured. More and more KOLs are promoting themselves by wearing Hanfu. Hanfu-related videos on Douyin often reach millions of likes, especially Hanfu cross-dressing videos. The stunning effect has greatly expanded the audience of Hanfu. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Sensen Tsushima skirt - a relatively mature style in Hanfu and versatile for daily use - can become popular.
And this fire was also successfully "ignited" on Sun Ding, but because he was slow to respond to the market, he failed to catch up with the craze of the Spring Festival in the Year of the Dragon. "I missed a business opportunity."
"Caoxian County should be given a reward"
Sun Ding, who "missed the business opportunity", made a special trip to Caoxian County to buy Hanfu. Luo Ruyan was his initial target store.
Yao Chixing is Luo Ruyan’s proprietress. She was born in 1990 and has been engaged in the Hanfu industry for 12 years. In 2012, Yao Chixing married her husband Li Zilei, who had returned from studying in Japan. At that time, she was engaged in selling traditional wood carving handicrafts and had a strong interest in traditional culture. She also liked to wear Chinese tops and cheongsam in her daily life. Once, Li Zilei talked about his experience in Japan. During holidays, people wearing kimonos can be seen on the streets of Japan. He felt that this way of wearing cultural confidence on the body was particularly good. Why do Chinese people wear traditional clothes? What if you can’t go into daily life?
At that time, Hanfu in China had been well promoted. Especially on November 22, 2013, Hanfu enthusiasts from many places around the world took to the streets to hold events wearing Hanfu. This trend also germinated the seeds in the hearts of Li Zilei and Yao Chixing.
After several years of preparation, in 2019 Li Zilei shifted from traditional industry e-commerce to Douyin short video and live broadcast business. For the first time, he tried to sell Hanfu through short videos and live broadcasts through accounts such as "Cao County Hanfu" , which is also the first company in Caoxian County to sell Hanfu through new media.
“But I always feel like there’s still something missing.” In 2020, Li Zilei discovered that micro-drama is effective and low-cost in increasing brand awareness, so he seized the opportunity and filmed Caoxian’s first Caoxian original "Luo Ruyan", an online micro-short drama with elements of Hanfu, attempts to deeply combine "Cao County" and "Hanfu" through new media. "'Luo RuYan’ is the heroine in the play, and she is a Hanfu designer in the play. Now we treat ‘Luo Ruyan’ as our own child and give it culture. Yao Chixing said.
However, she also admitted that due to the small demand for Hanfu in the early days and not being proficient in the styles and fabrics of Hanfu, Caoxian Hanfu also experienced a period of complaints and boycotts. This This forced Hanfu merchants in Caoxian County to start transforming, looking for designers to make patterns and purchase copyrights. In recent years, many merchants have also formed their own design teams, and originality has become the mainstream of Hanfu in Caoxian County.
When did Caoxian Hanfu become popular? The first time it became popular was in 2021 when a Douyin blogger called Caoxian County "popular", and the society began to focus on the Caoxian Hanfu market. For merchants, it was 2022. p>
Yao Chixing remembers that in the early days, the industrial chain in Caoxian County was fragmented and not refined, and each industrial chain was relatively scattered, which led to the slow introduction of products into the market. Therefore, in 2021, she and Li Zilei established the earliest and largest company in the country. Youai Yuncang Cangbo Base, two years later, the base became the original Hanfu live broadcast base in Shandong Province, and settled in the Youai headquarters base in Jizhi Industrial Park, integrating Hanfu exhibition hall, supply chain, platform, anchor, logistics and other resources In one body.
Luo Ruyan’s Youai headquarters base is located in Jizhi Life Industrial Park
Soon, Luo Ruyan received the first wave of “tremendous traffic”.
In August 2022, Li Zilei saw a video on Douyin of a medical team member assisting Cao County wanting to buy Cao County Hanfu. He immediately left a message and replied, "I would like to give a set of Hanfu to all team members." "At that time, I contacted 6 people, and each person received two sets, giving away a total of 12 sets." However, this act of charity triggered a chain reaction, and more people who aided Cao expressed their desire. Finally, with the assistance of local government departments, Luo Ruyan cooperated with hundreds of Hanfu merchants in the base to produce more than 4,800 sets worth of Hanfu in one week. Caoxian Hanfu worth 500,000 yuan was given to all those who assisted Caoxian in fighting the epidemic.
This was originally a touching gift, but unexpectedly it brought more lasting rewards to myself. More than a month later, Yao Chixing clearly felt that Hanfu was "selling like crazy". Since then, she has continued to receive buyers from all over the world, most of whom are Hanfu experience stores in scenic spots. ChineseThe clothing industry seems to have been activated all of a sudden. Not only have prices increased, from the original more than 100 yuan to now there are styles available for 200, 300 or even thousands of yuan, and the patterns and styles are also updated every two or three months.
During the Spring Festival of the Year of the Dragon, Caoxian County launched the "Horse Face Skirt Craze" again. Sales of New Year's Eve clothing, mainly horse face skirts, exceeded 300 million yuan. Luo Ruyan has launched more than 1,000 styles of New Year greetings clothes, and sells them live through more than a dozen Douyin accounts. The sales of each account can be around 100,000 yuan a day, which is equivalent to making a million yuan a day.
Now Yao Chixing has created a personal Douyin account to promote horse-faced skirts and talk about Hanfu culture
Such a prosperous scene is very common throughout Caoxian County, and there is even a situation where "a dress is hard to find", and many businesses can only Reduce live broadcast time to cope with demand. According to data from the Douyin e-commerce platform, in March this year, the sales volume of Hanfu on the platform increased by 58% month-on-month and 549% year-on-year in March last year. Data from the Cao County E-commerce Service Center shows that in the first quarter of this year, sales of Hanfu in Cao County reached 1.98 billion yuan, of which online sales of horse-faced skirts were 887 million yuan.
"Anyway, Caoxian County has made Hanfu more accessible to the public. Everyone can wear Hanfu. From this perspective, Caoxian County should be given a commendation." Yao Chixing said with a smile.
From famous brand to brand
Walking on the streets of Caoxian County, what comes into view are Hanfu companies and e-commerce companies, large and small, with raw materials, design, processing and sales, here It brings together a complete Hanfu industry chain.
In an interview, Zhang Longfei, director of the Cao County E-commerce Service Center, mentioned that Cao County currently has 2,282 Hanfu companies and nearly 100,000 Hanfu practitioners. It has achieved industrial clustering within 5 kilometers, including original research and development. , design and production, copyright protection, cutting and plate making, embroidery printing, accessories, exhibitions, online marketing, after-sales service and all supporting facilities.
“We want to convey a concept to everyone, buy Hanfu in Caoxian.” Zhang Longfei said that in order to achieve this goal, Caoxian is guiding enterprises to shift from focusing on online to focusing on two-way interaction between online and offline. The so-called offline means encouraging Hanfu merchants to set up exhibit halls or actively participate in offline exhibitions.
Based on this, the Caoxian County E-commerce Service Center actively prepared for many offline activities such as the Hanfu Cultural Festival and the "National Style Hanfu Show Year". From March 28th to April 3rd, they collaborated with Douyin to The e-commerce company held the 2nd Caoxian Hanfu Cultural Festival and the 2024 Spring and Summer New Product Launch. It invited 50 local leading Hanfu companies to participate in the offline exhibition and built a huge oval T-stage in an exhibition hall of more than 3,000 square meters. Used for companies to release new products on catwalks.
Speaking of this event, Zhang Longfei was a little excited. He said that because it was the first time to hold a catwalk event, during the Douyin live broadcast a few nights ago, netizens always pointed out some problems, such as the host should not It’s not appropriate to hold a blank piece of paper, it’s not appropriate for a model to wear sneakers for a catwalk, etc. “We only solve one problem when we encounter it. The government serves the development of the entire industry, so we are not afraid that it will not be wonderful or outstanding. We believe that’ If you have one, you can reach two, if you have two, you can reach three. We have bravely taken the first step."
Data show that the exposure of Hanfu companies participating in this exhibition has increased by orders of magnitude, and the average number of stores has increased. Nearly 10,000 followers have been added, the on-site order amount has reached 51 million yuan, and there are more than 800 intention orders. It is expected to complete sales of more than 160 million yuan.
Zui Yuduo, the head merchant of horse-faced skirts in Cao County, released a new style of horse-faced skirts at the second Caoxian Hanfu Cultural Festival
Of course, with the transformation from online stores to e-commerce live broadcasts, this cultural festival also This marks that Caoxian County is leveraging the power of platforms such as Douyin e-commerce to combine traditional culture with modern business and explore a unique path for the development of the cultural industry. This also raises a new topic for local Hanfu companies: while attracting more attention and attention with the help of offline exhibitions, they must also do a good job in "online" skills. Zhang Longfei said: "I hope our leading companies can also be listed on the market, or can produce a well-known brand."
This is also a topic that Caoxian Hanfu companies are thinking about. Three kilometers away from the Caoxian e-commerce service center is the headquarters of Zui Yuduo, the top merchant in Mamianqun in Caoxian County. Last year, Zuiyuduo achieved sales of over 100 million with its horse-faced skirt as a single Hanfu category. But Cui Tianyun, the person in charge of Zuiyuduo Hanfu brand operations, said frankly: "We are not a brand yet, just a famous brand."
In his view, as a Hanfu brand, it should have its own design styleand design language. However, Zuiyuduo currently tends to cater to the market and is unable to guide the market like a real brand. "We also need to learn from the outside world." Cui Tianyun said that from the beginning, he did not dare to make horse-faced skirts because he could not solve the skirt problem. Now, the company's horse-faced skirts account for the first place in Caoxian City; from exploring online stores to transforming e-commerce Business Live Broadcast, Douyin platform sales alone account for 70% of all platform sales. He believes that companies can draw on the power of brand growth through user feedback from books, museums, Hanfu enthusiast groups and e-commerce platforms.
In two days, visiting the Hanfu exhibition hall, accessories street, and clothing processing factory in Caoxian County, you will find that the people here are naturally "hospitable" and everyone is very happy to share their entrepreneurial stories. Sun Ding said that he contacted forty or fifty Hanfu merchants, "They all want me to come to pick up goods offline or bring goods online."
A 61-year-old aunt told me that she talks to A group of sisters, with an average age of 60, were performing in a park wearing Hanfu. She said: "Every age has a pursuit of beauty, as long as they are happy."
We believe that when everyone in an industry works hard, the industry will definitely flourish and bear tangible fruits.
Before leaving, Zhang Longfei said that they had begun preparations for the third Caoxian Hanfu Culture Festival in October this year and released new autumn and winter products. At that time, a cafe will be added at the entrance of the exhibition hall to satisfy those in need. Next, we need to review the situation of cooperating with Douyin e-commerce to hold more traffic support for merchants, so as to promote Caoxian Hanfu to a broader market. "Maybe we are not doing well now, but our mood is hot."
