In the Children’s Clothing City in Zhili, Huzhou, the market trend is changing, and some keen merchants have already taken the lead and started designing Nordic-style children’s clothing.
Zhili Town is located in Wuxing District, Huzhou. It was named after the prosperity of weaving since ancient times. In the late 1970s, the local area began to develop the children’s clothing industry, and has now become a veritable “children’s clothing capital of China”. There are more than 14,000 children’s clothing companies alone, with an annual output value of more than 70 billion yuan.
▲In the domestic children’s clothing market, Zhili is truly the capital of children’s clothing. (Photography by Li Yang)
Zhili’s children’s clothing has always been focused on the domestic market, with domestic sales accounting for 90%. Only a part of foreign trade orders will be sold to South Korea, Japan and other regions, and children’s clothing styles are also more Japanese and Korean style.
Since this year, Zhili’s children’s clothing exports have accelerated significantly, and North America, Europe, the Middle East and other regions have become new markets targeted by many local businesses. On February 2, the Huzhou Municipal Commerce Bureau organized 18 Zhili children’s clothing, textile and other companies to participate in the International Spring Consumer Goods Expo in Birmingham, England, marking the first start of the year for children’s clothing to go overseas.
On March 16, Pinduoduo’s Duoduo cross-border e-commerce business children’s clothing category special team also came to Zhili. Under the guidance of the Huzhou Commerce Bureau, they worked with the local children’s clothing office, e-commerce associations, and cross-border e-commerce service platforms. Yu Group and more than 50 children’s clothing companies have conducted in-depth discussions on the integrated plan for children’s clothing going overseas, and promoted many children’s clothing companies to join the Duoduo cross-border platform, which also opened a new exploration of Zhili’s children’s clothing “selling globally in one stop”.
“Now it’s the other way around. Koreans are also going to Zhili to look for hot-selling items.” Every day at 2 p.m., the children’s clothing city in Zhili starts to get noisy. Merchants, fabric merchants, sample clothing merchants, and cloth shop bosses from all over the country come to collect samples. Designers and delivery masters will flock to every stall in the market. Especially when the peak season comes in August, the average daily flow of people in the entire children’s clothing city can reach tens of thousands.
As early as the 1970s, Zhili was a well-known backwater in the Hangjiahu Plain. Local weaving craftsmen started a business on a “bianpole street” covering an area of only 0.8 square kilometers. They mainly sewed bedspreads, pillowcases and other fabrics, and produced The leftover fabrics were processed into children’s bellybands and clothes, thus starting the children’s clothing industry in Zhili.
By the early 1980s, there were thousands of small family workshops producing and selling in Zhili Town, and the children’s clothing industry began to take shape; in 1995, electric sewing machines replaced pedal sewing machines; in 2000, machine assembly lines began to enter factories, attracting More upstream and downstream industries are gathered here, gradually forming an industrial ecosystem.
▲In the Zhili children’s clothing market, many young people recommend children’s clothing styles to dealers from various places through mobile phone videos. (Photography by Li Yang)
In 2011, when e-commerce was on the rise, Zhili Town’s industrial chain advantages also attracted e-commerce entrepreneurs from all over the country, and e-commerce annual sales increased exponentially. As of now, there are more than 8,000 active e-commerce companies in Zhili Town, and the annual sales of children’s clothing e-commerce are close to 30 billion yuan.
Up to now, “two out of every three children’s clothing items in the country come from Zhili.” Zhili has not only upgraded to become the commercial, R&D and brand center of Chinese children’s clothing, but also has successively emerged 30 brands such as Tisana, Hanada Aya, and boys and girls. Many children’s clothing brands.
“When I first entered the industry ten years ago, everyone went to South Korea to buy editions. Sometimes more than half of the passengers on a flight from Shanghai to Seoul were colleagues who went to South Korea to buy editions. It was very embarrassing.” According to a children’s clothing store The brand’s boss recalled that starting from 2018, the situation has been reversed. Korean bosses have begun to come to Zhili to buy hot products. In Zhili’s current edition buying market, at most, more than 5,000 people come to buy editions every day.
In the past year, due to the repeated impact of the epidemic, the domestic sales of Zhili children’s clothing have been affected to a certain extent. “The entire franchise store system has been under certain pressure. We originally had 8 franchise stores in a first-tier city, but 6 were closed last year.” A children’s clothing boss said.
In addition, children’s clothing e-commerce has also experienced a short-term decline due to express delivery delays, logistics obstruction and other reasons. The local Dahe Village is one of the five major e-commerce villages in Zhili. This small village with only 3,000 local villagers had 1,500 e-commerce merchants at its peak. “The previous Dahe E-commerce Village was so crowded that taxis couldn’t get in. To deliver goods, you could only ride a two-wheeled electric vehicle.” According to a taxi driver, compared with the previous bustling scene, last year’s E-commerce Village was much less crowded. It’s a little deserted, and rents at some stores have dropped by half. Since the beginning of this year, Zhili children’s clothing has begun to rebound in an all-round way in the domestic market. At the same time, under the guidance of the local government’s package of measures, many children’s clothing merchants have also begun to turn their attention overseas, seeking the next growth curve for Zhili children’s clothing. Launched the “reverse customization” model to help children’s clothing factories transform and upgrade. After returning from Birmingham, England, children’s clothing merchants in Zhili also began to spontaneously go out, organizing groups to participate in exhibitions in Vietnam, the United States, Europe, the Middle East and other regions. Some leading brands Merchants have also begun to test foreign markets, designing and researching���Strive to sell China’s manufacturing industry to the world in one stop. From the perspective of the practitioners of Zhili children’s clothing, the impact of one-stop global sales on Zhili children’s clothing and the domestic industrial belt is far more than that. In the domestic children’s clothing market, the off-peak and peak seasons are more obvious. Compared with other domestic children’s clothing industry belts, Zhili’s winter clothing is the best, and its peak season is also concentrated from August to December. Once the global market is opened, the off-season in the first half of the year can also be used, because winter clothes can be sold to the Australian market in the southern hemisphere. “Selling globally in one stop means that it is the peak season all year round.”
“When the cross-border business was launched, Pinduoduo also officially launched the ‘2023 Duoduo Overseas Support Plan’ to create 100 overseas manufacturing brands in the first phase.” The person in charge of the children’s clothing category of Duoduo’s cross-border business said that the platform will then combine Zhili’s R&D and design advantages in children’s clothing have focused on building a number of children’s clothing brands, helping Huzhou build Zhili into a bridgehead for Chinese children’s clothing brands to go overseas and continue to move towards the “Children’s Clothing Capital of the World”.
</p
