Guo Xiuling: The Story Behind "Soft Gold" And The Beauty Of A Lamb

The fate behind "soft gold"

The grassland will not wake up until the spring breeze falls. However, at a height of one thousand meters above the Alashan plateau, the strong winds blow hard every spring. Until mid April, the green traces will come out from the grass in the next year. They will be drenched rapidly by three or four heavy rain. With spring, there are sheep and thousands of sheep, like a pearl in the new green grassland. In fact, sheep are more valuable than pearls. As the highest grade cashmere producing area in the world, Alashan and the area of the region are almost all over the world. Luxury cashmere The main raw materials. As the weather gets warmer, the season for collecting cashmere is coming soon. Soon after, a valuable cashmere scarf will be hung in the window of Fifth Avenue in Paris. Under the subtle illumination of light, there will be a bright light - the soft name of the commercial society is its soft name.

The "soft gold" in Fifth Avenue seems to have been born, just like the spring in Alashan grassland. Few people tried to tell the story behind the expensive scarf, as few people knew before the spring came, when the 30 degree grasslands were covered with heavy snow, and how sheep and herdsmen depended on each other.

But Guo Xiuling tried to talk about the Chinese cashmere with her first hand. brand SAND RIVER, at the main venue of the fashion week in Paris, is described in the University of New York, in salons and gatherings, big or small. This gave her a kind of devotion and warmth of a preacher. Because she was once one of the girls in the pastoral area who grew up with the lambs.

Wonderful sense of propriety

Before a comb is made of cashmere, a lamb has to go through two winters.

In the second winter, severe cold will force them to grow a short layer of fur on their skin. Compared with 15 centimeters of wool, cashmere is only 3-5 centimeters, fine and smooth, and protects them through the long winter. Any human being can use. Spin Raw materials can not be compared with it, but can only be said to be a miracle for the goats. However, in the first winter of the birth of lamb, there was no time to help. They landed in large numbers from December to new year. At this time, dozens of degrees below zero and falling snow were threatening the grasslands.

Herdsmen appeared at this time. Guo Xiuling remembered that his home in winter had become a kindergarten for the sheep. His father and mother were careful to see which sheep would bring them home when they had to be born in the evening. The children were crowded on the big Kang, and the mother was lying in front of the Kang, and the cold was shut out. The fire was beating in the black eyes of the sheep, and the sheep and the sheep were waiting with each other, waiting for the lambs to fall to the ground.

"Baby is born! Baby is born!" here, Guo Xiuling, like a singing ballad, clapped his hands. "When it was born, it staggered up, and the mother of sheep stretched out his tongue to help him lick the amniotic fluid, and he came to play with you. When you grow up for a few days, you go down to crouch, and five or six sheep can't wait to climb all over your back and legs, kiss you, peck your ears, peck your chin. The family becomes kindergarten at once.

The task of Guo Xiuling, the little girl, is to feed the lamb to eat soybeans, and when they are cooked half baked and lacking in materials, the herdsmen use this method to supplement their nutrition. The days that the lambs are squeezed and squeezed and eaten for cooking will last four or five months until the spring breeze starts to blow again, and the combed season of the new year is near.

Collecting the original velvet from sheep, the time and patience required for this process is beyond imagination. The grasslands gradually turned to warm. The warm velvet of the sheep was already over the season. When it was time for them to recover them, cashmere began to fall off. An adult sheep can produce 50 grams of cashmere in a year, and the cashmere called Baby Cashmere is more precious, only 30 grams. This dozens of grams of villi, herdsmen need to spend a month or so, follow the speed of the fall of villi, seven or eight times, with special iron comb comb down.

"When the temperature is higher, the fleece will return a little. This is a natural instinct of animals. So the herdsmen comb their hair very gently, just like treating their children with their hair.

So far the herdsmen of Alashan steppe still comb their hair by hand, and comb each sheep next to each other. In April, the sun was shining brightly, and the clouds moved like mountains, casting huge shadows. The sheep lay in the shadows and were combed and sluggishly. Since Guo Xiuling was a little girl, he had been watching and participating in this gentle technique. He still passed through the steppes of Alashan several decades later. There is a strange sense of proportion between man and sheep, which can not be replaced by machines. Guo Xiuling showed me her little video. The herdsmen were combing down their hair. A lamb climbed up and swayed from one person's back to another's back. The lamb, which is only two or three months old, is young and tender. If it is iron, it must be naughty with the grown-ups. The herdsmen in the video roared with laughter and said in Mongolian: "look, look at this little fellow!"

Dead angle and sky

When Guo Xiuling and lambs played together, she did not know where their cashmere had been collected carefully after their hands breeding and raising. No one seemed to ask this question. The village never lacked the wool merchants. After a short stay, they left with their raw materials and left behind the herdsmen and sheep in the grasslands. At this point, the grassland and all the herdsmen disappeared in the next cashmere story. Design, weaving, packaging, and the high premium paid by the brand have nothing to do with them.

In Europe, the cashmere fashion craze that has emerged in nineteenth Century has already bred mature and well known brands. As for how to design cashmere with both warmth and fashion sense, big designers are very familiar with them. They not only give cashmere "soft gold" the nickname, but also make this precious material really possess the meaning of luxury. The fact that large-scale breeding of cashmere goats in Europe can not be hard won. In the early nineteenth Century, Italy and Scotland began importing cashmere raw materials from Inner Mongolia, Tibet and other places in China to establish spinning and weaving factories. Today, when customers stop watching a cashmere product in front of Max Mara, the label shows a price of one hundred or two hundred times higher than the price of raw materials. People will only admire "what a precious Italy cashmere!"

Many years later, Guo Xiuling fully understood the "next cashmere story". After graduating from University, she entered the cashmere sweater factory in Ordos and became a workshop worker. The obstruction and depression of the small town made her panic. Most people succumb to fate and follow a regular life. But she began to learn English eagerly, and a tape of "go to America" can be heard backwards. Even though she herself did not know how to learn English, The factory imported new machines, and no one was interested in it. Guo Xiuling found a dust laden instruction book and studied it in English. The longing for knowledge and the yearning for the world make her an alien plant. Until one day, a German expert came to visit the factory. The spanlation did not understand the terminology of experts. An unbelievable scene took place. The unknown woman worker on the assembly line suddenly spoke to German experts in fluent English. Her professional views were stare. Her fate changed. She became the backbone of the factory. After several years, she was invited to Germany to engage in technology research and development, and gradually grew into the top five experts in the world. Later, she even became a link in the cashmere story chain at that time. In 2002, she started a cashmere factory from Germany, and became a supplier of world-class luxury brands such as Armani and Max Mara by virtue of high quality Inner Mongolia cashmere raw materials and exquisite craftsmanship. "Take the best Chinese cashmere, and tell the Italians the brand story."

This is not Guo Xiuling's own confusion. In fact, few people know that 75% of the world's cashmere is produced in China. Even after 2012, when Guo Xiuling was determined to make her own cashmere brand, she followed the research team to the doorway of London's Department of inquiry, and asked, "where is the best cashmere in the world?" the answer is eighty percent, Italy, which is almost zero for Inner Mongolia or Mongolia.

The herdsmen are always behind the scenes. China has always been behind the scenes. The world that she devoted to is dependent on the raw materials of China, but can not hear the voice of China.

"But what can our Chinese suppliers do? Meticulously, even the tag is done to them. A brand instruction comes down - all kinds of goods do well, and the boxes are also packed. This box is sent to a certain shop in Paris, and the case is sent to a certain shop in New York. Stores receive goods directly dismantled and sold. Everything is done by our suppliers. We can do that. "

The turning point was with destruction. The destruction took place in 2008. Under the further pressure of domestic policy change and brand, the foundry factory as a supplier was unsustainable.

"Armani will say, give you Order, my price is this. Can you do it? You can't do it without problem. To Kampuchea. "

Factories began to face huge losses, employee turnover and customer spanfer. Guo Xiuling has never realized that he is in the weak position of this chain, and will only continue to fall into the mire without end. Compromise is no longer possible for the future. And she obviously owns so many skilled manufacturing workers, simple herdsmen, core technology, and precious material of Inner Mongolia's grassland.

"All of us are working for this Name. Why? "

According to the world clothing shoes and hats net, in 2012, Guo Xiuling bid farewell to all the former customers, and overnight, 90% of the business was cleared. But she had no choice. From the depths of the prairie, the woman walking along the cashmere industry chain for more than 20 years saw the light and dark on the chain at this moment. The cashmere story, which is accompanied by luxury, is far from herdsmen in the dark. The suppliers and skilled craftsmen in different stages are sharing the same fate with the grassland herdsmen. Unless they emit their own light, they can only live behind the scenes, be cut apart, unknowingly squeezed and abandoned.

"We will never go that way again. That road has pushed me to the dead end, three walls are everywhere, and there is no way to go. The situation is very clear: there is only one road left in the sky - I want to set up a brand of our own, a brand belonging to all of Inner Mongolia. Guo Xiuling stopped and stressed, "all of us."

The beauty of a lamb

Six years later, the cashmere brand named SAND RIVER has more than ten stores in China and has created the first "Cashmere Scarf" into China's fashion week in Paris. Under the official invitation, SAND RIVER entered the Paris fashion week main venue for the six consecutive season. After being tested by the world's leading luxury brand buyers, it was taken to 13 countries. SAND RIVER is also coming from department stores or independent luxury stores in the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Dubai.

According to Hermann Simon, the world's master of management and the father of the invisible champion, SAND RIVER is undoubtedly the "invisible champion" of the world's cashmere industry. "Hermann Simon,"

Guo Xiuling put 90% of his energy on products, which gave the brand a great leap. As a person who is "good at doing things for Armani", on the basis of raw materials, she used the most core technology, the most top-level equipment and the most modern design, and exported high-grade luxury brands at the terminal. The first store opened in the old dock of the Bund, Shanghai. "Put the product directly in and talk with the guests". The highest grade cashmere materials and Seiko technology in Inner Mongolia are presented in this store without reservation.

When I was in the shop watching, Guo Xiuling was more relaxed than he imagined. He was not eager to introduce how unique the design was and how exquisite the material was. When she got up to the booth, she suddenly became very quiet. She stroked past the exhibits, like her mother looked at her little talkative daughter. The light is soft, the cashmere scarves are hung side by side, the delicate shadows between the fluff and the fuzz, and a more lightweight scarf surface is heavily colored. It is designed by Koshino Junko, the Japanese heavyweight Designer (Junko Koshino), and has been shown after dozens of meticulous coloring. The material that has been treasured from the source has the power to convey to the face-to-face person, without commentary. Even the creator himself is apt to be silent in the face of perfect products.

Guo Xiuling maintained this "care from beginning to end" with great care, from one side of the herdsman in the depths of Alashan grassland to the consumer end of the old port store in Shanghai. She brought the SAND RIVER cashmere scarf back to the grasslands and handed it back to the herdsmen's hands. At that moment, the herdsmen's happiness shook her.

"They thought, when they were handed out, they were still a pile of dirty velvet. When they came back, how could they become such beautiful things? They were very happy in holding their hands, trying to take them with them, and they had a very careful feeling. I can't imagine myself having anything to do with such a beautiful thing! But I have been saying all the time - no, it's related. Not only to the herdsmen, but also to consumers, from design to factory to terminal business, everything has something to do with herdsmen. The scarf that sells tens of thousands of dollars in Fifth Avenue, the herdsmen should be proud of it.

Guo Xiuling is helping the lamb feed its herdsmen. As long as you have heard the story of herdsmen and sheep accompanying each other through the cold winter, you can hardly forget it. In winter, the herdsmen take care of the lambs. In the spring, the lambs give back the precious "soft gold", which is called the unintentional arrangement of creation or love. Guo Xiuling prefers to believe that the latter is the latter. Most consumers in the world do not know this for the time being. We have consumed expensive cashmere products but have not yet received the kindness of a lambs behind them.

In this sense, even a small amount of raw materials should not be wasted, because love can not be wasted.

SAND RIVER has many dolls made from cashmere leftover materials.

"For example, a doll's blue skirt, 20 grams, can't do anything in the factory, it needs to be scrapped. But the lamb is only 50 grams a year, and half of this lamb has been thrown away by us this year. That's not acceptable. "

Obviously, she is building a brand new and detailed logic. If in fifteenth Century, cashmere meant artifacts from the mysterious East. In nineteenth Century, cashmere meant a fashion luxury trend led by European brands. So, at the moment, Guo Xiuling and her SAND RIVER are redefining cashmere with the ingenuity of China, which is inspired by the real cycle of herdsmen, sheep and grasslands for thousands of years. How does a lamb express its love? How do we receive it? This is no longer an answer to the expensive price tag, and the meaning of cashmere is slowly rebuilt in the process we are trying to answer.

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