Hubei Tianmen Accelerates The Construction Of "E-Commerce Clothing City"

In the middle of winter, in a clothing company in Tianmen National Investment Industrial Park, Hubei Province, the "post-80s" bear flew around the shelves on a balance car to check the inventory. Behind him, pieces of small floral dresses were automatically packed by the machine, waiting for air transportation to the United States.

"The balance car had just been charged in the morning, and ran around with me. It had to be charged again soon, which is the normal situation since I went back to my hometown to start a business," Xiong Feixiang said. In 2019, he returned to Tianmen to start his own business with the experience and resources of two generations of his family working in Guangdong for decades. "The labor cost and rent of Tianmen are more than 30% lower than those of Guangzhou. After cost compression, we increased investment and transformed to e-commerce sales. Now the company has nearly tripled its size," he said.

In October this year, under the promotion of Tianmen Municipal Bureau of Commerce and clothing e-commerce industry association, the TEMU Investment Promotion Conference of Pinduoduo cross-border e-commerce platform entered Tianmen, customized training content for merchants, explained operation strategies, and attracted more than 100 clothing enterprises to "go to sea". As a result, Xiong Feixiang's market has become wider and wider. In the fourth quarter of this year, his company sold 140000 pieces of clothes on the TEMU platform alone, and more than 2500 pieces a day at most.

In the workshop of a textile enterprise in Tianmen City, Hubei Province, the staff were removing the redundant cotton wool from the line. Photographed by Du Zixuan, a reporter from Xinhua News Agency

The textile and clothing industry is the traditional pillar industry of Tianmen, with more than 300000 Tianmen practitioners. In recent years, with the increasing production costs in coastal areas year by year, Tianmen seized the opportunity to introduce more than ten supporting policies for the textile and clothing industry, set up special funds, and coordinate financial institutions and large logistics enterprises to provide good services. Tens of thousands of "second generation clothing companies" like Xiong Feixiang have been able to return to their hometown to start their own businesses and find jobs. They have seized the clothing e-commerce track and accelerated the transformation of Tianmen's textile and clothing industry.

In the other corner of Tianmen State Investment Industrial Park, a 4700 square meter workshop, the sound of sewing machines is heard everywhere. The full intelligent hanging system will send the cloth to the corresponding station. The workers will push the cloth with one hand and step on the pedal with one foot. In a short time, a finished down jacket will be ready.

"The intelligent hanging system reduces the tedious procedures of finding and matching pieces. It takes less than 80 seconds from the hanging system to the ready to wear offline, which greatly improves the efficiency while ensuring the product quality," said Hu Zhiguo, the boss of the clothing company.

The staff is processing clothes in the workshop of a clothing enterprise in Tianmen City, Hubei Province. Photographed by Du Zixuan, a reporter from Xinhua News Agency

Hu Zhiguo, who has worked hard in Guangdong for many years and has an online store sales volume of more than 100 million yuan, will return to Tianmen to start his business in 2023. "In recent years, the online store business has been impacted by the live broadcast, and the sales volume has shrunk, so I have always wanted to transform and get involved in the live broadcast. Just as my hometown has a good investment promotion policy, I took this opportunity to build 12 new intelligent assembly lines, and now two have been put into production. Next year, I plan to transform the first floor of the factory building into several live broadcast rooms, so that clothing can be put on the shelves as soon as it leaves the workshop." Ho said.

According to Fei Wen, president of Tianmen Garment E-commerce Industry Association, Tianmen has more than 5000 textile and garment enterprises, covering textile manufacturing, garment processing, surface materials supply, e-commerce marketing, logistics and distribution and other fields. From January to November this year, the sales volume of Tianmen Garment E-commerce was 423 million, with a turnover of 34.5 billion yuan.

Planting Chinese parasol trees attracted the phoenix. Looking at the advantages of Zhongtianmen, such as adequate supply of goods, low price, convenient logistics, etc., the leading domestic MCN institutions look forward to investing more than 3 million yuan in science and technology to build a live broadcast base in Tianmen. From afar, Zhai Fuzhuo, president of the Institute of Science and Technology Live Broadcasting, led an 11 member team to expand from Hangzhou to Tianmen, including Russian anchor Sasha.

In the evening, at the corner of Beihu Park in Tianmen City, Sasha displayed her "Little Fragrance" coat, and the shopping guide anchor responded to the questions of netizens in the live broadcast room in a timely manner. With the continuous promotion of the live broadcast team, the background inventory data displayed on the computer is decreasing.

Russian anchor Shasha carried goods live in Beihu Park, Tianmen City, Hubei Province. Photographed by Du Zixuan, a reporter from Xinhua News Agency

In addition to introducing excellent anchors to Tianmen, Zhai Fuzhuo also held live training in Tianmen to incubate a group of new anchors. Among them, the average daily sales of high-quality anchors have exceeded 100000 yuan.

"Tianmen textile and clothing industry has initially formed a complete industrial chain. The gathering of industries has created more than 100000 jobs for Tianmen, and also increased the per capita income of Tianmen. Next, we will promote the popularization of intelligent manufacturing, smart cloud warehouse and live broadcast, further reduce costs and improve efficiency, and make the industry bigger and stronger," said Fei. (Reporter Yue Wenwan, Du Zixuan)

(Source: Xinhuanet)