Fashionable Changshu's "Textile and Clothing" Blossoms All the Way, Changshu's 40th Anniversary of Demolition from County to City | From "Bixi" to Star Ocean Center | Textile and Clothing | Fashion
Changshu City, known as the "blessed land of Jiangnan" in Jiangsu Province, has always given people a low-key impression, but the textile and clothing industry is indeed a distinct business card of this city. As a hot spot for exploring the "Bixi Road" model in southern Jiangsu, Changshu has long been ranked first among the top 100 county-level economic counties in China. With the 40 year development of Changshu's withdrawal from the county and establishment of a city, Changshu has also continuously polished the business card of the textile and clothing industry.
A billion dollar industry from scratch
In 1975, Gao Dekang, a young man from Changshu, Jiangsu, saw for the first time the report of a Chinese mountaineering team climbing Mount Everest from the north slope in Shikumen, Shanghai. The spirit and belief of the mountaineers who had gone through hardships and climbed Mount Everest deeply impressed him, and he set his sights on making down jackets for his whole life. In the second year, Gao Dekang started his entrepreneurial journey with 8 sewing machines and 11 people, and the well-known "Bosideng" at home and abroad began from then on, which is an important microcosm of the development of Changshu's textile and clothing industry.
Gaodekang's entrepreneurship cannot be separated from the fertile land of Changshu. In the 1970s, when Gao Dekang started his business, a group of migrant workers from Shanghai and Changshu established small enterprises in Bixi Township, including small hardware, knitting, cotton fabric, clothing, and grain and feed processing. Most of these enterprises worked for large factories, while some were self operated. Given the environment at the time, these actions were risky. "The development of industry in Bixi Township was not smooth sailing. It was a gradual and tortuous process from scratch, from small to large." As the first Party Secretary of Bixi Township after Changshu was abolished as a county and established as a city in 1983, Zhou Dinggen once described the process back then.
With the relaxation of policies, these small enterprises in Changshu entered a period of rapid development in the 1980s. At the beginning of the reform and opening up, farmers in the southern part of Changshu seized the opportunity and set up street stalls near the bustling Qinnan Township long-distance bus station. In May 1985, the Qinnan Township Government took advantage of the situation and built 400 stalls using fiberglass tiles as sheds and cement slats as cabinets, creating the first farmer's market in China - Changshu Zhaoshang Mall.
The investment attraction has undergone several expansions, and by 1992, the number of stalls had increased to 6674; That year, the Changshu Municipal Government planned to use 3.71 square kilometers of land to establish the Jiangsu Changshu Zhaoshang City and establish the Jiangsu Changshu Zhaoshang City Development Corporation to be responsible for daily management. In 2008, Zhaoshang City was renamed Changshu Clothing City in Jiangsu, China.
After more than 30 years of development, Changshu Clothing City has 35 professional markets of various types, with an annual transaction volume of over 160 billion yuan, import and export volume of 1.6 billion US dollars, cargo transportation volume of nearly one million tons, and daily capital flow exceeding 2 billion yuan. Has been awarded titles such as "China Men's Clothing Center", "China Footwear Center", and "China Children's Clothing Center", and ranks first in the top ten professional textile and clothing markets in China.
From the "street market" to a billion dollar clothing city, Changshu Textile and Clothing has embarked on a "road to prosperity" of "market driven industry, industry enhanced market" in the past forty years. During the forty year development process, the people of Changshu took the opportunity to establish township enterprises and build new types of towns, gradually successfully breaking through the "Bixi Road" of farmers who "leave their hometown without leaving the soil, and enter the factory without entering the city.". The forty year path of industrial development cannot be separated from Changshu's pioneering efforts to adapt to the circulation and market of farmers, nor from Changshu's persistent efforts to develop the private economy. While achieving great economic development, Changshu has also bloomed with vibrant industrial flowers.
The Fashion City Hidden Behind Live Streams
In 2021, Kunchi Group, a Shanghai based enterprise, traveled westward to Changshu and began operating the "JD Beauty Live Content Creative Base" north of Yushan. In recent years, more and more companies have placed their cameras in Changshu. People are surprised to find that Changshu is not only known as the city of textiles and clothing, but also a fashion world hidden behind live broadcast cameras.
Changshu's live broadcast e-commerce industry started in 2016 and expanded outward from the clothing city. The live broadcast merchants in the clothing urban area mainly gather in Yunshang Town. According to the principle of "industrial cluster, space agglomeration, function integration, and resource intensification", Yunshang Town focuses on the construction and cultivation of the "Internet plus+textile and clothing creativity" industry, relying on the Internet and led by the textile and clothing industry.
At present, the live streaming industry in Changshu relies on local cotton and linen women's clothing, down jackets, middle-aged and elderly men's clothing, large-sized men's clothing and other advantageous supply chain resources, and the development trend continues to rise. In 2021, Changshu's total online retail sales continued to steadily rank first among all districts and cities in Suzhou. According to statistics, in 2022, the number of Tiktok stores in Changshu will reach 18833, with 16690 dynamic sales; The total sales of live streaming new retail in Changshu Industrial Belt reached 99.2 billion yuan.
The massive sales figures cannot be separated from the clustered industrial chain. In 2022, the textile and clothing industry in Changshu has formed a relatively complete industrial chain, with a mature professional market. The autumn and winter clothing and knitted fabric fields have formed a competitive position nationwide. The textile and clothing industry chain covers processes from chemical fiber manufacturing to raw materials, accessories, fabric weaving, printing and dyeing, post-processing, clothing and apparel production, and professional market sales.
The textile and clothing industry is now one of the three pillar industries in Changshu, with a scale of over 100 billion yuan. As a traditional pillar industry and a prosperous industry for the people in Changshu, the textile and clothing industry in Changshu has successively won titles such as National "Textile Industry Base", "China Leisure Clothing City", and "National Professional Demonstration Base for Foreign Trade Transformation and Upgrading". With the support of China Clothing City and the leadership of leading enterprises such as Bosideng, Qianrengang, and Rihe Rongmei, the development of Changshu's textile and clothing industry chain is becoming increasingly complete.
Strive to be the "leader" in the digital economy industry
Standing at the intersection of the new era, countless new and old acquaintances are transforming the path of new industrial development. In 2016, Zhao Tianli, who resigned from the research department of the World Bank, was looking for a place to start his own business. A friend's invitation prompted him to bring a venture capital of 3 million yuan from Shanghai to Changshu and establish Beta Technology.
The C2M flexible supply chain platform independently developed and built by Beta Technology connects with millions of users on one end and a large number of intelligent factories upgraded and transformed by Beta Technology's automation technology on the other. The average inventory turnover rate has increased by 8 times, and the order delivery cycle has been shortened from 15-30 days to 1 day. The enterprise has rapidly grown into a "quasi unicorn" with a valuation of over 500 million yuan. This also brings huge imagination space for the intelligent transformation and digital transformation of Changshu's textile and clothing industry, which is worth 100 billion yuan.
In the same year as the establishment of Beta Technology, a company called Feiliu Technology was established in Zhangjiang, Shanghai. As a technology-based enterprise building a flexible supply chain for clothing, initially, Feiliu Technology only planned to establish itself in the Changshu textile and clothing industry belt and provide digital transformation services to the production lines of clothing enterprises. After fully understanding the location advantages of Changshu and the supporting services after landing, Feiliu Technology decided to relocate its headquarters to Changshu.
Enterprises are the main body of innovation, and talents are the core of development. The economic vitality of cities cannot be separated from the contribution of talents. Zhao Tianli believes that "Changshu has a good business environment, convenient living, and efficient government services, making it very suitable for entrepreneurship, especially for entrepreneurs and R&D personnel who enjoy efficient living and work. With the opening of high-speed rail lines, this area will evolve into a region similar to the Silicon Valley Bay Area in the future, with a very bright and beautiful future." Nowadays, Beta Technology provides over 2 million customized sportswear to hundreds of thousands of various teams in China every year and serves millions of teams worldwide.
With the release of the "Changshu Digital Economy Industry Development Plan", the textile and clothing industry in Changshu is actively integrating into the development of the digital economy industry. With the construction of the "Yangtze River Delta Industrial Digital Innovation Center" as the main line and relying on the resource advantages of leading enterprises, Changshu is actively cultivating the industrial digital ecology, promoting the digital development of the clothing industry, and has gathered a number of industrial Internet platform enterprises and industrial digital service enterprises, rapidly forming the digital service capacity and agglomeration effect on Changshu's clothing industry chain.
As one of the largest professional clothing markets in China, Changshu Clothing City relies on its traffic and scale advantages of a 3.5 million square meter professional market and 35000 market entities, highlighting "digital transformation" and "full process reengineering", promoting "de intermediation", and promoting differentiated development of the clothing industry through "technological research and development" and "fashion strategy". A large number of professional operators, incubation institutions for internet celebrity influencers, and original designer brands have settled in the clothing city. The strength of original design continues to increase, and differentiated competitive advantages are gradually emerging. Currently, over 80 live streaming institutions and supply chain companies, as well as over 6000 anchors, have become important new marketing forces in the fashion city.
With the acceleration of major industrial projects such as the fashion supply chain hub, urban distribution center, and Zhongtong Commercial Headquarters in the Yangtze River Delta, Changshu is constantly seeking new breakthroughs in the textile and clothing industry, which has been a major industry for decades. In the new wave of digitalization, new development flowers are constantly emerging.
