Small Industry And Large Market: The Annual Output Value Of Dingji Wedding Dress Is More Than 2.4 Billion Yuan

Let's start with a set of data:

In the Past National Day holiday, more than 150000 couples married. Among them, 52112 couples got married on October 3.

The popularity of weddings is directly reflected in the demand for wedding dresses, which are likely to come from the same place: Dingji Town, Lu'an, Anhui Province.

In 2021, the annual output value of Dingji wedding dress is more than 2.4 billion yuan, with 15000 employees. There are more than 600 wedding dress shops in the town, with annual online sales of more than 1 billion yuan. The products are sold far away at home and abroad.

A generation of wedding dress towns are rising.

There are 50000 people in Dingji and 10000 in Huqiu

The romance of Dingji people was taught by Huqiu people.

As early as the 1980s, when Dingji people were still relying on agriculture to support their families, there were the first batch of wedding dress shops in Huqiu, Suzhou, 600 kilometers away. In just a few years, the number of Huqiu wedding dress shops has reached nearly 1000, and the total amount of wedding dress processing accounts for about 70% of the total amount of the whole country. It once became the production and sales base of national wedding dress.

After the rise of Huqiu wedding dress industry, it has attracted a large number of migrant workers, including many Dingji people. At that time, there was even a saying that there were 50000 people in Dingji and 10000 in Huqiu.

At first, they had to sew in the wedding dress factory because they had no technology. After a period of time, they found that the threshold of the wedding dress business is not high, and they can do it themselves.

At that time, customers didn't pay attention to the style of wedding dresses. Merchants often only needed a few sewing machines, a few sewing workers, and then rented a shop to produce and sell.

As a result, some visionary Dingji people started their own business to produce wedding dresses. During the peak period, Ding Jiren set up more than 1800 wedding dress production and sales enterprises in Suzhou, with nearly 20000 employees.

No matter how big the business is, it is other people's business. Ding Jiren started his business in Huqiu, which led to Huqiu's economy.

Therefore, in 2011, Dingji government launched the "one-to-one" investment promotion policy, attracting Phoenix to return to the nest. According to the established plan, the local government hopes to introduce three or four large-scale wedding dress enterprises, and then drive more small and medium-sized enterprises to return.

However, the effect is not significant. In addition to a few factories in Suzhou due to the difficulty in recruiting workers and high rent costs, many entrepreneurs are not willing to go back.

On the one hand, Suzhou's economic conditions are better developed; on the other hand, they have been rooted in Suzhou for many years, and they have a better understanding of Suzhou's market and policies, but they are unfamiliar with the business environment and future prospects of their hometown, so they are not willing to take risks easily.

Until around 2018, the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations are facing upgrading and transformation, encouraging the development of tertiary industry and high-tech industries. Suzhou began to eliminate labor-intensive industries such as Huqiu wedding dress. At the same time, Suzhou began to carry out large-scale safety management due to repeated fire accidents in group rental houses, and Huqiu wedding dress street became the focus of rectification.

Since 2000, a large number of wedding dress practitioners have entered this block, especially after the rise of e-commerce, there are many wedding dress workshops in residential buildings. In order to facilitate logistics distribution, these piles of wedding dress products and cloth are mostly scattered on the roadside, once a fire, the consequences are unimaginable.

Therefore, in May 2018, the government carried out a severe rectification of Huqiu wedding dress block, requiring that the wedding dress workshops in the streets that do not meet the fire safety regulations need to be relocated immediately, and Dingji people there are also forced to accept the choice of transfer.

After seeing this opportunity, Dingji government undertook these enterprises with preferential policies, and Suzhou wedding dress industry began to transfer to Dingji on a large scale.

At present, Dingji town has more than 400 wedding dress enterprises, more than 100 nail beads, cloth, patch, embroidery and other wedding accessories enterprises, more than 20 express and logistics enterprises, more than 20000 pieces of daily express delivery, more than 600 wedding dress e-commerce enterprises, the sales area radiates at home and abroad, and the annual value of wedding dress exceeds 2 billion yuan, which has become a worthy wedding dress town.

Make a "wedding dress" for others

Although the wedding dress industry cluster effect is prominent, Dante's wedding dress popularity in the outside world is far less than Huqiu.

This is because Huqiu wedding city not only has a long history, but also has celebrity effect as endorsement.

In 2008, Xu Yangtian made his first pot of gold by selling Huqiu wedding dress overseas. A few years later, he bought the domain name of sheninside.com to create an independent station. The story was widely circulated.

A few years later, Huang Zheng, founder of pinduoduo, set up lebei Technology Co., Ltd. in Suzhou. JJ's house, an independent cross-border wedding dress station, once became a big wedding e-commerce in the world because it sold Huqiu wedding dresses overseas.

In contrast, Dingji wedding dress, although the momentum of development is fierce, but no matter from time experience, or popularity, are obviously behind Huqiu.

Of course, the more important thing is that Dingji wedding dress industry has its own problems.

Interface news has reported that the wholesale price of Dingji wedding dress is about 1500 yuan to 2000 yuan. When they are sent to the wedding dress Museum in Soho, Beijing, the price will directly double - rent 3000 yuan to 5000 yuan a day, and the direct purchase price may be tens of thousands of yuan.

The high premium formed in the middle is due to the excessive concentration of Dingji wedding dress manufacturing in the middle and low-end market, without the formation of high brand premium.

Like the Huqiu wedding dress before, in Dingji wedding dress manufacturing, although some enterprises make efforts to the high-end wedding dress field, most of them still focus on low-level processing and manufacturing, mainly through the wholesale sales of cheap walking volume to earn meager profits.

In addition, Dingji wedding dress also has a fatal problem: excessive dependence on external channels.

Generally speaking, industrial clusters such as down jacket and trousers are mainly wholesale, but most of them are self-produced and sold, directly facing the middle end consumers. But Dingji wedding dress is an exception. After the wedding dress is made in Dingji Town, it needs to be sent to Huqiu for sale by express. Even if the goods sold to overseas markets, most of them are carried out through the middlemen in Guangzhou, Suzhou and other places.

In this regard, some local people have said that Suzhou, as the country's largest wedding dress sales center, occupies 70% of the domestic market share, but about 60% of the wedding dresses sold are produced in Lu'an, where Dingji belongs.

This dependence on external channels, on the one hand, is easy to let Ding Ji "do wedding clothes for others", which is not conducive to the expansion of the local wedding industry's popularity, and on the other hand, it also leads to the disconnection of supply and marketing.

We should know that the wedding dress industry is the same as the clothing industry. If there are too many middlemen, the high premium is only one of them. The key is that it is difficult for manufacturers to control consumers' preferences and produce wedding dresses that satisfy customers.

For example, since the wedding ceremony was held in a hotel in the past, the bride had to walk a long red carpet, so she needed a big tailed wedding dress to hold the scene. However, after the outbreak of the epidemic, because of the risk of large-scale wedding banquet, many couples choose to reduce the size of the wedding banquet or hold a lawn wedding instead. Therefore, in order to facilitate the bride to walk outdoors, and suitable for the venue, Qi Di wedding dress began to be popular.

If the producers can not understand this trend, it may lead to unsalable problems after the production of tailed wedding dresses, which will increase the risk of accumulation of goods.

The miniature of domestic wedding dress industry

In fact, the status quo of Dingji wedding dress is only the epitome of domestic wedding dress industry.

Especially in the low-end manufacturing, China's wedding dress enterprises generally lack of brand awareness, lack of technology and technology, as well as serious imitation and plagiarism. Take Huqiu wedding dress city as an example. In addition to the most expensive designer brands sold in area C with prices ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of yuan, other areas a and B are mainly low-cost and low-quality products, with prices ranging from hundreds to thousands of yuan.

On the one hand, the domestic wedding dress manufacturing is low-end, on the other hand, the wedding dress industry shows great development prospects.

In recent two years, with the improvement of material level, for the purpose of commemoration, women tend to change from renting to buying wedding dresses, and even spend a lot of money to customize wedding dresses. The wedding dress market is getting better.

According to the special survey data of China's wedding dress industry, 53.4% of the people preparing to wear wedding gowns and 46.6% choose Chinese cheongsam and other clothing. Driven by the concept of combining Chinese and Western wedding, the market demand of China's wedding dress industry is growing.

Based on this, Dingji wedding dress town is accelerating the solution of industrial problems and promoting industrial transformation and development.

First, smart use of e-commerce, get rid of Huqiu sales channel restrictions.

With the rising trend of e-commerce, there are many pioneers in Dingji town who have settled in e-commerce platforms such as tmall and pinduoduo to sell their products all over the country, trying to get rid of the problem of over reliance on Huqiu sales channels.

At the same time, some young people who are proficient in Internet technology seize the sea dividend and open shops on cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and ebai to sell their goods overseas and broaden their sales channels.

Second, brand operation, close to high-end.

Earlier, some entrepreneurs in Dingji seized the market trend, promoted the development of branding, and moved closer to high-end original design.

For example, Xu Chang, who first established a wedding dress factory in Dingji, should set up a design team in Guangzhou in 2014, turning to the high-end market and pursuing original design. At present, the company can not only design four or five new models in one month, but also establish a number of physical stores in the country and establish cooperation with nearly 3300 dealers.

Third, we should use mechanization to speed up industrial efficiency.

Most of the traditional wedding dress manufacturing needs manual sewing, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive. At present, some enterprises in Dingji have realized mechanized production. As long as the pattern of machine embroidery is input into the computer, it can automatically embroider and sew beads, greatly improving the efficiency.

It is believed that with the help of these enterprises, Dingji wedding dress town will burst into new vitality.