E-Commerce Base: Xiliu Clothing Town In Liaoning Embraces E-Commerce

With an annual output of 350 million pants and 220 million cotton suits, it has the largest clothing wholesale market in Northeast China with a daily turnover of more than 100 million yuan... Xiliu Town, Haicheng City, located on the transportation artery in southern Liaoning Province, has grown into a "famous town of China's pants industry" and "famous town of China's cotton suits" integrating processing, commerce and trade in the east wind of reform and opening up.

Under the wave of e-commerce, Xiliu Town gathered more than 10000 anchors to develop live broadcast sales relying on the advantages of clothing origin. In the past year, the e-commerce transaction volume of Xiliu Clothing exceeded 27 billion yuan. The reporter recently came to this famous clothing town to learn about its "second entrepreneurship" embracing e-commerce.

　　 With the rise of live broadcasting, thousands of anchors compete

In the deep winter, Xiliu Town, Haicheng City, which is located next to the Shenyang Dalian Expressway, drips water into ice. Entering Liaoning Xiliu E-commerce Industrial Park, it was a hot scene.

"This down jacket is easy to wear but not expensive, so I promise you won't regret buying it" "The second link is out of stock, and now I will introduce you to this casual pants"... At 7:00 p.m., one by one live broadcast room is brightly lit, the anchors are trying on clothes while shouting, the customer service people switch back and forth between multiple platform accounts, reply to customers, and the tallyman is busy looking for goods and delivering goods

Liu Yanwen, born in 1994, is a local anchor. A few years ago, he started from scratch and entered the clothing industry by bringing goods through live broadcast. Now, he has precisely positioned himself as a "segment track" for making men's clothes in large sizes for customers with fat bodies. In the "Double 11" promotion season in 2024, his sales of large men's clothing exceeded 9 million yuan.

Wang Haifeng, director of the Industrial Park Management Committee, said that Xiliu Town has gathered tens of thousands of anchors with goods like Xiao Liu, of whom nearly 2000 are online celebrity anchors with more than 100000 fans. Through training, support, tax exemption and other measures, the park seized the opportunity to guide the transformation and development of Xiliu garment people. In 2024, the e-commerce transaction volume of Xiliu Clothing will exceed 27 billion yuan, an increase of about 35% over the previous year, and it will be "one in four" among the clothing sales with a total scale of over 100 billion yuan.

Moving sales from offline to online is not easy. Xiliu E-Commerce Industrial Park, which was established as early as 2016, has launched more than 240 live online and offline training courses for the main broadcasters, with more than 16000 person times of lectures. The park also provides matchmaking to match the cooperation between clothing factories and anchors.

Over the years, Xiliu has formed a business model of "garment processing factory+professional wholesale market". Many merchants were once quite uncomfortable with the "online" sales.

When entering the Xiliu China Trade City, which is one of the top ten professional clothing wholesale markets in China, many merchants are full of scattered clothes inside and outside their stalls. When they ask, most of them are due to returns or orders. It turns out that in the era of wholesale, merchants are waiting for customers to come. Even if downstream retailers cannot sell out the goods, they will also use sales and other means to digest them. Upstream wholesalers need not worry about "too many returns". In addition, clothing wholesale is a "one-to-one" closed channel, and the profit space is not transparent, which allows wholesalers to have more pricing power, and is more conducive to ensuring the "revenue guarantee" of upstream links in the market fluctuations.

"Now, e-commerce channels are diversified and prices are transparent, which not only reduces the cost budget of merchants, but also makes them unable to take the initiative in sales." Yang Guang, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of Xiliu Garment Group, said that the return of clothing, which accounts for more than 50% of the total, was unexpected for Xiliu people. "These are what we need to face when we embrace e-commerce."

　　 In the e-commerce era, mining the advantages of the origin market

Wang Tongfei, 55, is an "old Xiliu" who has been engaged in clothing business for nearly 40 years. He was worried about the e-commerce impact on Xiliu Town.

"In the history of clothing in New China, Xiliu is famous. At the beginning of the reform and opening up, local farmers rushed into the clothing processing industry, and Xiliu's clothing market also created a precedent in the northeast region." Wang Tongfei said affectionately that around 1994, it was not difficult to sell 3000 pairs of pants a day at a "stall" more than one meter wide in the Xiliu clothing market. According to the data, from 1984 to 2009, Xiliu clothing market experienced multiple rounds of reconstruction, new construction and expansion of the original site, and its business scale reached the peak of 16000 in the first decade of the 21st century.

"When business is booming, consumers may not know where their pants come from, but almost everyone knows about Xiliu when picking up goods from all over the country." Ms. Yuan, who has been engaged in clothing business in Xiliu Town for more than 20 years, said that in addition to the three northeastern provinces, southern merchants from Fujian and Zhejiang will come here to batch goods.

In the e-commerce era, although Xiliu, which is dominated by physical stores, has been impacted, it is also actively exploring the advantages of clothing origin.

"Early start, complete categories and sufficient supporting facilities are the distinctive features of Xiliu." Yang Guang introduced that with more than 40 years of development, Xiliu has formed a characteristic textile and clothing industry cluster focusing on trousers, cotton clothes and large size clothing, with professional market as the leader, supporting processing and supporting services.

The advantages of supply chain provide strong support for e-commerce sales. "Xiliu Town is home to more than 10000 garment and textile production and processing enterprises, and the physical market here operates more than 20000 textile and clothing products in 40 categories, including clothing, fabrics and accessories." Wang Haifeng said that with the "popular" version of live broadcast sales, Xiliu people can quickly find corresponding materials and production lines by virtue of the complete industrial chain, It has a processing speed unmatched in other places.

In the e-commerce era, the high cost performance advantage of Xiliu Clothing is also prominent. Liu Yanwen said that opening a shop online does not mean reducing costs, but relying on the production base can well grasp the cost budget. "On the premise of reliable quality, the average price of each cotton padded jacket sold in Xiliu Town is about 120 yuan, and the average price of a down jacket is only 180 yuan to 280 yuan. Although it is a low-end line, it adapts to the low price strategy of e-commerce." said Yin Yuquan, secretary of the Party Committee of Xiliu Garment Business Management Group Co., Ltd.

　　 Embrace e-commerce, Xiliu still needs to "write" homework

On December 15, 2024, the Xiliu Cotton Clothes Shopping Festival came to a successful end. The three-day festival turnover reached 4.5 million yuan, which ignited the shopping boom in the ice and snow season.

"As long as you carry an ordinary power pack in your arms, this cotton padded clothes made of graphene flexible fabric heating materials can be warm in three seconds." Wang Tongfei opened a cold resistant cotton padded clothes designed and processed by his own enterprise to introduce to the reporter that through the e-commerce platform, this product is currently exported to northern Europe.

The successful application of new materials in clothing has opened the market for enterprises. "As a place of origin wholesale market, product quality deserves to be the core competitiveness." Wang Tongfei said that without his own products, there is no way out just by endless price war, and the key to attracting traffic lies in product strength.

After several years of testing, more and more people in Xiliu realized that the development of e-commerce is not opposed to the wholesale market.

"The shortening of channels has forced producers and merchants to be closer to consumers, so they must grasp the latest trends in the industry to produce more products that are popular in the market." The head of Liaoning Lanjie Garments Co., Ltd. said that in recent years, the company has focused on the development trend of the ice and snow industry, and vigorously developed ski clothes processing. In the first 10 months of 2024, the number of exported clothing has reached 1.13 million.

The products need to be updated iteratively, and the functions of the wholesale market need to be changed timely. "The traditional wholesale market is more like a 'front warehouse'. Since everyone comes here to order goods, why not learn from Wenzhou, Yiwu and other places, and try to give up more storage functions to the display of design and order negotiation?" In the interview, a southern businessman's point of view triggered the thinking of merchants in Xiliu. It turned out that a large number of goods were no longer piled up in the stalls of some wholesale markets in the south. Instead, tea tables for negotiation and projection screens for display were placed.

Over the years, Xiliu has its own "moat" for foreign trade sales. Through border trade, Xiliu people have exported their clothing to 122 countries and regions such as South Korea and South Africa. Up to now, there are 6122 foreign trade suppliers and 51 foreign trade operators in the town, and the export volume will exceed 700 million dollars in 2024.

"We should better 'go out, please come in'." Yang Guang introduced that since 2024, the Group has led a number of enterprises to participate in the 2024 China International Clothing Expo, the 135th China Import and Export Commodities Fair, and actively hosted the 2024 Second China Pants Conference, helping merchants broaden their horizons and reach cooperation. Next, Xiliu Town plans to make good use of the effect of the country's relaxation of transit visa free policies, improve the business visit rate and facilitate the transaction.

"Seeing is better than hearing. Invite more foreign businessmen to come to Xiliu to have a look, and you can understand the whole process of a garment from design to proofing to production, further deepening the trust of businessmen in Xiliu," said Wang Haifeng. (Reporter Wang Bingkun and Li Minghui)

(Source: Economic Information Daily)