Fortune Story: How Two Pants Change The Destiny Of A Small Town

In the 1980s, the trend of "making pants and selling pants" surged in Xiliu Town. At that time, Fang Yunliang began to ride a bicycle to the "Daji" to sell pants sewn by himself. Now, with the help of e-commerce enterprises and online celebrity teams, he and his son have pushed the clothing business to a broader stage.

On the afternoon of June 16, in a jeans shop in Anshan City, Liaoning Province, 75 year old Fang Yunliang was discussing cooperation with buyers, hoping to continue to expand the business scale. Fang Hongchang, his son, is answering the order call from the webmaster. Next, he will show his products on multiple Internet channels.

"Different from the traditional business model, the logic of delivering goods through live broadcast is small profits but quick turnover." Fang Hongchang told his father many times about the business differences between e-commerce and physical stores. Although their business philosophy is different, both generations are operating their own industries with more familiar models.

Xiliu Town, Haicheng City, Anshan City, Liaoning Province, is a famous town in China's pants industry and the largest clothing wholesale distribution center in Northeast China. After more than 40 years of development, the clothing industry cluster in Xiliu Town has been growing and has a huge and solid industrial foundation.

With the synchronous growth of the local clothing industry, Fang Yunliang's business model has also undergone tremendous changes. In the 1980s, Fang Yunliang began to ride his bicycle to "Daji" to sell pants sewn by himself. Now, with the help of e-commerce enterprises and online celebrity teams, he and his son have pushed the clothing business to a broader stage.

Become one of the three professional cloth wholesale markets

In the early spring of 1978, Ding Qishan, a farmer in Dongliu Village of Xiliu Commune, wanted to buy a pair of pants for his child. He found that it would cost 16 yuan to buy a pair of pants in the market, but if he bought 16 yuan "Dacron" fabric, he could make two pairs of pants himself. Unexpectedly, two pairs of trousers were bought by a neighbor just after they were finished. Ding Qishan earned 4 yuan just by buying and selling.

Ding Qishan saw the chance to change his fate with two pairs of pants. So he mobilized his family to make pants and sell them in the surrounding villages. In addition, they were delivered to his home, attracting many people to come to him to make customized pants. Later, the news that Ding Qishan became rich by making pants spread quickly, especially when he went from village to village carrying cloth bags to sell pants. People in Xiliu Town woke up.

At that time, Ding Qishan might not have thought that the two pairs of trousers he sold would be the beginning of the growth of the Xiliu clothing market in the future.

"In 1981, the local small traders selling pants spontaneously set up a market. Two bricks occupied the land, and a piece of wrapper skin spread out to become a stall... The rudiment of the Xiliu clothing market was formed." Fang Yunliang recalled that in 1994, Xiliu Town raised hundreds of millions of yuan to build the Xiliu clothing market, and the former big fair jumped into the three major professional clothing wholesale markets in China.

Zhao Qinglong, a staff member of the government of Xiliu Town, Anshan City, Liaoning Province, introduced that in order to avoid homogeneous development and create an overall competitive advantage, the government encouraged merchants to take a differentiated development path, while giving full play to many advantages such as high quality and low price, fashionable style, flexible marketing methods, etc. Now the types of clothing market products are expanded from pants to clothing fabrics There are more than 20000 kinds of commodities in 40 categories, including auxiliary materials, and more than 10000 production and processing enterprises. The cluster covers an area of 4.5 square kilometers, including 10 individual markets and supporting industrial parks.

"In the peak season, more than 1000 pairs of pants can be sold a day, and the processing factory at home cannot supply them, so they have to find a factory to process them." Through careful operation and continuous innovation, Fang Hongchang's business is becoming more and more prosperous.

Integration into domestic and international "double circulation"

In the process of inheritance and development, the Fangs and their sons witnessed the rise of the local clothing market and became direct beneficiaries of market dividends. Today, Xiliu clothing market cluster has 26200 stalls, with a maximum daily passenger flow of more than 50000 people.

At the same time, relying on regional advantages and industrial cluster advantages, the local logistics park has also been built.

Xiliu Town is located at the key node between the coastal areas of southern Liaoning and the inland areas of northeast China. It is an important gateway on the "Liaoning Mongolia Europe" and "Liaoning Manchuria Europe" routes of the northern "Belt and Road" Eurasian continental bridge.

The reporter learned that in 2018, Xiliu International Logistics Park was started, and more than 30 "post stations" were set up in domestic border port node cities, opening up the "China Mongolia Russia Europe" trade channel. As a result, the popularity, agglomeration and influence of Xiliu clothing market cluster have rapidly increased.

Gao Changhong, general manager of Liaoning Xiliu Commercial Logistics Group, said that there were 72 logistics transportation enterprises settled in the park, with 666 domestic lines and an annual cargo throughput of 1.2 million tons.

At the place under the supervision of Xiliu Customs in Haicheng, Anshan, Liaoning, a batch of trousers, shirts, shoes and socks and other goods are about to be exported. Different from the conventional trade, these goods come from many merchants in Xiliu Town and are exported to 122 countries or regions such as South Africa, the United States, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Italy, etc. through the way of LCL.

"In 2020, Xiliu Garment City was approved as a national market procurement trade mode pilot, bringing economic and social benefits for Xiliu to integrate into the domestic and international 'double cycle'." Zhao Qinglong said that this new business form of foreign trade has built an international trade bridge for small and micro enterprises and self-employed households in the industrial cluster area. More and more enterprises begin to export through market procurement trade, and enjoy value-added tax exemption, convenient customs clearance, exchange settlement innovation, online declaration and other preferential measures, thus solving many trade problems such as small orders, miscellaneous supplies, many varieties, no VAT invoice and so on.

According to relevant data, by the end of 2023, there were 6122 foreign trade suppliers in Xiliu, with an accumulated export of 607 million dollars.

At the same time, Xiliu is striving to promote the upgrading of professional market clusters to the whole industrial chain. Among them, to be the front end of the whole industrial chain and accelerate the development of market supporting processing industry clusters; Strengthen the middle end of the industrial chain and accelerate the quality improvement of local products; Make the end of the industrial chain alive and open up the international logistics channel.

Build e-commerce base and improve competitiveness

"The clothes are made of ice silk, so it's cool to wear them. All the products are made by our own, and the price is reasonable..." The anchor Jiang Bo is recommending the new ice silk summer clothes facing the mobile phone screen. In his studio, the amount of orders placed in one hour has exceeded 10000 yuan.

In recent years, Xiliu has made a breakthrough in building an e-commerce online celebrity live broadcast base, innovatively developed the digital commerce industry and e-commerce online celebrity economy, promoted the transformation of Xiliu market to commodity branding, supporting intelligence, and trade internationalization, and accelerated the online and offline integration and development of the physical market. Under this background, Xiliu E-commerce Industrial Park came into being.

"I used to sit at the door of the store and wait for customers. Now the anchor comes to me to pick up the goods. Every day, he broadcasts live on the Internet for several hours. At most, more than 2000 pieces can be sold in one show," said Fang Hongchang.

Song Yecai, director of Xiliu Town E-Commerce Industry Management Committee, introduced that in order to cultivate a new mode and new business type of live streaming with goods, the park not only provides working space, but also provides various convenient services to help people with entrepreneurial dreams come here to "carry out business". At the same time, professional lecturers from leading enterprises were invited to carry out training, and more than 240 online and offline training sessions were held, 16000 participants. Up to now, Xiliu Town has gathered more than 10000 anchors with goods. In 2023, the e-commerce transaction volume will be 22.1 billion yuan, and the express delivery volume will be 220 million pieces.

"The material of this dress is' graphene+nano ceramics'. It is designed and developed for cold regions, and can keep warm for 6 hours at minus 40 degrees Celsius." In Xiliu E-commerce Industrial Park, Pan Chunsheng, the operator of this high-tech outdoor vest, said that this product is popular with foreign merchants, and is exported to Europe and North America.

The reporter learned that with advanced processing technology and high-quality products, Xiliu now has a complete ice and snow clothing industry chain, forming a strong competitive advantage of Xiliu textile clothing.

"What we need most is to build our own high-end brand, which is what all businesses and enterprises growing up in Xiliu have been doing," said Pan Chunsheng.