The rise and fall of the "fur capital"
Our reporter Wen Jicong
Tongerbao Town, a small town in Dengta City, Liaoyang City, Liaoning Province, has a registered population of about 40,000.
It is a famous tourist and shopping attraction in Northeast China. Since the reform and opening up, it has developed from a remote town into the "Fur Capital of China". It is the three major bases for fur production, processing and sales in China together with Xinji in Hebei and Haining in Zhejiang.
40 years of ups and downs, bitterness and glory.
The reporter recently came to the town to conduct research and interviews.
Ups and downs in the sea of business
Jiang Yong is a bus driver in Dandong, Liaoning Province. He is mainly responsible for the "Dandong-Tong Erbao" shopping tour in winter.
On February 16, the lowest temperature in Dandong reached minus 13 degrees Celsius, and Tong Erbao was a few degrees lower, but this did not affect everyone's enthusiasm for shopping.
At 6 o'clock in the morning, a bus full of 53 people departed from Dandong and arrived at Tong Erbao 4 hours later.
The reporter went there by car and saw huge billboards in many fur malls along the way.
Tourist buses from Dandong, Fushun and other places, and private cars from surrounding cities such as Shenyang, Anshan, and Tieling, arrive at Tongerbao continuously.
"The leather down jacket I just bought cost only 1,000 yuan, which is at least 30% higher in other places." Li Dan, a tourist from Xinfu District, Fushun City, showed reporters the treasures he found.
The development of Tongerbao can be traced back to the mid-1980s. The market economy was just sprouting in the countryside. Tongerbao people began to make clothes and sew trousers, started small businesses, and slowly formed their own markets.
In 1991, the lighthouse held the on-site office meeting of Tong Erbao Clothing Wholesale Market, and decided to raise 1.2 million yuan to build a large market of 4,000 square meters.
"What a determination!" said Jiang Zuoxiang, deputy secretary of the Tongerbao Town Party Committee, "the meeting that year set the policy of 'three priorities' - market construction, individual and private ownership, and leather clothing industry. Lord. From then on, Tong Erbao leather suits on the fast lane of development.”
The clothing market was built in just 3 months.
The number of individual leather garment processing households in the market has surged, with nearly 10,000 passengers per day and a turnover of up to one million yuan.
This greatly enhanced the confidence of Tong Erbao people.
In 1996, Ai Yingli had the first "big brother" in his life. Now he is the chairman of Liaoning Weidaier Clothing Co., Ltd. He has tasted the sweetness since the beginning of business.
But it didn't last long.
Tong Erbao's rough development and family workshop-style production and operation model lead to too single leather products, and problems are constantly exposed.
Around 2000, Tong Erbao was deserted at once, and 5 of the 7 market halls in the town were closed.
Faced with this situation, Tong Erbao people faced the difficulties and continued to find their way.
After 2000, fur became popular in Northeast China. People in Tongerbao started fur retailing and invested in building factories. By 2006, Tongerbao market began to transform and upgrade from leather to fur industry.
"Tong Erbao has come to life." Ai Yingli started fur business in 2006, he said: "Since then, Tong Erbao's leather fur industry has gradually formed an integrated industrial chain, covering breeding, tanning, processing, testing, Sales, etc., the industrial agglomeration effect is prominent." Zhejiang-based Haining Leather City entered Tongerbao and established Tongerbao Haining Leather City Co., Ltd.
Tongerbao Town has now built eight leather and fur processing parks with a total area of 540,000 square meters, with an annual production capacity of 4 million pieces (sets) and more than 30,000 industry-related personnel in the town.
Transformation always comes with pain.
"In recent years, the Internet economy has been raging, coupled with the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, physical shopping malls have been hit to a certain extent, and the fur industry of Tongerbao has ushered in the test again." said Xia Yifeng, general manager of Tongerbao Haining Leather City Co., Ltd.
Live e-commerce bursts into new energy
"This new leather and denim coat has a fashionable color scheme, and it is warm and thin. If you like it, hurry up and place an order!" At Tong Erbao Haining Leather City E-commerce Live Broadcasting Center, "PP Original" anchor Pan Pan was in The Douyin live broadcast room recommends the clothes on the body to fans.
In recent years, live-streaming e-commerce has flourished, while physical stores have begun to decline due to the impact of the epidemic. In order to reverse this situation, Tong Erbao has explored building a whole-industry-chain e-commerce base to accelerate transformation.
In November 2020, the Northeast's first fur-like Douyin e-commerce live broadcast base jointly built by the Dengta Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government, Douyin E-commerce, and Tongerbao Haining Leather City settled in Tongerbao Haining Leather City.
Short video live broadcast e-commerce is booming in Tong Erbao.
"The rise of live-streaming e-commerce has brought a timely rain to merchants." Wang Yu, general manager of "PP Original", said that he started live-streaming on Douyin in February last year, and currently has nearly 120,000 fans.
"We used to have a small brick-and-mortar store in the second phase of Haining Leather City, which could sell about 2,000 pieces of clothes a year; in the year when the live broadcast was launched, more than 6,000 pieces were sold."
"I started live broadcasting on Kuaishou in April 2019, and now I have closed all physical stores." said Zhang Rongming, the person in charge of "Mayfair's Strict Selection", "because live broadcasting is more profitable. In the past, the annual sales of physical stores were about 3 million yuan. , and now the sales of live broadcasts can exceed 10 million yuan per year."
In Tong Erbao, e-commerce live broadcasting has formed a complete industrial chain.
Every afternoon until late at night, Tongerbao Haining Leather City E-commerce Industry Incubation Base is in full swing.
The anchors were busy showing their clothes, the customer service staff responded to multiple after-sales accounts, the tally staff were looking for delivery, and the trucks of the courier company drove in and out one by one...
At present, Tongerbao e-commerce is developing towards bases. There are 8 large-scale e-commerce live broadcast bases, with an e-commerce business area of nearly 400,000 square meters. There are more than 1,000 e-commerce supply chain enterprises (merchants) in the town, covering clothing. , cosmetics, food and other categories.
"We give full play to the advantages of industrial clusters, integrate the upstream and downstream service resources of e-commerce live broadcast, from basic properties to supply chain support, to provide effective guarantee for merchants' one-stop live broadcast service." Tong Erbao E-commerce Network Technology Co., Ltd. Deputy General Manager Gao Gao Lixue said.
Why has Tong Erbao e-commerce live broadcast developed so rapidly?
Qu Rengang, Secretary of the Party Committee of Tongerbao Town, said that people, goods and venues are the three elements of e-commerce live broadcast, and Tongerbao has everything.
The humorous and witty Northeast dialect of Tong Erbao's anchor is unique, and the commodities have a certain price advantage. The franchise market and industrial plants have become the "main battlefield" for bringing goods.
The hot e-commerce live broadcast has drummed up the pockets of Tong Erbao people.
The town has more than 1,800 platform anchors and nearly 20,000 people engaged in e-commerce-related industries, driving the revitalization of assets in the town and the development of e-commerce with an area of over 200,000 square meters.
In 2021, Tongerbao leather fur market sales will be 14.2 billion yuan, of which e-commerce sales will be 4.5 billion yuan.
Don't be afraid of challenges
In mid-to-late February, I was walking in Tong Erbao Fashion Industrial Park and saw no one.
"We gradually stopped production in January." Ai Yingli said, "Our production has obvious periodicity. Generally, we start production in June every year, receive orders in July, and do OEM for many big fur brands. Autumn is the peak season, etc. Work will stop early next year.”
This revealed a common problem faced by Tong Erbao fur manufacturers - the situation of "working for half a year and idle for half a year" still exists.
"We still have many difficulties and challenges." Qu Rengang said bluntly, Tong Erbao's innovation ability is not strong enough, the original design ability of leading industries is insufficient, and its competitive advantage has declined.
Faced with bottlenecks and pressures, Tongerbao people did not stop there, but continued to explore breakthroughs.
Tong Erbao clarified its development goals for the next few years: to consolidate the leading industry of leather and fur, and to build a nationally renowned light industry city.
Strive to increase the annual production capacity of Four Seasons clothing to 8 million pieces (sets) by the end of 2025; the area of various operating markets will reach 1.5 million square meters, and the online and offline transaction volume will achieve 30 billion yuan.
Pan Hong, executive dean of the Digital Economy Research Institute of Liaoning University, suggested that Tong Erbao has already added the wings of live e-commerce to traditional industries. In the future, it should highlight fashionable and younger designs, promote domestic and international cross-regional cooperation, and further enhance brand value. .
Qu Rengang said that on the one hand, it is necessary to gather industrial strength, continuously enrich the market format, strengthen the leading industry of leather clothing and fur, and create a gathering place for leather clothing and fur.
On the other hand, accelerate industrial upgrading, build a nationally renowned light industry city, actively introduce domestic and foreign well-known brands to settle in, highlight the industrial characteristics of Tongerbao area, and accelerate the transformation and upgrading of enterprises to non-leather clothing and other light industries.
Wen Jicong