This article is from WeChat official account:20 Club (ID: quancaijing_20she)< span class="text-remarks">, author: Ma Cheng, editor: Wang Xiaoling, original title: “Behind the explosion of Caoxian County, is the nostalgia of the big city”, caption: Visual China
“Someone is hacking Cao County.” Liu Fei said, this was his first reaction when he saw “Beishang Guangcao” on Douyin as a native of Cao County.
Liu Fei didn’t know how the jokes became popular for a while, and his intuition was a black material. As the CEO of MCN Shell Video, he followed this hot spot out of curiosity. He found that a circumflex chant of “Shandong Heze Caoxian 666” by an internet celebrity might be the earliest out-of-circle content. “Netizens competed to imitate, and Cao County became a hot search.”
Liu Fei discovered that most of the people who praised Cao County didn’t know what was going on in Cao County.
Caoxian Genghuobian social network image source / Douyin
There are a total of 98 “single-character” county towns across the country, most of which are names left over from history. Among them, Shandong accounted for six. Heze Shan County, not far from Cao County, is the hometown of the Internet celebrity Dayi brother, and Linyi Fei County, not far away, is the hometown of the Internet celebrity “Ramen Brother”. Two months ago, Internet celebrities from all over the country gathered at the door of Ramen, trying to catch the popularity of the traffic.
Unlike other counties, Cao County’s “Red” has more “achievements” that can be achieved. In 2020, Cao County has a total density of 151 Taobao villages and 17 Taobao towns.Ranked second among the top 100 in the country, the main industries are costumes, Hanfu and wood products. Cao County ranks second among the top 100 Taobao counties in the country.
More than one hundred Taobao villages have propped up coffins, shrouds, performance costumes and Hanfu, these industries have a huge contrast. Hanfu is obviously Cao County’s out-of-circle password. Because of its low price, Cao County’s Hanfu has already accounted for 30% of the market.
After sorting out the background and path of Cao County’s popularity in this round, Liu Fei believes that Cao County’s pride has little to do with Cao County itself. “Many people regard Cao County as a kind of’anti-urbanization’ sustenance. The feelings of young people from small towns towards their hometown.”
In any case, Cao County has spread all over the Internet in an incredible form, ushering in its own “15-minute rule” of the Internet.
The hidden Taobao village
One of Cao County’s popular stars is a counterattack. Low-priced Hanfu is certainly not a high-end industry, but it is definitely an upgrade compared to coffins and shrouds. What’s more, before that, Cao County could not even keep his young people.
“I grew up in the county seat of Cao County, and the county seat is a very ordinary and boring place. Most students who study well will go to college and stay in the big city; those who do not study well will work in the south after graduating from junior high school early. , Mainly in electronics factories and textile factories.” said Liu Fei, who lives in Jinan. At that time, Cao County was a large exporting county. Post-80s and post-90s, more than 80% of the labor force works outside.
Indeed, for a long time, the labor income from going out to work was the main income of Cao County.
Data shows that in 2005, Cao County exported 200,000 rural laborers, and the labor income reached 1.7 billion yuan, accounting for 30% of Cao County’s total GDP. At that time, out of every 500 to 600 working-age laborers in Cao County, only 4 to 5 remained in the local area.
As for the coffin and shroud business, it is not so well-known locally. In the past, Liu Fei also had relatives and friends who made money from this kind of business, but they couldn’t get in touch with them every day, “all in the town below.”
Zhang Ling, another Cao County native who lives in the first-tier cities, also sighed on Weibo, “I took Cao County’s ID card for nothing. I really don’t know that Cao County is famous for making coffins, let alone that Cao County produces Hanfu.”< /p>
Cao County’s traditional industries mostly rely on natural resources-90% of Japan’s coffin business is won because of its abundance of tung trees, which are suitable for making coffins. In addition, Heze is an important cotton producing area in Shandong and even the country, and the textile industry has a foundation. , The shroud industry is not surprising.
But these are not the proud capital of Caoxian people. After all, there is no big enterprise like Weiqiao here, and most of them are family workshops. When away from home, when Liu Fei introduced Caoxian, he only mentioned, “An ancient historical city, the birthplace of China’s first cloned cow.”
In recent years, Liu Fei found that many people went home to start businesses. Every New Year’s Day, town and village staff will issue a “letter” to the station to welcome young migrant workers and college students returning to their hometowns to join the Taobao team. “There are a few high school friends who are doing Hanfu e-commerce and family workshops. They are not large in scale. It is easy and very rich to get 20 to 30 million turnovers every year.”
Some Cao County e-commerce bosses have begun to recruit son-in-laws, and the dowry is often an online store with millions of dollars a year.
Liu Fei said that most of his classmates who stayed in his hometown worked as civil servants. “When I chatted with them, they discussed entrepreneurship, e-commerce, and short video topics. There was not much information gap.”
Does Hanfu need culture?
Although “Coffin Shroud” made money, it failed to become the pride of Cao County. Hanfu is different.
Located in Daji Town in the south of Cao County, it is the country’s largest production base for performance costumes and Hanfu. Daji Town has a registered population of 46,000 and 18,000 registered Internet users. It is interspersed between printing factories and garment factories, and there are dozens of express delivery points, which can be packaged and sent to all parts of the country at any time.
Zhang Chi, who is only 21 years old, is the owner of an embroidery factory. After graduating from technical secondary school, he took tens of thousands of dollars and went home to start a business. He has a store of less than 50 square meters and nearly 40 embroidery machines.
Ten years ago, the costumes produced by Cao County were mainly sold to studios and film crews across the country. Zhang Chi mentioned that the craftsmanship of costumes is more complicated than ordinary clothes. Cao County specializes in embroidery, printing, sequin decoration, and garment proofing, etc., and the industrial chain is complete. But costumes generally have poor fabrics, and for family workshops, they don’t need to be designed. Just pick some ready-made styles, or process them according to external styles. The costumes are mostly one-off, so the cost is low, and the price is basically around 100 yuan.
By 2019, the performance clothing market is gradually saturated, and profits are declining. Locals found that the logic of Hanfu and performance costumes is very similar, “The factory is still the previous business, that is, it has changed to a different category.”
“Buy the design drawings online, cooperate with a few patternmakers, polish them into samples based on the drawings, and make mass production in the factory according to the samples.” Zhang Chi said that the transformation looks simple, and it also attracts many new designs by virtue of the variety of styles and low prices. Hanfu users.
Cao County quickly replicated the success of performance costumes in the Hanfu category.
According to the “2021-2017 China Hanfu Industry Market Supply and Demand Research Report”, Cao County of Heze ranks second among the top 10 merchant regions in Hanfu sales, second only to Guangzhou. The “2020 Hanfu Consumer Trend Insight Report” shows that among Hanfu users, the proportion of the same clothes who choose Hanfu at a price of 100-300 yuan is the highest, reaching 41.78%. Most Hanfu at this price comes from Cao County.
Zhang Chi also found that this kind of transformation will encounter difficulties in the future. “The consumers of Hanfu and performance clothes are completely different, and many people pay great attention to the orthodox and original design.”
In addition to the suppression of copycats by original shops, many Hanfu fans have also spontaneously organized associations to regularly publicize suspected plagiarism Hanfu.
In the opinion of a seller of Hanfu in Cao County, the local area really started from cottages and has a bad reputation in the industry. However, he believes that as the reputation increases and the industrial chain is sound, Cao County will gradually go out of its own way. For example, he also knows a few returning college students who are studying design, designing styles, taking pictures, and opening Taobao stores.
However, a person in charge of a well-known Hanfu brand believes that culture is more important than design. “Hanfu clubs have never been established in Cao County, and Hanfu-related activities are rarely organized. Most businesses are blank about Hanfu culture.” Businesses in major Hanfu production areas such as Chengdu and Guangdong are all dissatisfied with the Caoxian model.
There are even many netizens who believe that the “Hanfu” made by Cao County is actually a costume or “photo studio costume”, and they think that the tag of Hanfu is gaining popularity.
Despite the popularity of Cao County on social media, few people can name any local Hanfu brand.
Shandong, as a traditional manufacturing province, has Crouching Tigers, Hidden Dragons everywhere. An ordinary small village may have the largest single-product production base in the country. The small village of Zizhang in Hezewan, not far from Cao County, produced 80% of the fabric stools are also exported overseas; Qingdao Pingdu is the country’s largest production base for cosmetic contact lenses, supplying 70% of the country’s false eyelashes, and stimulating local employment for 50,000 people.
The vitality of these industrial bases is tenacious. Just as Cao County monopolized the performance clothing market, profits fell, but the local Hanfu market quickly discovered the emerging Hanfu market, followed up quickly, and earned the initial dividends of the industry.
But how to further establish a position in the industry and build a brand is a difficult problem for all counties and towns. In every Taobao village, the predicament is similar-there is no stable traffic and customer source, and no well-known brands. Therefore, when the live broadcast became popular, Douyin Kuaidi had dozens of accounts related to Hanfu in Cao County overnight.
The Hanfu was not popular, and Cao County unexpectedly became an internet celebrity. This still makes Zhang Chi feel the arrival of new dividends. He plans to find a few design and operation partners this year to do the original Hanfu business.