A sign identifying the costume garment component market in Sunzhuang Village, Daji Town, Caoxian County, Heze City, Shandong Province, straddles the main street that it is located on. The market features a variety of materials used in costume production and the participation of more than 1,600 people involved with various aspects of the costume industry.

AliResearch, the Alibaba Group’s research arm, defines a “Taobao Village” as a village in which residents got started in e-commerce primarily via the Taobao Marketplace consumer-to-consumer retail platform, at least 10 percent of families are actively engaged in e-commerce or where there are at least 100 active online stores, and total online sales exceed RMB10 million (US$1.56 million) per year, and a “Taobao Town” as a town, township, or sub-district that encompasses at least three Taobao Villages.

A “Taobao Village Cluster” refers to a county, district, or county-level city that is home to at least 10 Taobao Villages; a “Large Taobao Village Cluster” refers to those with at least 30; and a “Super-large Taobao Village Cluster” refers to those with at least 100.

Well-known for its fashionable costumes and home to 151 Taobao Villages and 17 Taobao Towns, Caoxian County, Heze City, Shandong Province, is the second Super-large Taobao Village Cluster in China and also home to the largest industry cluster producing costumes used in performances and special events in the country.

The rapid e-commerce development that has occurred in Sunzhuang in recent years has enabled it to transform from an isolated agricultural villages into a prospering Taobao Village – a title it has maintained for nine consecutive years. Locals jokingly refer to it as the “centre of the county” as a large costume garment component market that was established has attracted the participation of more than 1,600 people involved with various aspects of the industry from nearby townships and even other provinces who have come in search of success and prosperity. Over 70% of Sunzhuang’s 760-plus households now operate stores on platforms such as Taobao and Tmall – the business-to-consumer (B2C) online retail platform that was spun off from it in 2011 – while the rest either run clothing factories or manage delivery services.

A view of the interior of a commercial warehouse used to store costumes and other garments located at Dajii Town’s Taobao Industrial Park. One of Shandong Province’s key poverty alleviation projects, the industrial park was designed to boost employment and incomes in the market town, received RMB900 million yuan of total investment, and features the involvement of dozens of enterprises engaged in garment production and distribution.

Observing that residents in the neighbouring village of Dinglou were earning much higher incomes engaging in e-commerce than they did before doing so and that it became a Taobao Village in 2013, the village's official Sun Xueping began encouraging its young people to give Taobao a try due to the fact that youth tend to love technology and are receptive to new things. He also invited e-commerce experts from central Caoxian to deliver educational lectures and took groups of Sunzhuang’s inhabitants to Dinglou to learn from its e-commerce participants’ experiences a number of times. More and more Sunzhuang residents started getting involved as they witnessed young people who were seemingly idle farmers not long ago began buying cars and new homes after achieving success on Taobao. From 2014 to 2018, everyone who had left the village in order to pursue better-paying work elsewhere had returned and launched their own online stores. Natives pursuing higher education in other areas also began to return and brought advanced skills and concepts that helped fuel Sunzhuang’s e-commerce development back with them.

Sunzhuang paved its roads in order to improve its transportation and logistics and the market specialising in fashionable garment components that it established made a variety of materials available for costume manufacturers and people who operate online stores in the surrounding area, which boosted the industry, significantly lowered costs, and helped give rise to a costume accessories industry cluster that includes aspects such as textile production, embroidery, sewing, photography and design.

Boosting Sales with Innovation

Mostly involved in the costume industry, the village’s residents pay close attention to various television programmes and trends for inspiration. In 2015, Sunzhuang native Sun Guoqiang designed a costume featuring elements depicting jasmine plants after seeing a foreigner perform a jasmine-themed dance on a TV show known as “Brilliant Chinese” for example, which, with the surging popularity of the show, became his first hit product and was a best-seller for several months. Sun’s wedding ceremony also drew wide attention that year. All of the groomsmen and bridesmaids at the wedding were Taobao store operators and were dressed in traditional red Chinese wedding attire that he designed and produced, and the couple’s attendants rode to the venue in motorised delivery tricycles. The bride’s dowry was also unique – two Taobao stores that have received four diamonds on its one-to-five-diamond system, indicating that they have received thousands of positive comments, were presented.

In 2016, a child dancing in a monkey costume on the “Spring Festival Gala” television special broadcast on the eve of Chinese New Year in celebration of the upcoming Year of the Monkey inspired Sunzhuang’s inhabitants to create a monkey costume featuring elements of 16th-century classic Chinese novel “Journey to the West,” and it also became a hit product. All of the village’s clothing factories began producing the costume in order to meet demand, and its residents ultimately generated more than RMB10 million in sales.

In 2020, performances and celebrations throughout China began to become subject to restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused Sunzhuang’s online costume store owners and operators to suffer a significant decline in sales. They began promoting products like Hanfu – a term for the traditional dress of the Han people that covers many styles but often consists of a loose, sleeved upper garment and a skirt-like lower garment– and cosplay costumes on video-sharing platforms as live commerce started becoming popular in the country in response to the situation, however, which resulted in revenue actually increasing during the pandemic rather than decreasing.

Sunzhuang dweller Liu Mingcui and his wife Fan Qunying have also benefited from e-commerce by selling handmade steamed buns to consumers located throughout the country on a platform that originally connected farmers with consumers and has since expanded to connecting merchants and consumers across multiple product categories as well as a major e-commerce platform in addition to locals.

“We receive more than 500 orders a day at times,” Liu mentioned with a sweet smile in 2021. “I use aged yeast, which contributes to their pure flavour and popularity.”

For more information, please contact WFP China COE (wfpcn.coe@wfp.org)