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December 16, 2009

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Home » City specials » Hangzhou

Mart an outlet for young creatives

December 16, 2009, Wednesday | Print Edition

YOUNG designers and entrepreneurs are getting the chance to expose their products at a new creative industry market. And it's the ideal place to pick up innovative Christmas gifts this weekend, Xu Wenwen reports. Original and creative products made by young designers may make Christmas gift buying in Hangzhou a little easier this year - and they can be found at the innovative West Lake Idea Mart this Sunday.

Hangzhou, the scenic city famed for its legendary West Lake tourism precinct, also boasts a booming arts and crafts industry as it shapes itself as a "National Cultural and Creative Industry Center."

West Lake Idea Mart is supported by the municipal government as a platform for young designers to sell their original products.

It can be found in two alternative locations - Longyou Road adjacent to Wulin Fashion Street, or at Xicheng Square - every first and last Sundays of the month.

The mart started last July and offers creative products from soup to nuts. It is increasingly popular among young local crafts people but has also caught the attention of out-of-town designers.

With this Sunday the last before Christmas, around 50 designer teams will market items at the Longyou Road site not usually featured, such as hand-made red reindeer dolls, snow boots and matchboxes printed with a Santa Claus pattern.

The mart's encouragement of local crafts is extended by the offsite Charm Cafe on Zhongshan Road N. which selects items on display during the weekend sales to sell in store.

Charm Cafe doubles as a cafe and retail outlet and presents itself as a venue for designers, creative business entrepreneurs and consumers to meet.

Though the cafe only opened three months ago, it has already invited heavyweight cartoonist Murong Yindao (dog cartoon character Daodao's creator) and Hiroshi Watanabe (a Japanese anime director and animator) to give lectures to young designers about how to operate creative industry businesses.

"Young designers tend to design things with low appeal and we suggest how to make products to fit the market," says Zhou Jia, manager of Charm Cafe.

The cafe features a dazzling collection of goods, like various hand-made earrings and dolls, clothes and creative toys to suit every age.

However, some goods' prices may be a bit expensive, such as a pair of silver peacock-shaped earrings for 200 yuan (US$29.30) and a cat-like bolster for 99 yuan.

Zhou explains that the creativity involved in making such items takes a lot of work. Almost all the products are hand-made and hard to manufacture by machine.

They're not only commodities but a bridge to connect the designer's and customer's feelings, she says.

Zhou cites the cat-like cushion as an example. It is seemingly easily made, but it is the product of human engineering - to stuff the cotton into it requires masterly manual work, so the elasticity won't be too soft to support the body nor too hard to be cuddly.

More importantly, the customer "adopts the cat" more than buys it. Also, every buyer is entitled to log onto the manufacturer's Website to be one of the cat's masters as well as to pick up fashion and other creative tips.

She says running a creative business was not as simple as drawing pictures on T-shirts or knitting scarves.

It requires creativity, persistence and business-savvy, and with these it can generate huge added value.

According to cafe owner Benny Yu, thanks to the government's support of offering the mart venue for a low rent of 50-100 yuan a day, every booth's turnover ranges from several thousand yuan to tens of thousands yuan a day.

Kuzo Cultural Innovation Co is one of the designer teams using the mart.

Run by four graduates and undergraduates studying industrial design, it focuses on producing fashionable creative china, such as rain boot-shaped vases.

Their best-seller - a Golden China shoe imitating Nike's Air Force 1 - is designed for use as a flowerpot and ashtray and sells for 200 yuan. The first batch of 100 sold out in two months.

The rapid success they've enjoyed has startled the new young entrepreneurs.

"We didn't know how much to sell the products at the beginning, so we applied low prices to promote them," recalls Xiang Shanshan, one of the operators of Kuzo.

"Yet we met a customer at an expo who is a professional antique collector and he suggested we charge more as they are art works, not daily commodities," she says. "We tried and found they sold better."

The strategy has led to a big order from Siemens to produce 100 porcelain dolls looking like a Siemens sound box wearing an earphone.

According to a recent governmental survey, Hangzhou's cultural and creative industries in the first three quarters of the year generated added-value of 41.31 billion yuan, accounting for 11.9 percent of the city's GDP.

Date: December 20

Address: Longyou Road (across Wulin Street, where Zhejiang Oscar Movie World is located)

Hangzhou


 

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