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November 14, 2014

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Home » City specials » Hangzhou

Yuhang, city of designers, a creative center

By Xu Wenwen | November 14, 2014, Friday | Print Edition

YU Yue remembers roads lined with seemingly endless stalls selling bamboo products during her childhood in Baizhang Village in Yuhang, Hangzhou.

When she returned home as a young woman after studying finance in the US, she was almost surprised that the situation hadn’t changed. She found her family business that manufactured bamboo products such as chopsticks and chopping boards was still wholesaling to middlemen and retailing to these stall sellers, just as all the other local factories had done for decades.

Then in her 20s, Yu decided to change her family’s business. Last year, she started up an online store on taobao.com for her family business, Lifeng Bamboo, and within months the family’s sales figure doubled.

The success influenced Yu’s neighbors in Baizhang Village, who in less a year also joined the e-commerce business mode and are now gaining benefit from it.

“We have adjusted our product design according to the sales online,” said Ni Guowei, manager of Suncha Bamboo, another large manufacturer. “The sales push us to develop more products and design more practical products.”

The brand recently designed a large bamboo chopping board especially for the northern Chinese market, because its salesmen found that northern Chinese people often use chopping boards to roll dough. Wooden chopping boards, common in northern China, are likely to crack in the cold winter. The new product won lots of customers online.

Before these manufacturers started competition on the Internet, they made very similar products, without much deviation. But since going into e-commerce, that has changed.

“We found that customers are actually voting products and designs through their purchase,” said another local bamboo factory manager.

Consequently, design instead of cost reduction has become a priority among these manufacturers.

It is just one example of how “creation” is an important factor in growing the economy and industries in Yuhang, a county-level city, where the GDP rose 10.2 percent last year. In 2013, Yuhang’s cultural and creative industries’ added value was calculated at over 18 billion yuan (US$2.94 billion).

Supporting the numbers are the industrial clusters headed by Taobao City — the office building of Alibaba, Xixi Wetland Film and TV Industry Base, Liangzhu Jade Culture Industry Park and others.

The 20,000-square-meter Wuchang Creative and Cultural Industry Park, where many design firms are located, earned revenues of 250 million yuan last year.

That meant “1 square meter generated over 10,000 yuan, much higher than manufacturing industry’s yield,” said Yao Zhihua, deputy director of Wuchang Community.

Pinwu, a leading design firm in Yuhang, has won dozens of international design awards, including the Salone Satellite Award, the Red Dot Design Award “Best of The Best” and the Elle Decor Award China, for its series of products named “From Yuhang.”

The name “From Yuhang” was used because designers were inspired by traditional old concepts and methods used to make handicrafts in Yuhang. For example, Pinwu created a paper chair after studying paper umbrellas, and it made silk into a warm coat after dipping into the silk floss techniques. It also designed flexible bamboo stools when the team researched Yuhang bamboo products.

The designers use Yuhang’s resources and help Yuhang on the international stage, and today the local Yuhang government is using that reputation for a new initiative called “To Yuhang,” which is expected to lure more and more designers.

At the beginning of next year, a park will be ready for the project, featuring zones adapted from three old factories’ workshops. Included will be a library providing design books, another library offering information about traditional materials, and there will be studios for designers and handicraftsman, as well as exhibition halls and boutique stores selling designers’ works.

“We attract talent, talent will build teams, and these teams will form the industrial cluster,” said Luo Weijuan, deputy director of Yuhang Creative and Cultural Industry Office.

“Our aim is to build the county’s first city-level design center.”

Hangzhou


 

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