The New Mainland Garment Wholesale Market

Over the past three decades of reform and opening-up, the garment industry in China has seen fast development.Liuhua Garments Commercial Circle has had a prominent place in Guangdong Province's wholesale garment market, and even the greater China market. The area boasts varied styles of clothes and a large number of vendors selling to niche clients. As an important part of Liuhua Garments Commercial Circle, New Mainland Garment Wholesale Market is a professional large-scale marketplace which realized the importance of subdividing the market and brand building at a very early stage. In keen market competition, New Mainland Garment Wholesale Market has gone through ups and downs, transforming from a state-owned operation into a joint venture, and finally returning to state ownership. However, it has continually striven to build a professional market environment and brands for its vendors.

    Not long after the 2008 China Liuhua International Garment Festival's conclusion, China Today interviewed Zhang Zhanxin, general manager of New Mainland Hotel in Guangzhou.

    China Today: Most of New Mainland's business was formerly tied up in hotels. What circumstances lead to the company's involvement in the garment business?

    Mr. Zhang: Once an enterprise matures, it will have its own future development and maybe it won't need us as its "incubator" any more. But we don't consider this a bad thing. A brand becoming successful in the New Mainland Market is the best result for us. Those successful brands serve as models for our future work. In fact, it is a win-win result, as only by continuously cultivating new brands can our New Mainland Garment Wholesale Market keep thriving in the long run.

    Mr. Zhang: The New Mainland Hotel is a subsidiary of the China Import and Export Fair (aka Canton Fair). Every year when the fair is held, the hotel provides accommodation for a lot of guests and many of them rent rooms as demonstration areas for their commodities. Not long ago the Canton Fair started to be held at the exhibition hall on Liuhua Road, and the garment market on Zhanqian Road flourished. As our hotel is quite near both these places, we decided to take the opportunity and reconstructed 500 rooms of the hotel and turned them into a garment wholesale market.

    China Today: The reconstruction must have been a huge project?

    Mr. Zhang: Yes, of course. In fact at the beginning our customers weren't satisfied with hotel rooms that had been turned into shops. Most vendors in the district are famous domestic brands, such as Yingwei, Chengjiu and Yilun, etc, who attach great importance to their brand image. They also value the market environment very much. But the outward appearance of our original building looked ragged and old, and the interior decoration of each shop was also not good enough. So we couldn't attract famous brand vendors despite our good location. Therefore, we have invested over RMB 20 million since 1999 to refurnish our market, which covers eight floors. We installed cargo elevators inside and built huge glass walls outside. In this way our New Mainland Garment Market was set up "with the facilities of a high-class office building and the management of a star-rated hotel."

    China Today: Can you elaborate on that last statement?

    Mr. Zhang: This is an important idea underlying our management. "The facilities of a high-class office building" refers to a novel feature of New Mainland Market. We installed broadband and digital TV interfaces in every shop. We have introduced the use of advanced management software and set up a market website to make sure that everybody has access to information. Here in the market all the public computers have Chinese and English interfaces for the convenience of foreign customers. In terms of providing the management of a star-rated hotel, our security staff make an inspection every 45 minutes to ensure safety during transactions. Purchasers come here to take a look at the samples and place orders, and then they can leave, because the following procedures can be handled online. As we can't do much about prices and other transaction-related issues for our customers, we try to provide them with as much market information as we can, and help them get firsthand information to study market trends, in the hope that the overall garment business will flourish.

    China Today: 2008 was an unusual year for the Chinese garment industry. Many problems emerged, such as difficulties with market positioning. Many markets introduced same brands and same quality goods, causing some to close down amid keen competition. How has the New Mainland Garment Wholesale Market tackled these problems?

    Mr. Zhang: From the very beginning our market was different from others in the commercial circle. We focused on one aspect and paid a lot of attention to subdividing the market instead of developing a comprehensive marketplace. In 2000, we found the woolen textiles wholesale market had a promising future. So we provided all kinds of preferential treatment to attract vendors in that field and initiated the professional woolen textiles wholesale market in Guangzhou. It still stands as the largest woolen textiles wholesale market in the city, or even in China. Now we have more than 600 woolen textiles vendors, including most of the manufacturers of Guangdong Province, perhaps most in the whole country. The products here are mainly sold to Indonesia, the Philippines, the United States, Russia, the European Union and the Arab world. The point is how to subdivide the market and take the right market orientation. Here I can give a small example:the Liuhua branch of the Guangzhou Agricultural Bank located in our building took third place in Guangzhou in terms of business volume in its first year of operation, surpassing many other, long-established bank branches.