Nantong turns to e-commerce to grow customer base and income,Hu Yongqi and Zhu Xudong report.

The home textile industry in Nantong, an industrial hub in Jiangsu province, is turning to e-commerce to increase its income in the era of the Internet.

More than 400,000 people work in the industry in the city’s Chuanjiang township and neighboring towns and have created 60 billion yuan ($9.45 billion) in annual revenue, enabling it to become a pillar sector of the local economy.

Back in the 1970s, some farmers in Nantong’s Tongzhou district secretly traded government-issued coupons for food, meat and cloth. Local women who didn’t have access to such trading turned to embroidery to make extra money for their families.

To the surprise of many, the embroidery became popular in cities such as Shanghai and Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province. Other embroiderers then joined the business and started to extend their trading to fabrics such as velvet, lace and linen.

A production worker at a textile plant in Nantong, Jiangsu province. [XU CONGJUN FOR CHINA DAILY]

As China began reforms and opening-up in the late 1970s, the local government erected makeshift booths for vendors in a 1.6-hectare area.

Gong Lihua, 62, was one of the few trading home textile items in 1980.

Instead of renting a booth, Gong carried a large bag with more than 600 pillowcases to each house looking for sales.

He also took his pillowcases to Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province in Northeast China, once and earned 1,000 yuan, 50 times what he earned in one month working in a factory.

Two years later, he quit his factory job and started traversing many regions of China selling his pillowcases.

From then until 1997, Gong continued his own business selling pillowcases and other textile products, earning at least 1 million yuan in annual net income.

More than 10 years ago, Tongzhou published a series of policies to support the textile industry.

Following this, small and medium-sized enterprises sprang up like mushrooms after rainfall in the spring in Chuangjiang township and its surrounding areas.

In 2006, Nantong Textile Plaza opened to textile businesspeople in the city, which helped create a complete industrial chain ranging from fabrics, exhibitions and research and development to warehousing and logistics. The facility is the biggest textile trade and service center in China.

That same year, Gong Yifeng graduated from college and introduced e-commerce to his father Gong Lihua, who until then was unaware of the power of the Internet.

“I couldn’t understand terms such as Internet marketing and e-commerce, but my son insisted on inviting professionals to give us lectures,” Gong Lihua said.

The elder Gong supported his son’s choice to explore the new Internet channels, a decision that proved to be wise, even in a heated market for foreign trade.

The son registered the Kouzi brand, which generated 140 million yuan in revenue last year, with a profit margin of more than 10 percent.

The Internet has been embraced and utilized by the young generation, which is changing the business model of its predecessors.

Another local Huang Niaofei, 26, also quit his job to run an online shop. Six months later, he started to sell textile sets wholesale to online shop owners, a more profitable business than running his own shop.

During the next three years, he sold textile items worth 10 million yuan.

“We provide a complete chain of services. Online shop owners can see photos of the target items and get the goods in a short time. Now I have more than 5,000 regular customers,” Huang said.

The textile industry has also created opportunities for other professions in Nantong.

The top three logistics companies send about 90,000 items to other cities each day. In total, more than 150,000 items are delivered daily to destinations dotted around the country.

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