HEFEI, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Inside a busy workshop in an eastern Chinese town, embroidery machines hummed in unison, each with 48 needles dancing on snow-white wedding dresses to create various floral motifs.
"The pattern being embroidered requires a total of 81,376 stitches. The machines start to work automatically after the pattern has been input into the computer, which is quite efficient," said a worker on-site with the New Era Wedding Dress Company in Dingji Town of Lu'an City, Anhui Province.
Despite being situated in a mountainous region, Dingji is the place to go for trendy bridal gowns in China. Over 500 relevant manufacturing companies and more than 600 online shops are based in the small town, with nearly half of its 33,000 residents working in the industrial chain.
In 2022, the wedding dress industry generated an annual output value of 2.4 billion yuan (about 345.2 million U.S. dollars) for Dingji, with the total export value hitting 100 million yuan.
Aided by a logistics system on par with those in big cities, Dingji was able to send out nearly 5 million wedding dresses around the country and beyond last year, or 13,000 pieces per day on average, according to Huang Min, an official with the town.
The peak season of wedding dresses began after the Spring Festival, which, according to Huang, will last till May. A significant rebound in the market is expected this year, as companies are working at full capacity to meet their deadlines," said Huang, adding that roughly 400,000 wedding dresses made in Dingji have been shipped elsewhere since the beginning of this year.
For instance, the New Era Wedding Dress Company has received an influx of orders from both domestic and international markets, with delivery dates scheduled till the end of March, according to the company.
Dingji's wedding dress manufacturing started blossoming over ten years ago. Many natives of Dingji who had worked in Huqiu, another major wedding dress manufacturing base in Suzhou City, east China's Jiangsu Province, were attracted by the hometown's favorable policies and returned to start their own businesses.
Xu Changying, the owner of New Era, came back in 2010. He said that a whole industrial chain covering design, embroidery, sewing and customization of wedding dresses has been formed in Dingji over the years.
In response to the ever-changing market, manufacturers are constantly striving to keep up with the latest fashion trends. "Changes happen almost every month in terms of popular styles, materials and patterns, among others," said Jiang Houhui, owner of a wedding dress store in Dingji. "Over the past three years, we have updated the designs of hundreds of dresses."
In Jiang's store, traditional Chinese red wedding gowns, which have been in vogue in China in recent years, are displayed alongside western-style white wedding dresses.
She has noticed a new opportunity to expand her business. "More brides tend to buy a wedding dress nowadays as a souvenir instead of renting one, and the dress can also be worn for wedding registration, travel photography and anniversaries," said Jiang.
Building on its established fame, Dingji has launched a "wedding dress town" project that integrates production, marketing, photography, and runway shows in a planned area of 3.15 square km. The first phase of this project has already attracted about 220 shops, including Jiang's store.
"In the future, we will dig deeper into developing cultural tourism by designing travel routes, displaying the culture of wedding dresses as well as different wedding customs, so as to make our pillar industry even more diversified," said Huang, the Dingji Town official.
A single purchase
