2013-May-13 Shenzhen Daily
MORE than a dozen Shenzhen lingerie-makers exhibited their top products and told stories of their brands at a lingerie fair that ended yesterday at Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center, as the city’s underwear trade association prepares to build the brand of Shenzhen-made intimate apparel.
The three-day Shenzhen International Brand Underwear Fair, covering 51,000 square meters, highlighted widely known Shenzhen brands including Embry From, Venies and Maniform, among more than 200 exhibitors from home and abroad.
A key production base for lingerie in China, Shenzhen is home to nearly 200 underwear companies that churn out 480 million pieces of underwear annually, Zheng Bihao, head of Shenzhen Underwear Association, said at the fair’s opening ceremony Friday.
The output of the city’s lingerie-making industry totals more than 22 billion yuan (US$3.5 billion) per year on average, accounting for 10 percent of the national total and more than one-third of Guangdong Province’s total. The value of exported Shenzhen-made underwear totals about US$1.5 billion yuan every year, the association said.
To help Shenzhen underwear gain larger market shares at home and abroad, the association plans to put the collective brand of Shenzhen-made lingerie under a more intense spotlight by taking booths to other fairs and other cities in the coming months.
“It will benefit both big and small lingerie-makers as it helps the whole industry upgrade,” said Hong Youyi, deputy head of the association.
Shenzhen’s lingerie-makers also have agreed to the use of online channels to increase sales.
“We opened several online stores, and for now the Tmall store is the most successful,” Chen Xuanhan, a saleswoman for Venies’ Inthebox brand, said Friday at the fair. “Nowadays, online sales are always swifter than brick-and-mortar stores.”
Currently, online turnover accounts for 10-20 percent of the total sales of these lingerie-makers, according to the association.
