Image source @ Visual China
Text | Kaiboluocaijing, author | Liang Lishuang, Editor | Golden Dragon
Entering April, the flower season is coming, and wearing Hanfu to take pictures is popular again.
Take Beijing, for example, the cherry blossoms of Yuyuantan, the plums of Daguanyuan, and the magnolias of the Summer Palace have all bloomed, and the flower viewing army has quickly occupied the major flower viewing points, and girls wearing Hanfu appear in the crowd from time to time, together with flowers, becoming the target of long guns and short cannons in the photographer's hand.
In the past two years, it is no longer a new thing to wear Hanfu to play in the streets, and some companies with a relaxed atmosphere can even accept employees to wear Hanfu to work. When Hanfu became a trend chased by young people, entrepreneurs poured in, not only Cao County in Heze City, Shandong Province, relied on the Hanfu industry to go out of the circle, but also led to the development of Hanfu accessories, photography, design, makeup and other surrounding industrial chains.
The Hanfu brand returned to Hantang and more than thirteen, and the "Three Pits Collection Store" twelve light years and the ancient style photography plate Women's Square were favored by many capital parties such as Tencent, Station B, and Bubble Mart, with a single round of investment of up to more than 100 million yuan. Ai Media Consulting data predicts that the sales scale of China's Hanfu will exceed 10 billion yuan in 2021.
Some financing situations of Hanfu related industries are sorted out according to public information
However, the Hanfu circuit, which has developed for nearly 10 years, is still mixed. Some practitioners vividly commented, "The road has not been paved, and it is inevitable to walk on it."
In fact, the "Hanfu Girls" are deeply touched by this, and their steps, flowing clothes, and laughter in front of the camera are mixed with a lot of spitting sounds. Spending money, spending time, spending thoughts and easily stepping on the pit is the most common slot point.
For consumers, whether it is a small white or a senior enthusiast, from buying to wearing, it may be pitted. Inexperienced little white players only look good, the result of buying cottage goods, poor quality is not yet the version; advanced players pay attention to the overall sense of atmosphere, not only have to buy hairpins, makeup, about photography, but also to participate in various festivals, travel activities; some higher-level players also smell the wind, trying to pan for gold in the Hanfu business, such as opening a Hanfu shop, learning makeup and participating in the catwalk through the registration training class, etc., and as a result, spending money to find that the makeup class is not worthy of the name, want to be a model but is a bad businessman white prostitute, suffered a lot.
So, what are the pits in wearing Hanfu, and how should consumers avoid it? Around the industrial chain of Hanfu, can you make money? The 10 billion-scale Hanfu circuit, is it a real fire or a virtual fire? This article attempts to answer these questions.
Little White Player: Wearing Hanfu, you can also be pitted
"Go out on vacation and wear Hanfu, taking pictures must be very film!" Many people's first hanfu was purchased for traveling and taking pictures, but it was often indispensable to get into the pit.
The first is the quality of Hanfu itself.
After 95, she grew up watching costume TV dramas, and gradually developed the idea of buying Hanfu after working. The first set of Hanfu was ordered impulsively because I "thought the design looked good", which was a clear-made stand-up collar cardigan, and when I bought it, I found that the fabric around the embroidery was a little wrinkled. She thought it was normal, until she saw that someone on the "Hanfu Tree Cave" also said that this problem was not good.
Hanfu Tree Cave is a place dedicated to complaining and consulting Hanfu-related issues. Here, the comrades complained about the pits that had been stepped on by buying Hanfu, consulted whether a certain Hanfu was worth buying, and exchanged experiences in idle fish. After learning to look at the tree hole, she found that the reason why she felt that the fabric was wrinkled was normal was because she did not treat Hanfu as a normal dress.
Hanfu should first meet the basic requirements as a costume.
For example, Heyuan bought a set of Song Hanfu to wear in the summer, but the fabric of the main belt was very thick and breathless, and it was wet after a day of wear, and the fatal thing was that it would change color when it met the water.
"Hanfu Girl" has a set of black words to communicate and avoid pitfalls:
"Rollover" refers to the inconsistency between the physical object and the pre-sale drawing, generally mostly the quality problems such as the horse-faced skirt fried pleats and loose pleats, the skirt door is crooked, the color difference is serious, the data error is large, and the embroidery pattern is not on the right board.
"Snakeskin" refers to poor sewing threads and untidy stitching of clothes.
"Incoming material" refers to buying the finished cloth yourself and sending the cloth to the tailor to customize the clothes.
The "Old Collection of Confucius" refers to more than 8,000 pieces of Ming and Qing dynasty costumes unearthed in Confucius, which can be called "half of the history of Ming Dynasty costumes".
"Imitation of Kongfu" refers to the imitation of the crown in the old collection of Confucius, such as the common flower and bird skirts and round necks.
Incorrect shape and layout are also seen as quality issues.
As a symbol of national costumes and traditional culture, more and more enthusiasts regard the correct shape as the basic requirement of a Hanfu. The Taobao 2020 Hanfu Consumption Trend Insight Report shows that Hanfu during the Ming Dynasty, Song Dynasty and Tang Dynasty is the most popular. But it is not easy to buy the correct hanfu with the correct shape.
"The Tang Style Skirt and Wei Jinfeng, which are very popular in the post-95 generation, including the Song pants with elastic bands, actually do not have the support of relevant excavated cultural relics, but because they are good-looking, convenient to wear, and many, merchants are willing to do it." Yun Qing in Hangzhou is a staunch form party. She believes that the correct form must be supported by excavated cultural relics, otherwise it is "doubtful".
Sources of the Outline of the Development of the Ancient Hanfu System / China Textile Publishing House", "General Theory of Hanfu"
Her experience is to make sure the shape is correct and then look at the fit. That is to say, first of all, there must be a "good" form in history, and secondly, the layout can be required to be "good".
To see how the layout is, you have to look at the merchant on the product detail page to put a tile map. "I wouldn't buy Hanfu without a tiled drawing, and the fit must be catty." Yun Qing summed up.
In addition to the quality problem, wearing Hanfu not only costs money but also needs to wait for a long construction period, and even takes time, but does not wait for clothes.
There are high-end brands in Hanfu, a set of Minghuatang Hanfu, the average price is nearly 10,000 yuan, and the single piece of Nanjing Yunjin is hundreds of thousands. However, in general, the price of a complete set of Hanfu is between 300-500 yuan, and the price of cabbage hanfu is 100-300 yuan.
However, because Hanfu-related brands are mainly small online brands, a set of Hanfu can not only be bought with money, but also needs to take time to wait. In the Hanfu circle, pre-sales of 45 days and a long construction period are very common, and even some construction periods can be as long as one or two years.
Lan Ruoting's explosive Hanfu "Spring Color Here", because there are too many people to buy, the factory can not do it, and it is called "Autumn Color Here" on social platforms.
Some merchants not only have a long construction period but also delay the construction period, but also complain about the delay: "I bought hanfu in order to participate in the Flower Dynasty Festival activities, but when it comes to the pre-sale time, the merchants delay the delivery, the construction period is delayed again and again, and the festival has not been shipped after the festival." ”
High-end customized products like Minghuatang can last as little as a few months or as much as a year or two. Into the pit for many years of yue yue introduction, "Minghuatang's wedding dress is very famous, marriage is such a life event and do not want to rent clothes, you can only wait for one or two years of construction, in order to wait for the wedding dress to postpone the wedding date there are also many people." She joked, "Love doesn't last long." ”
Even if the construction period is long, the most feared thing is to wait until the last flow. The essence of "Hanfu Group" is a group purchase activity, the buyer pays the deposit first, the order quantity is full, the store cuts the order "into a group", and the factory takes orders and begins mass production. When the order volume is not enough, it will "flow", the activity will be invalidated, and the store will refund the deposit. For the buyer, it took two or three months before being told that it was a group.
Another problem that plagues Xiao Bai is that the Hanfu that costs money and time is difficult to take care of and difficult to change hands.
Merchants use TENCEL, human silk and other fabrics as a selling point, increase the unit price, but for buyers, although comfortable to wear, but the fabric is delicate and difficult to manufacture, difficult to take care of, the way of washing, ironing, and even the water temperature have high requirements.
"Usually, I wear less, and I have to provide, and in the end, I either put it on the ashes or hang it on the second-hand platform." Many small white buyers face such problems after buying Hanfu. And because some merchants will reduce prices in the later stage, and the price of cabbage is more and more, the difficulty of second-hand transfer is not small.
Advanced players: makeup, photography, is the big pit
In order to achieve the ideal film effect, it is far from enough to wear Hanfu, accessories, makeup, and photography must be arranged.
"Good accessories can play a finishing touch, and it is rare to wear Hanfu without buying accessories." There is a four-tier Hanfu accessories box, the hairpin and the noodles inside are highly used items, and her style relies on these limited items to combine into different styles. One of the most expensive pieces of jewelry is the 200 yuan gold silk phoenix three-tailed noodles, and the Red Chamber style is suitable for matching Ming Hanfu.
By the end of 2020, the number of Hanfu merchants in China has exceeded 1500, and famous brands can also be called by outsiders. However, the number of Hanfu accessories merchants is far from the same, and most of them are mainly small workshops.
Because there is rarely a copyright dispute over hair accessories, most of the styles of hairpin girls (personal handmade accessories makers) can do, and the price is generally around 100 yuan. Small pieces of alloy, silk flowers, butterfly shell material accessories do not need to be bought for 50 yuan, and delicate shrinkage flowers and material utensils can also be solved within 100 yuan per unit price.
The intangible cultural heritage hair ornaments such as tangled flowers, velvet flowers, and diancui are high in price because of the complex process, time-consuming, and high prices, and the unit price may exceed 100 yuan. The top of the Hanfu jewelry industry wanbaode, a wedding crown of 200,000, a small hairpin also needs thousands of yuan.
The flag head in the corner of The Biography of Zhen Huan is a diancui cultural relics and antiques worth 1 million yuan
Rather than spending money to buy, Yue Yue prefers to buy material packs to make accessories by herself, velvet flowers, winding flowers, imitation dots, heat shrinkable sheets, material utensil flowers, each one to do one or two. "Looking small, just a flower, in fact, every step is difficult, a velvet hairpin from learning to making a finished product, I spent four months." 」
In order to have a more systematic understanding of the hairstyles and makeup of various dynasties, Yue Yue spent a few thousand yuan in Jiangsu to apply for makeup training classes, and each dynasty learned 2-3 typical hairstyles and makeup. "As for whether it is a leek or not, the benevolent one will see the benevolent." I value my work and don't just sign up for work because of the fame of a stylist. Yue Yue said.
Accessories made by Yue Yue / Courtesy of the interviewee
Because there is no unified standard for Hanfu makeup design, and makeup designers do not have relevant qualification certificates, some personal makeup training classes belong to "driving without a license".
This is where a series of problems arise. Xian Bing is a novice makeup lady (makeup designer), signed up for the online Hanfu makeup training class at a vocational education institution, paid the tuition fee and deposit, encountered a series of problems such as delaying the start of the class, no class schedule, missing teachers, and difficulty in refunding.
Afterwards, she inadvertently found that the course she bought for 899 yuan could be watched for 1 yuan on the public platform.
Yun Qing taught herself makeup through a search tutorial, "After wearing Hanfu for a long time, you can more or less practice some skills on your body." She also opened Weibo and Xiaohongshu accounts to publish Hanfu photos and record her makeup works, most of which were taken by mutual encouragement photographers.
Yun Qing's makeup work
After buying Hanfu and learning makeup, the "Hanfu Girl" came to the last step - taking pictures. Mutual encouragement photographers are very popular in the Hanfu circle.
Mutual encouragement is mutual encouragement, which is a way of Hanfu dating, which does not cost money and is cost-effective. Photographers practice their skills through mutual encouragement, have their own photographic works, models take free photos, and both sides can post in Xiaohongshu or related Hanfu groups to recruit. This is a win-win thing, and in practice, it is easy to disagree on aesthetic issues such as framing and lighting, post-retouching, etc.
Some people save money about "mutual encouragement", and some people spend money on Hanfu photography agencies. Founded in 2003, Pan Lady Renfang made its fortune as "ancient style photography", and also applied for an IPO in 2020, impacting the first share of domestic commercial photo studios, but even the industry's leading companies could not get rid of the labels of "studio style", "fairy style" and "ancient costume", which was criticized by the Hanfu shape system party. Pan Women's Fang has nearly 2,000 complaints on the relevant complaint website, mainly focusing on poor experience, dissatisfaction with retouching, and inducing consumption.
Hanfu circle: hot and chaotic coexist
Wang Han has been in the Hanfu market for many years, once operated his own Hanfu brand, talking about today's Hanfu industry, he said bluntly: it is not easy to do, on the surface it looks very lively, in fact, it is going downhill.
Overall, Kai Pineapple Finance summarizes the Hanfu industry into four major stages according to the market development:
From 2003 to 2008, the enlightenment period of Hanfu industry. The concept of Hanfu was born, the Hanfu community rose, and some old Hanfu brands such as the return to Hantang began to be founded.
From 2008 to 2017, the Hanfu market had a long period of dormant development. Hanfu began to form a market, and the old Hanfu brand developed and grew, and began to form an industrial chain.
From 2017 to 2020, Hanfu opened a blowout period. The industry ushered in a watershed, the Hanfu brand blossomed, the industrial chain gradually improved, the industry pattern was basically formed, driving the development of surrounding industries, and capital entry.
From 2020 to now, it has entered the shuffle period of the Hanfu industry. The industry is two heavens of ice and fire, a large number of brands are created at the same time, a large number of brands have closed down, a price war has begun, and the brands with ability are stronger.
During the blowout period of Hanfu's store opening, relying on event marketing is a way for Hanfu brands to go out of the circle.
At the catwalk in Jiuzhou, "Pear Blossom with Rain", the Hanfu treasurer "Listening to the Moon", who cried while walking, became famous when he cried, became a red person in the circle, and brought a lot of popularity to the store. For a time, it seems that participating in a catwalk can make the brand popular, but in fact, there are many "cats" in it.
The organizers hold activities to attract the participation of Hanfu brands, and they have to charge "appearance fees" according to thousands of people per person, but some practitioners believe that "the marketing effect is limited", and some merchants will appear "white prostitute" models in order to transfer costs.
Some merchants use the catwalk activities to start a business, they use the ordinary model to want to go on the stage but there is no way, pretending to recruit ordinary models, promising that the model can get tailor-made Hanfu, personal image promotion and packaging, catwalk guidance, body guidance training, etc., in fact, in order to collect the registration fee. Other merchants have more concealed routines, they do not charge any fees, under the sign of access to well-known Hanfu models, requiring ordinary models to take care of their own makeup and travel expenses.
On the one hand, it is the fiery appearance seen by the outside world, and on the other hand, it is a turbulent lizi, which seems to indicate that the Hanfu industry has entered a reshuffle period.
In the past two years, some startups in Hanfu-related brands have won the favor of capital. More than thirteen, back to Hantang, Sankeng offline collection store twelve light years have been financing.
However, in the entire Hanfu market, the Hanfu shoe and bag, accessories, and cosmetics markets are mostly small workshops, and there are only a few large brands of Hanfu brands that have established their own factories after development, in addition, whether they are high-end, mid-end or low-end brands, they are mainly "small workshops". Many brands are as small as the boss as a tailor, and the boss lady is a model.
At the same time as the financing boom, the industry has also ushered in a wave of store closures. This year alone, well-known Hanfu brands such as Huazhixi, Ducheng Nanzhuang and Yijin Jiudu have announced the closure of their stores. As for the reason for the closure, Hua Zhixi mentioned in the Weibo of the closure that the two founders "opened two jobs in 2021, and the income of those two jobs is much higher than the income of the Hanfu store."
Lan Ruoting, which closed its shop in the middle of last year, can be called a fighter in the explosion, and "Taiping has elephants" and "spring colors here" are called "the school uniforms of the Hanfu industry". Even if the store is only opened for half a year in 2021, the annual output value of single products is still far ahead, second only to the brand positioning mid-range Hanfu more than thirteen.
Although he single-handedly brought Hanfu to the era of cabbage prices, Lan Ruoting did not escape the end of "closed-store reorganization" at the end of July 2021, and there are also news that it may merge with another well-known Hanfu brand, Chi Xia.
Wang Han analyzed that Hanfu merchants without capital support can only take two routes if they want to survive. Either there is self-built factory support behind it, which can beat the price down, or take the high-end customized route to provide unique products and services, or turn to explore in a new direction, such as the development of Han elements and daily models with a wider audience, the development of national style fashion brands, and the fashion route. He believes that the low-end Hanfu market is saturated enough, if blindly participate in the price war, in the end often can not play the old card, the next can not play Shandong Cao County, and finally ended up in the collapse and reorganization.
Wanting to dig gold in Hanfu's tens of billions of markets is not as easy as expected.
*At the request of the interviewee, Yun Qing, Yue Yue, and Yue Yue are pseudonyms.