After entering the Douyin e-commerce platform, Douyin also actively provided some activities for Sun Wenting and her Su embroidery works for her participation, "Next I want to do matrix numbers, subdivision fields, do a few more accounts to study the content, Su embroidery can be combined with the Douyin e-commerce platform, good promotion."
"I hope that every Su embroidery work I send has a certificate, a brief introduction to Su embroidery, a set of well-equipped Su embroidery culture brochures, and I want to do brand Su embroidery and inherit and develop Su embroidery professionally." In 2015, after returning from an exchange in the United States and interning for more than half a year, Sun Wenting resolutely resigned and decided to go home to help her parents take care of the Su embroidery business.
For Sun Wenting, Su embroidery is not only a beautiful picture scroll depicted in childhood, but also a deep concern that melts into the blood.
With the popularity of e-commerce, the traditional sales model of traditional handicrafts is facing challenges, how to sell Su embroidery has become a common problem faced by traditional craftsmen such as Sun Wenting, offline is not good to open up online channels, but the road is not as easy as imagined, students, teams, brands and even conflicts of ideas from parents, Sun Wenting faces a lot of problems.
"Never thought I would do this today"
"I never thought I would go back to my home, I would do this line", elementary school, junior high school, high school, college and even later went abroad to exchange, Sun Wenting never thought that one day she would return home to take over her parents' Su embroidery career. Because she studied hotel management in college, when she went abroad to exchange, she thought about how to become a general manager step by step.
In 1993, in Zhenhu Lake on the edge of Taihu Lake, Sun Wenting was born.
Zhenhu has 8,000 embroidery maidens, and the traditional folk culture has accumulated deeply, which is the main birthplace of Su embroidery. Sun Wenting grew up in such a strong environment of Su embroidery culture.
Earlier, Sun Wenting's grandmother, grandmother, and mother made embroidery crafts in exchange for living expenses, and by the time Sun Wenting was born, Zhenhu had formed a large-scale embroidery factory, and most of the women here made a living from embroidery.
Sun Wenting remembers that when she was a child, she would often follow her mother to watch her mother embroidery, and sometimes she would meet the teachers of the Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute in the city to guide the embroidery techniques, after continuous learning, there were many women here who became full-time embroidery girls, "My father is also an accountant in the embroidery factory", in Sun Wenting's heart, her fate with embroidery is doomed.
In 1998, the government vigorously built embroidery street to promote embroidery culture, and at that time, Sun Wenting's parents had walked out of the embroidery factory and opened an embroidery shop on the town street, in 1999, Sun Wenting's parents borrowed money to buy a set of shops in embroidery street, and began more than 20 years of embroidery street life.
But for Su embroidery, Sun Wenting did not like it as much as her parents, "In fact, when I was a teenager, I was tired of Su embroidery."
When people who do not like to be disciplined carry out management work
When Sun Wenting's family first arrived at Embroidery Street, she was in elementary school, and during the winter and summer vacations, her mother would give young Sun Wenting a bandage, and put someone else's embroidered appearance on the side for her reference, if she encountered a problem, her mother would also point it out.
In the continuous groping and under the guidance of her mother, Sun Wenting's embroidery skills gradually grew, because she looked at it from a young age, so she got started quickly. And the first work she completed was a fishing boat under the sunset in Taihu Lake, which was one of the popular small water towns series at that time, and gradually, she could also make money through Su embroidery works, "At that time, the price of embroidery was 8 yuan, and I could complete several paintings in a winter and summer vacation."
But when she was a teenager, Sun Wenting was bored with Su Xiu, and the boring actions and price comparison traditions day after day saw more, and Sun Wenting's interest was greatly reduced.
When primary school to junior high school, Sun Wenting was the only one from the town to the district experimental junior high school, and then all the way to study, junior high school and high school, 2013-2014, also went to California for a year of exchange, with the rich content of life and the heavy schoolwork, the distance between her and Su Xiu is getting farther and farther, during the university period, Sun Wenting studied hotel management, in the United States, also interned in the hotel for a period of time, when she was bent on how to achieve the position of general manager, Su Xiu seems to be only a small part of the primary school memory and does not exist in the future.
After the exchange, she returned to China and continued to intern in the hotel, and in 2013, Sun Wenting's father went to Shenzhen to develop and opened a Su embroidery store, her mother was too busy to come, plus she did not like to be disciplined, Sun Wenting resolutely decided to resign and change careers, and went home to help her parents take care of su embroidery.
This man, who did not like to be disciplined, began to run wild on the road of traditional handicrafts.
Douyin e-commerce has enabled her to find new ways to open up the Su embroidery market
Looking back, there was another main reason why Sun Wenting decided to resign and go home to take care of Su Embroidery' business. There are more than 300 stores in Embroidery Street, the competition is fierce, and the traditional sales model is gradually lagging behind, but e-commerce is popular, and she wants to seize this opportunity to let Su Embroidery return to the public vision.
Although she grew up in an environment with a rich Su embroidery culture, Sun Wenting felt that she was not proficient in this handicraft with a history of more than 2,000 years, but since she decided to do this job, she must do it well.
Embroidery personnel are few, and the scarcity of young people has become the first problem that Sun Wenting has to face, she has done a survey, now the age of embroidery girls is mostly concentrated in 40-60 years old, young embroidery girls are very few, some powerful embroidery girls are also wrapped up by some large embroidery studios, in this case, Sun Wenting can only rely on network resources to find embroidery girls, "so far, barely enough."
How to better combine traditional handicrafts and modern e-commerce models has become another major problem she has to face.
Without a foundation, Sun Wenting started from art and operation, and began to explore Andi's embroidery in the e-commerce era, and she knew that the word e-commerce contained a lot of content.
She wants to do her own embroidery brand, the Su embroidery inheritance and development of specialization, she hopes to send out every Su embroidery work has a certificate, there is a Su embroidery profile, there is a set of well-matched Su embroidery culture brochures, want to give customers perfect but works, but this idea has not been understood by her parents, the traditional sales concept of her parents and her philosophy have conflicted, for this she often needs to be sandwiched between customers to communicate, and various introductions on various e-commerce platforms also make her weak.
But the problem does not stop there, without sufficient funds and professional team, her e-commerce road is more bumpy, how to develop after that? Sun Wenting's pressure doubled, and she was a little confused.
Under the sharing and recommendation of friends, Sun Wenting learned about the Douyin e-commerce platform, learned that friends in the same industry around her had previously obtained considerable income through the Douyin e-commerce platform, and from May 2021, Sun Wenting studied and settled in the Douyin e-commerce platform, and registered the account of @Non-Heritage Su Embroidery (Royal Product Ingenuity).
"Just started to enter the vibrato is to try the mentality, do not know whether it can succeed", slowly, Sun Wenting groped on the platform to send some videos about Su embroidery culture, "Su embroidery has a history of more than 2,000 years, the previous Su embroidery and now but Su embroidery is very different, just like historical research, each era of Su embroidery characteristics reflect the cultural characteristics of different eras", in Douyin, she found a better way to export Su embroidery culture, through these videos and Douyin e-commerce platform, she also met more friends, The video mode more vividly shared the beauty of Su Xiu's works, and the live broadcast mode also established a platform for her to interact with netizens across the country who were interested in Su Xiu, and also brought more income.
In Douyin, there are many traditional craftsmen like Sun Wenting, and Douyin E-commerce has also launched a series of activities to help the development of traditional handicrafts.
On June 11, 2021, the "Douyin Intangible Cultural Heritage Data Report" was released. In the past year, including 10 non-hereditary inheritors, 85 craftsmen have achieved annual income of more than one million yuan through Douyin e-commerce, and the total turnover of goods carried by non-genetic inheritors on the platform has increased by 15 times compared with last year.
On October 27, the "Double 11" of Douyin e-commerce was officially opened, and a special area of "Douyin Double 11 Good Things Festival" was set up online to promote domestic products, local agricultural specialties and other preferential products through short videos and live broadcasts. The event lasts for 16 days and ends on November 11. During the event, non-hereditary heirs and craftsmen will also bring goods through short videos and live broadcasts, introduce traditional crafts and sell traditional handicrafts.
Editor: Chenxi Gu
Coordinator: Shi Chuang