With the help of digital technologies, Dalang Fashion Town in Longhua District is now seeking ways to create a transformationalupgrading within the framework of the traditional fashion industry.

Over the past 40 years, the fashion town has been transformed from a small cluster of garment foundries into Shenzhen’s fashion industry hub. In 1996, the year when the fashion town-based enterprise Yinger Group was established, all the designs were drawn on paper by hand and then sent to the factories for mass production, all of which was time-consuming, inefficient and slow in response to the abrupt changes of market demands.

The 26-year-old fashion group is now on its way to a digital transformation, according to Yu Qigang, CEO of Yinger Group.

“Digital technologies are applied not only in making the designs, but also in collecting the user portrait data and managing our members and supply chains,” said Yu. “We are also developing our online businesses, which is a very important step forward for the transformation of traditional fashion industries and for us to offset the impact of COVID-19 pandemic.”

A scene at the pavilion of Yinger Group at the 2021 Fashion Shenzhen at Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center in Futian District.

For ELLASSAY, another renowned fashion group basing at Dalang Fashion Town, digital technologies are also applied in production, material management, anti-counterfeiting and quality control.

All the anti-counterfeit labels on clothes and accessories produced by ELLASSAY are now supported by radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, which enable users to check the authenticity of products and to trace the source of clothing materials, according to Ou Bolian, director of the supply chain department of ELLASSAY.

For footwear manufacturers in the fashion town, the utilization of digital technologies not only enhances their productivity and efficiency, but also improves the quality of shoes in terms of size, shape and materials.

In the factory of Lirong Footwear at Dalang Fashion Town, automated production lines can analyze the shape, size and condition of every piece of leather and cut out flawless parts that best fit the designs.

As a subsidiary of Shenzhen-based footwear retailer Belle International, the footwear manufacturer has developed an AI-supported quality control system for leather materials, utilized automated technologies in designing and manufacturing the shoes and carried out big-data research to collect the foot information of users and help them customize shoes, according to Guo Zhongjie, deputy manager of Lirong Footwear.

More than 600 medium- and high-level fashion enterprises have thus far been introduced to Dalang Fashion Town by the end of last year, according to the construction and management center of the fashion town.

Newly-emerged digital technologies including RFID, 3D design and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are serving as the major boosters for the transformation and upgrading of fashion enterprises at the fashion town.

Moreover, enterprises are also attaching great importance to their research and developing (R&D) sectors. According to the management center, over 75% of the fashion town-based enterprises may allocate five to 15 percent of their total sale amount to their R&D fund.

Last year, the fashion town was designated as one of Shenzhen’s top 10 cultural feature towns.