As the New Year approaches, merchants from Qinghe's cashmere industry, Caoxian's horse-face skirt producers, and Yunnan's flower farms are all bustling in live streaming rooms, sprinting towards the lucrative Spring Festival market.

In recent years, the consumer market has clearly favored products with industrial zone labels like "origin tracing" and "factory direct supply." Simultaneously, live streaming e-commerce has continually sparked new consumer demand and scenarios, profoundly altering the fortunes of these industrial zone merchants. They have gradually transitioned from the traditional OEM model and small workshop setup to branding and scale, achieving a remarkable transformation from "behind the scenes" to "on stage."

Recently, TikTok E-commerce released the "Made in China in the Live Streaming Room - 2024 TikTok E-commerce Industrial Zone Development Report," revealing that in the past year, 170 million products from industrial zones nationwide sold 15.4 billion orders on TikTok E-commerce, marking a 39% year-on-year increase.

Behind this data lies the deep integration of the industrial zone economy with the emerging e-commerce model represented by TikTok E-commerce. This integration offers dual value. On one hand, industrial zones' production technology and cost control advantages are seamlessly integrated with TikTok E-commerce's "all-interest e-commerce," delivering truly cost-effective high-quality products to consumers. On the other hand, TikTok E-commerce not only aids industrial zone merchants in their digital transformation but also drives the dual enhancement of commercial and social value, infusing new momentum into local economic development.

I. A Screen Connects High-Quality Goods Directly to Consumers

Wearing new clothes for the New Year is a cherished tradition, and opting for a cashmere sweater has become a must-have choice for many as they bid farewell to the old and welcome the new. However, the high price of cashmere sweaters often deters potential buyers.

In recent years, as consumption concepts have shifted, more people have begun to seek out high-quality goods directly from the source and purchase from manufacturers at more affordable prices, enjoying premium cashmere products while satisfying the New Year's ritual and achieving rational consumption.

This consumer mindset has ushered in a renaissance for Qinghe cashmere industrial zone merchants.

"The world turns to China for cashmere, and China turns to Qinghe for cashmere." Data indicates that Qinghe County's cashmere production accounts for 40% of the global total and 65% of China's total. However, due to local enterprises' focus on OEM production and wholesale exports, well-known consumer brands have been scarce for a long time, and local enterprises' branding transformation has faced bottlenecks, with independent brands struggling to develop.

Xu Jinmeng, the founder of Xiute Cashmere, deeply rooted in Qinghe, observed that cashmere products, ranging from international brands priced at tens of thousands to domestic brands priced at thousands of yuan, generally carry high markups. This price barrier has plunged the domestic cashmere market into a developmental dilemma. With the vision of "enabling Chinese people to achieve cashmere freedom," Xu Jinmeng was determined to create an affordable cashmere brand.

The entrepreneurial journey was not smooth. The high cost of building traditional sales channels, the complex and opaque offline distribution system, coupled with high brand promotion costs, posed significant hurdles.

A turning point emerged with the rise of TikTok E-commerce. Xu Jinmeng keenly realized that live streaming e-commerce could break the shackles hindering the cashmere industry's development. On one hand, through TikTok E-commerce, the brand concept of "high quality without high price" could reach more consumers; on the other hand, the platform's real-time data feedback allowed Xiute to promptly capture consumer preferences and grasp market trends.

With TikTok E-commerce's support, the emerging brand Xiute Cashmere successfully tapped into the domestic market, enabling more consumers to achieve cashmere freedom. It is understood that many Qinghe merchants produce cashmere sweaters at a lower cost than those in Inner Mongolia, thanks to two key factors:

Firstly, it benefits from a comprehensive industrial chain layout. The Qinghe cashmere industry efficiently manages and controls the entire process from raw material procurement to finished product production, with no middlemen, ensuring maximum supply chain stability and operational efficiency.

Secondly, relying on TikTok E-commerce's "all-interest e-commerce" advantages, through diverse forms such as live streaming, short videos, and malls, it not only fully showcases the unique value of industrial zone goods but also significantly improves circulation efficiency by optimizing intermediate links. This innovative model effectively reduces channel costs, forms a competitive price advantage, and allows high-quality goods from the source to reach end consumers at more affordable prices.

In fact, TikTok E-commerce's industrial zone empowerment effect has radiated nationwide, encompassing Guangzhou skincare products, Shenzhen mobile phone accessories, Yiwu hair accessories, Nantong home textiles, Zhuji pearls, Haining fur, Danyang contact lenses, Qidong seafood, Jieyang children's furniture, and Baoding tissues. Many specialty industrial zone products have reached consumers through the TikTok E-commerce platform at better prices and more convenient methods, bringing more high-quality and affordable options to the market.

II. Reshaping Supply and Demand Relationships in Live Streaming Rooms

Beyond meeting existing consumer demand, TikTok E-commerce, using content as a bridge, can more keenly capture segmented and diversified market demand through the "goods-to-people" business model. This facilitates industrial zone merchants in quickly identifying unmet potential demand and pain points, gradually nurturing "small demands" into "big markets," thereby driving industrial transformation and upgrading.

In recent years, the leap made by merchants in the horse-face skirt industrial zone is a prime example.

Previously, the Hanfu circle was a niche cultural circle comprising a group of young people passionate about traditional culture and individuality. Relying on TikTok E-commerce's vast user base and traffic support, horse-face skirts became a sensation, driving the Hanfu circle to gradually transition from niche to mainstream, achieving significant breakthroughs.

Merchants in Caoxian keenly perceived the trend and potential of Hanfu's transformation from niche interests to mass consumption and swiftly adjusted their strategies, shifting from focusing on stage costumes to concentrating resources on creating horse-face skirts. With the help of consumption trends disseminated by TikTok E-commerce, Caoxian integrated the originally "scattered and unrefined" clothing industrial chain. Today, within a 5-kilometer radius, Caoxian can complete all supporting facilities from pattern making, fabric, cutting, to printing, sewing, and finished garments, developing into "China's largest Hanfu production base" and promoting the transformation and upgrading of Hanfu from a niche market to a comprehensive industrial zone.

TikTok E-commerce plays two crucial roles here:

Firstly, it stimulates consumer demand. Short videos and live streaming e-commerce not only introduce more users to the aesthetic and cultural value of horse-face skirts but also arouse users' interest in traditional culture through emotional resonance, further converting this resonance and interest into actual purchasing behavior. This is a classic case of creating new demand and leading new consumption trends through content.

Secondly, it provides feedback to the production side. Short videos and live streaming e-commerce break the information barriers in the Hanfu industry through real-time data and consumer interaction, becoming a vital barometer for the production side. In the past, Hanfu merchants often adopted conservative strategies due to information asymmetry, fearing innovation and production expansion; TikTok completely shatters this information silo, enabling timely feedback on the latest consumer demand and helping the production side quickly adjust designs and optimize production capacity.

Overall, live streaming e-commerce is reshaping traditional supply and demand relationships with unprecedented efficiency, integrating fragmented consumption signals into clear market guidelines, promoting the conversion of traffic into real industrial energy, and guiding the entire Hanfu industrial chain towards more efficient and market-oriented operations.

The transformation of Caoxian horse-face skirt merchants is merely a footnote in TikTok's all-interest e-commerce story. Across the country, countless industrial zone merchants have undergone transformation and upgrading due to TikTok E-commerce. Driven by TikTok E-commerce's "Industrial Growth Plan," the platform's industrial zone business has covered 130 cities in 27 provinces nationwide. Since the beginning of this year, the number of TikTok orders in 332 industrial zones nationwide has exceeded 10 million, and the sales of 830 industrial zones have surpassed 100 million yuan. On average, over 1.5 million small and medium-sized merchants in industrial zones complete transactions on the platform every day.

With TikTok E-commerce's assistance, industrial zone merchants keenly capture new consumer demand and complete the transformation from "production-driven" to "demand-driven" through precise product design, material preparation, and production processing. This not only meets diversified and segmented market demand but also significantly reduces supply and demand mismatches, enhancing the overall supply chain's response speed and efficiency.

III. Industrial Zone Upgrading, Value Beyond Commerce

Whether it's Qinghe cashmere merchants creating affordable cashmere brands or Caoxian merchants seizing the horse-face skirt boom to achieve transformation and upgrading, these industrial zones' practices fully demonstrate how live streaming e-commerce, epitomized by TikTok, helps small, medium, and micro-enterprises and "workshop-style" enterprises achieve leapfrog growth and unleash greater development potential amidst the deep integration of the e-commerce economy and real economy.

This growth not only propels enterprises' own upgrading but also drives the overall transformation of the local real economy. Through the multifaceted and multi-touch expression of all-interest e-commerce, the efficiency of resource allocation and capital flow in production, distribution, circulation, and consumption has been significantly improved, ultimately benefiting practitioners throughout the entire industrial chain - whether enterprises, families, or ordinary workers, they have all become beneficiaries of this transformation and upgrading.

Taking Caoxian as an example, over a decade ago, it was an economically depressed and provincial poverty-stricken county in Shandong. Today, with the aid of live streaming e-commerce, Caoxian's GDP ranking has soared to the top in Heze City. In 2023, Caoxian's Hanfu sales reached 7 billion yuan, driving employment for over 100,000 people. Increasingly, highly educated talents choose to return home for entrepreneurship and employment. Currently, Caoxian boasts 3 doctors, nearly 100 masters, and nearly 10,000 college students engaged in e-commerce. In recent years, Caoxian has attracted a total of 50,000 people to return home for entrepreneurship, driving 350,000 people to engage in the e-commerce industry.

A similar narrative is unfolding in Yunnan's flower industrial zone.

Previously, Yunnan's flower planting industry was dominated by small-scale peasant economies, with planting bases larger than 50 mu being in the minority. Today, thanks to TikTok E-commerce's promotion, bases larger than 100 mu have become common, with the largest even reaching 4,000 mu. Additionally, a large number of medium and large-scale facility agriculture has entered the flower industry, and flower farmers have begun adopting technical and large-scale planting supported by intelligent systems such as soilless cultivation, irrigation, and temperature control, not only improving planting efficiency but also comprehensively upgrading the flower planting industry chain.

The "Made in China in the Live Streaming Room - 2024 TikTok E-commerce Industrial Zone Development Report" reveals that in terms of industrial zone sales and the number of merchants, Yunnan is the only western province ranking in the top ten for both indicators. Among them, advantageous products such as fresh flowers, succulents, preserved flowers, and dried flowers continue to sell well.

"Mumu Flowers," which fully transitioned to TikTok E-commerce in 2020, led 15 neighboring households into live streaming. He candidly stated: "In the past, when we grew potatoes, the per capita annual income was less than 1,500 yuan. Now, with live streaming to sell Yunnan flowers, the per capita annual income is over 50,000 yuan, and every household has bought houses and cars." According to statistics from relevant departments, the diversified industrial chain of fresh-cut flowers, flower derivatives, etc., has radiated and driven over 1 million people engaged in industries such as flower planting, packaging, logistics and transportation, flower e-commerce, and live streaming in Yunnan Province.

In the stories of transformation and upgrading of these industrial zone merchants, we witness that live streaming e-commerce not only enables merchants to achieve sales growth but also injects new vitality into regional economic development by reshaping supply chains, optimizing resource allocation, and expanding market channels, becoming a crucial engine for rural revitalization.

Crucially, live streaming e-commerce facilitates the dual advancement of branding and scaling for local industries. An increasing number of small-town brick-and-mortar enterprises are forging new avenues towards income growth and prosperity by developing high-value specialty products. From Yunnan's flowers to Qinghe's cashmere, and Caoxian's horse-face skirts, these products have transitioned from traditional, small-scale operations to national and even global markets, thanks to live streaming e-commerce, thus establishing distinctive regional brands.

Throughout this process, the ripple effect of live streaming e-commerce permeates the entire industrial chain, encompassing product production, operation, promotion, logistics, distribution, and after-sales service. This creates a plethora of job opportunities and offers new revenue streams for numerous families.

The ascendancy of live streaming e-commerce is transforming the challenge of rural depopulation. It transforms the countryside from a place of youth exodus into a land brimming with hope and vitality, enabling more rural regions to shift from "blood transfusion" (dependency on external aid) to "blood production" (self-sustaining development) and genuinely embark on a sustainable development path.