YCD News—Bridal wedding dresses from China are taking the world by storm. With the epidemic liberalized and Chinese factories in full gear to catch up with production, the global wedding dress market is expected to rebound sharply in 2023.
In Dingji Town, Yu’an District, Lu’an City, Anhui Province, more than 600 bridal gown manufacturing and operating companies are clustered. The town, with a resident population of 33,992, is home to more than 15,000 wedding dress manufacturers. It has become one of the largest wedding dress manufacturing and sales centers in China.
Jiang Houhui, general manager of Jinhuiyuan Wedding Dress Co., Ltd. told the media in a recent interview, “Our factory is currently understaffed and workers often work overtime until the early hours of the morning to meet market demand. We can produce about 100 wedding dresses and 300 gowns per month.”
Jiang Houhui’s factory in Dingji is one of those factories in full swing making wedding dresses for orders from home and abroad.
Wedding dress market booming
Jiang Houhui said about 30 percent of China’s wedding dresses and formal wear are exported to Europe, the Americas, Australia and other regions by exporters in Guangdong province.
An employee of New Era Wedding said in a media interview that their wedding dresses are mainly sold to the American and European markets.
According to the statistics of Dingji town, thanks to the strong logistics system, nearly 5 million wedding dresses were exported from Dingji to more than 50 countries and regions in 2022, with an average of 13,000 wedding dresses per day.
Data show that the wedding dress industry in Dingji generates an annual output of 2.4 billion RMB ($350 million). On the other hand, China is the world’s largest exporter of wedding dresses, with nearly 90% of the world’s wedding dresses produced in China.
YCD has learned that Dingji Town has now formed a large-scale industrial cluster with a full industry chain covering wedding dress design, embroidery, sewing and customization. The development of e-commerce has greatly boosted the sales of wedding dresses in the region. Now, about 80% of local companies sell through e-commerce platforms.
In order to better develop the wedding dress industry and create its own brand, Dingji has planned to build a “wedding dress town” covering 3.15 square kilometers, integrating wedding dress production and sales, wedding dress photography and wedding dress exhibitions. At present, the first phase of the “Wedding Town” has already housed about 220 stores.
Upgraded technology – a growth driver
In response to changing market demands, Chinese wedding dress manufacturers are constantly striving to keep up with the latest fashion trends and take advantage of upgraded knitting technology. In recent years, traditional Chinese red wedding dresses, which are popular in China, have become popular in the international market alongside Western-style white wedding dresses.
“Designs with traditional Chinese elements, such as mandarin duck collars and embroidery, are becoming increasingly popular, both in the domestic and overseas markets.” says an employee of New Era Bridal.
As the demand of the fee is getting higher and higher, the price of wedding dresses has also gone up. It is understood that because the production process is more complex, the cheapest one wedding dress also cost more than 1000 yuan.
At present, most of the factories in Dingji Village use computerized embroidery machines to make wedding dresses. It is reported that they have a computerized embroidery machine with a full length of about 15 meters, which can make 48 needles jumping rapidly at the same time. Some floral patterns need more than 80,000 stitches, manual sewing is time-consuming and labor-intensive, when computerized embroidery machine is used, the efficiency will be greatly improved.