Chinese garment makers look to technology to keep up with faster fashion

High-end customized apparel is becoming more readily accessible in China as tailors increase their use of tech, like smart factories and intelligent manufacturing, to shorten design and production time and cut costs.

At present, the market size of the domestic bespoke tailoring industry is close to 200 billion yuan (around 31.4 billion U.S. dollars).

One firm in the industry, Dayang Group Co.,Ltd. in Dalian City, northeast China's Liaoning Province has adopted a computerized typesetting that allows them to churn out clothes quickly. After workers gather all the needed fabrics, a suit can be cut in less than a minute.

"We can deliver a piece within four working days. The convenient closed-loop manufacturing makes expensive and time-consuming bespoke tailoring more obtainable to consumers," said Hu Dongmei, General Manager of the garment maker.

Hu says it used to take at least two to three weeks to deliver a customized suit, but now it rarely takes more than a week from design to delivery.

Thanks to digitalization and data analysis, garment customization enterprises need little or no on-hand inventory stock, can cut production costs, shorten manufacturing cycles, and prompt mass customization. This makes products more affordable to a wider audience.

In 2021, Hu said the company sold 1.2 million sets of customized clothing worldwide.

"The price of customization services are more affordable. In previous years, the price of a bespoke suit might be 3,000 to 5,000 yuan (around 471.4 to 785.6 U.S. dollars). But now it only costs 2,580 yuan (roughly 405.4 U.S. dollars) for a well-fitted pure wool suit. With online promotions, the price could be less than 1,000 yuan (about 157 U.S. dollars)," said Hu.

Liaoning, Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces are the main production areas customized clothing in China.