QINGDAO -- Innovative designs have revived garment enterprises in a traditional textile town in Qingdao,  Shandong, helping them realize industrial transformation and upgrading.

Jimo District of Qingdao City in Shandong is famous for its textile and garment industry and has been a production base for many renowned international fashion brands since the 1980s.
Song Haiyan, a business owner at the Jimo clothing wholesale market, was discussing with his colleagues about new designs for children's clothes in next spring and summer.
"We have designed more than 200 new styles for children's clothing for the coming spring and will add more styles to them when it comes to the season. Mothers and children nowadays are particularly demanding on products," said Song.
A few years ago, Song was mainly engaged in the secondary-level garment wholesale, when he procured clothes from cities with a booming clothing industry such as Guangzhou and Hangzhou for the secondary wholesale.
As consumers became increasingly personalized in their demands, homogenized products became ever more unpopular, and Song's sales volume and revenue continued to decline. To turn the situation around, Song began to embark on the road of original design.
"At first, many customers had some special requirements for our products and fabrics. As we had not source of such goods that met their demands, I asked myself, 'why don't I make it on my own?' We visited clothing markets in other places to learn about their designs and styles, finding they were different from ours. So after we returned from the visits, we got our professional teams and now can design the clothes at our customers' requests within one week," Song said.
To shift from the garment wholesale to original design is not that easy, which involves various links from buying a suitable production line and choosing fitting fabrics and printing and dyeing techniques to finding good partners.
Song attributed the success of his company to the complete industrial chain that Jimo has built for years.
"These sun protection clothes sell particularly well every year. It's easy because Jimo boasts a professional fabric market where there are many kinds of fabrics for me to compare. We will choose the fabric with good sun protection index and at a reasonable price," said Song.
Song's company now sells 3 million pieces annually, with the profit rate rising from about 7 percent in the past to 12 percent now. Its output value has jumped from one million yuan (about 139,300 yuan) annually before to more than 30 million yuan (about 4.18 million U.S. dollars) now.