Choosing the silk road for success

Company hopes to weave international brand from an ancient chinese craft

By introducing time-honored Song brocade to the outside world, the Saint Joy brand can see itself becoming the Hermes of the Chinese silk industry.

"With a history of more than 1,000 years, Song brocade is a valuable cultural heritage with high quality and refined design, yet it is not well known to the outside world, which is a great pity," says Wu Jianhua, general manager of Saint Joy, the only company that mass produces Song-brocade products, including bags and clothing, for the international market.

"For Saint Joy, we want to become China's Hermes in the silk industry. This goal is no daydream."

Founded in 2000, Saint Joy was originally a fabrics producer, but with declining profit margins in textile manufacturing, it changed to focus on making exclusively silk products, says Wu, speaking from the group's headquarters in Shengze, a town of Wujiang city, in East China's Jiangsu province.

"The profits rates of the silk end products, such as clothes and bags, are much higher than that of the textile fabrics," he says. "That's why we aim to develop our own brands."

In 2009, the company acquired Changshu Dongwu Silk Factory, a big local manufacturer that supplied the silk for the wedding dresses of British princesses, Diana and Kate.

It was this state-owned enterprise that originally started producing Song brocade in 1889, a silk-weaving craft that was developed during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and centered round the ancient city of Suzhou in Jiangsu province. (Saint Joy uses a painting of the dynasty's first emperor Taizu as its brand image.)

Saint Joy then began designing and making products featuring Song brocade, such as curtains, clothes, scarves, bags and other accessories.

"Unlike some other companies that just make Song brocade gifts (on a small scale), we want to make Song brocade more accessible to ordinary customers," says Wu. "So we design and produce many kinds of daily necessities, which also promotes the art of Song brocade."

Last year, Saint Joy's sales revenue was more than 100 million yuan ($16.29 million; 12.38 million euros), of which 80 percent came from the sale of textile fabrics, "with very little profit", says Wu.

By the end of this year, it is expected about 30 percent of the sales to come from the group's end products, and that they will account for half the group's total profits.

To achieve this, Wu says the group needs to sell much more in its overseas markets. The company has registered its brand in Los Angeles, with its products also being sold in Europe and Japan.

"We hope to gain about 200 million yuan from selling silk products by the end of 2015, with about 10 percent coming from the international market," he says.

Every year, the company invests about 5 percent of its sales in new product design and innovation.

The challenge, Wu says, is to make Chinese silk products more fashionable internationally.

"To bridge that gap, we have signed up designers from some foreign luxury brands such as Fendi and Coach to help us improve our products," says Wu.

Song Joy has invited the SMU group, a Los Angeles marketing company, to conduct its overseas marketing.

It also plans to open a store in London and set up a Song brocade culture industrial park by the end of the year in Suzhou to exhibit the ancient craft.

Wu, 44, whose parents also work in the silk industry, says he strongly believes Song brocade can become attractive to global customers in the future.

"This refined art represents our time-honored Chinese culture," says Wu. "We will make Song brocade a household name throughout the world."

Contact the writers through huhaiyan@chinadailly.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 07/26/2013 page16)