A county-level city in central China, Tianmen saw its garment e-commerce transaction volume exceed 70 billion yuan in 2025, ranking first in Hubei Province for women's wear sales. Once known as the 'hometown of tailors,' it is now aiming for a 100-billion-yuan industrial cluster. But behind the impressive figures lie clear shortcomings: weak brand cultivation and uneven digital transformation. This is not just Tianmen's challenge but a typical microcosm of China's garment industry shifting from 'manufacturing' to 'smart manufacturing.'
Data Foundation: The Hard Power Behind 700 Billion Yuan
Tianmen has built 37 textile and garment industrial parks, aggregating 43,000 market entities and 13,000 online stores. In 2025, garment e-commerce transaction volume reached 70 billion yuan, with women's wear sales firmly topping Hubei Province. Supporting this scale is a 'small order, quick response' flexible supply chain: orders as small as 50 to 100 pieces are accepted, and hot items can be reordered and delivered within 48 hours. Meanwhile, Tianmen has one of the lowest express delivery costs in Hubei, giving both cost and efficiency advantages to small and medium sellers.
From an industry cycle perspective, Tianmen is in a phase of overlapping advantages: resource aggregation, rising popularity, a catch-up window, and a golden period for action. Nearly 100,000 people have returned home to start businesses or find jobs, bringing mature technology, experience, and supply chain resources, forming a unique 'returning geese' effect. This population inflow not only replenishes the labor force but also provides endogenous momentum for supply chain integration and craft heritage.
Brand Breakthrough: Standardization and Globalization of 'Tianmen Yishang'
The regional public brand 'Tianmen Yishang,' launched in June 2023, has established a brand management standard system covering 6 major categories, 26 secondary sub-systems, and 194 standards, with over 1,200 certified entities. In 2025, the brand won the gold medal in the 'My Favorite Hubei Brand' TV competition with the highest total score. However, branding is not an overnight process—from the first batch of 13 authorized enterprises in 2024 to the launch of the supply chain information platform in 2025, every step addresses the pain point of 'having capacity but no brand.'
Next, 'Tianmen Yishang' plans to replicate its brand pavilion model in other cities and expand overseas through warehouses in Thailand, the United States, Malaysia, and Japan. As China's largest inland hometown of overseas Chinese, Tianmen has rich overseas commercial resources, but turning these resources into actual channel advantages and brand premiums remains an open question.
Cross-border Livestreaming: From 'Trial' to 'Dual-Track' Operations
Cross-border livestreaming is Tianmen's latest exploration for garment exports. Taking the Thai market as an example, the cross-border business launched in November 2025 had shipped over 200,000 pieces by the end of May 2026, running 20 livestreaming rooms in Thailand with a stable daily order volume of 3,000 to 4,000. The team uses a 'dual-track model': the Tianmen headquarters handles product selection, planning, traffic investment, operations coordination, and production; the Thai team handles livestream execution, local after-sales, and user interaction. 85% of goods are sourced from local factories in Tianmen, with monthly sales of 160,000 garments.
Notably, data from cross-border livestreaming feeds back to guide factory production, making products more aligned with overseas market demand, and boosting partner factory profits by 15% to 20%. This means cross-border livestreaming is not just a sales channel but an entry point for demand collection and product iteration. The team plans to expand Thai livestreaming rooms to 50-80 this year and enter Vietnam and Indonesia next year.
AI Empowerment: Efficiency Revolution from Design to Customer Service
AI adoption in the garment industry is accelerating in Tianmen. A dress category leader that relocated from Guangzhou saw daily orders surge from 3,000 to 100,000, with 2025 sales reaching 1.4 billion yuan. Its AI applications include: for content generation, what used to take ten days to half a month for a set of photos now takes half an hour to complete a dozen sets; for customer service, what previously required 60-80 people to cover pre-sales and after-sales now takes just six or seven people using AI agents.
This means AI is shifting the fixed cost structure of garment e-commerce from 'labor-intensive' to 'technology-intensive.' For industrial clusters like Tianmen, this is both an opportunity and a challenge—companies that embrace AI early will gain significant efficiency advantages, while small and medium factories with weak digital foundations may face greater competitive pressure.
Weaknesses and Opportunities: Brand Cultivation and Digital Transformation Still Need Work
Xu Jianhua, President of the Circulation Branch of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, pointed out that Tianmen still has shortcomings in brand cultivation and enterprise digital transformation. Although e-commerce and cross-border e-commerce digital development has achieved notable results, moving from 'scale expansion' to 'brand upgrading,' from 'domestic trade focus' to 'domestic and foreign trade parallel,' and from 'traditional manufacturing' to 'digital-driven transformation' requires systemic breakthroughs.
Young entrepreneurs are seen as the key to breaking the deadlock. Cutting-edge ideas from outside guests—such as professional market and industrial belt collaborative operations, digital supply chain tools, cross-border independent stations and social media traffic models, and AI-assisted design and intelligent product selection—are colliding with Tianmen's solid local production capacity. This combination of 'external brains + local manufacturing' may be the optimal path for Tianmen to fill gaps and achieve its 100-billion-yuan target.