The Story of Taihu Snow and Ms. Hu

The Story of Taihu Snow and Ms. Hu

Silkworms and mulberry trees once formed Zhenze in Wujiang District, Suzhou City. It became a market town because the market was prosperous, and it became a town because the city was thriving. Today's Zhenze has gathered hundreds of silk enterprises, painting a picture of "golden flowers taking the lead, little flowers following closely, and hundreds of flowers blooming together." Located in this famous Chinese silk town, Suzhou Taihu Snow Silk Co., Ltd. is the Zhenze silk industrial cluster leader.

It is hard to imagine that the "helmsman" who led this traditional private silk enterprise to become the "first silk stock of New National Products" on the Beijing Stock Exchange was once an elementary school teacher. With her deep love for silkworms and silk ingrained in her bones, she put down her teaching profession in the 1990s and grew from a "little Fang" girl in a small town to the chairman of a listed company today. She is Hu Yufang, chairman of Taihu Snow Silk.

Over the past 20 years, Hu Yufang has relied on the tenacity and courage unique to women to refine thin silkworm silk, integrating thousands of years of heritage into the silk industry, and weaving an innovative entrepreneurial path to produce good silk products, tell good silk stories, and inherit silk culture.

The world looks to China for silk, and China looks to Suzhou for silk.

Since ancient times, silk has become a shining name card of Chinese civilization, accompanying the spread of the "Silk Road" and "Maritime Silk Road" trade worldwide. "My father was an official in charge of the silkworm industry, and my mother was a silkworm farmer." Born in a family of silkworms and mulberries, Hu Yufang has always dreamed of passing on and carrying forward this Chinese intangible cultural heritage of silkworm breeding and silk weaving technology.

With this dream, Hu Yufang gave up her "iron rice bowl" teaching job in 1993 and went into business. In 2002, Hu Yufang rented three small storefronts in the Zhenze silk market, starting a problematic entrepreneurial journey with a silk reeling table and four female workers. 2006 Taihu Snow Silk was officially established, and the "Taihu Snow" brand was born. 2015 it joined the "Top Ten Silk Brands in China." In 2021, it was awarded the "National Service-oriented Manufacturing Demonstration Enterprise." In 2022, it was rated as a "Jiangsu Provincial Specialized and Special New Demonstration Enterprise" and successfully landed on the Beijing Stock Exchange as the "first silk stock of New Domestic Products." Hu Yufang herself has also won honorary titles such as "National Model Worker" and "National March 8th Red Flag Bearer".

The development process of Taihu Snow Silk is also a vivid manifestation of this fantastic female entrepreneur's spirit of "spring silkworms." At the very beginning of its establishment, Taihu Snow Silk cooperated with Suzhou University's Institute of Silk Research to establish the first research and development center, overcoming the problems of silk displacement and plate bonding. Since then, the company has successively established teaching and research bases such as the "Suzhou Home Textile Engineering Technology Research Center," the "Silk Lifestyle Research Institute of the Chinese Lifestyle Design Institute," and the "Nanjing Agricultural University Off-campus Practice Teaching Base."

"Breaking through myself and building a lean and excellent Taihu Snow is the belief I have always adhered to," said Hu Yufang. Taihu Snow Silk has always focused on improving silk quilt craftsmanship and technology. By the end of 2022, the company had accumulated three invention patents, 80 utility model patents, and 2,177 copyrights. At the same time, it has actively participated in formulating five national standards, three industry standards, and 2 group standards, making an essential contribution to promoting the healthy and benign development of the industry.

Good water nourishes good mulberry trees; good mulberry trees raise suitable silkworms; good silkworms produce good cocoons, good cocoons yield good silk, and good silk makes good quilts.

In Taihu Snow's science and technology silkworm breeding demonstration base located in Zhenze Wetland Park, rows of mulberry trees are scattered, and silkworm houses are neatly arranged. Hu Yufang told reporters that to solve the problem of a stable and high-quality supply of raw silk materials, Taihu Snow Silk has actively extended upstream of the industrial chain and carried out research on mulberry and silkworm variety selection and breeding technology, building a nearly 500-mu intensive and modern science and technology silkworm breeding demonstration base.

"With this demonstration base, we have kept our silk industry's roots." According to Hu Yufang's introduction, relying on this base, Taihu Snow Silk cooperates with universities and scientific research institutions to explore the research and development of improved quality silkworm varieties and large-scale feeding, ecological safety breeding techniques for mulberry and silkworms, etc., thus promoting the traditional mulberry and silkworm industry—the transformation and upgrading to a high-yield, high-efficiency, and high-quality modern sector. The base has become a national demonstration base for the quality of new silkworm breeds in the contemporary mulberry and silkworm industry technology system and has also played a good demonstration role in restoring the mulberry and silkworm ecological environment in Zhenze.

"Over thousands of years, silk has endured over time, transforming from a textile to a unique traditional cultural symbol, and has also become a cultural memory hidden deep in the hearts of many Chinese." Hu Yufang believes that as a traditional private enterprise, Taihu Snow Silk has the responsibility and obligation to integrate this silk into the national strategy to promote the revitalization of silk and the prosperity of silk culture.

To this end, while inheriting the Chinese intangible cultural heritage of silkworm breeding and silk weaving technology, Taihu Snow relies on cultural and creative upgrading and product technology innovation strategies. Combining new and traditional media, multi-dimensional cross-border cooperation has created a series of silk cultural promotion activities, bringing intangible and silkworm cultures into more people and modern life.

In 2022, Taihu Snow will cooperate with well-known IPs such as the Summer Palace and Suzhou Museum to create cross-border innovative designs and launch co-branded products such as "Covered Flowers," "Brilliant Pearls" and "Mountain Colors and Blurred," injecting new vitality into silk culture.

She is weaving into the flight of wild geese beyond the autumn clouds, dyeing into the spring colors of the rivers south of the Yangtze River.

Walking into any of Taihu Snow's offline stores, a dazzling array of silk fabrics and highly characteristic silk cultural and creative products can always attract many citizens to stop and shop. In recent years, brands that combine high quality, high value, personalization, and cost performance have rapidly emerged and become the biggest highlights in the consumer market. Taihu Snow Silk has also seized the new trend to continuously develop various silk products through brand product innovation, craft, and technical innovation, integration of silk culture and other methods, constantly enhancing brand influence and awareness and gaining wide recognition from society and the market.

"In every quarter's product, we have integrated traditional Chinese silk culture and original fashion design." Hu Yufang told reporters that Taihu Snow Silk had established production-study-research bases with Suzhou University, Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, and other institutions of higher learning. Through in-depth research on consumer needs and product research and development design from the consumers' perspective, a design style with the "Taihu Snow" brand label has been formed.

In addition, Taihu Snow is also actively engaged in marketing innovation. The company focuses on the core market layout, improves the operational quality of offline stores, actively innovates new retail models, expands public domain traffic, cultivates private domain traffic, and accelerates online and offline development.

In 2022, Taihu Snow Silk realized an operating income of 340.47 million yuan. In the first quarter of 2023, Taihu Snow Silk achieved an active income of 87.209 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 72%, demonstrating a strong development momentum.

Hu Yufang told reporters that subsequentTaihu Snow Silk will also implement the "Made in China + Brand Going Global" strategy to promote silk products to go global faster, better, and broader, and build the "Taihu Snow" brand into an internationally competitive national silk brand.