Over the past years, Huadu District, Guangzhou, was renowned for its three pillar industries – automobile, leather products and airport. Jewellery manufacturing industry got a late start, but surprisingly with a fast-paced development. Today, Huadu becomes one of the most influential jewellery manufacturing bases in China.
With the titles “Jewelry Capital of China” and “China Jewelry and Gem Characteristics Industry Base of China”, Huadu is undoubtedly a jewellery market that cannot be underestimated. Between 14th and 17th September 2012, Gem & Jewelry Trade Association of China and the People’s Government of Huadu District co-organized the 2012‧Huadu Jewelry Festival with the theme of “the charm of Haudu, brand achievements of the future” in Huadu.
Hong Kong Jewellery is pleased to be invited to witness Huadu’s transformation journey, from simple manufacturing to jewellery culture-oriented innovative tourism.
At the festival, different representatives from jewellery industries and government including Gaetano Cavalieri, chairman of World Jewellery Confederation (CIBJO), Chen Zhouqi, honour chairman of Gem & Jewelry Trade Association of China and Lin Zhongjian, Huadu district mayor were invited to initiate the opening ceremony.
In the meanwhile, Huadu announced that it would soon set up a public testing and certification platform providing one-stop service including inspection, consultation, certification service and training. Weitang town from Xiangcheng district of Suzhou, characterized by the pearl-themed tourism, signed a friendship agreement with Huadu at the ceremony, promising to work together for the integration of jewellery culture and tourism in the future.
The next stop of the tour is site visit. One of the transformation projects is YunFeng Jadeite Museum, developed by Yunfeng Jewelry Group. The pavilion is not only a museum of displaying jadeites, but also involving interactive ways to deliver jewellery culture to visitors. One of the ways to spread the jadeite culture is to provide the knowledge and formation of jadeite by using 4D technology.
To be more specific, one exhibition area is designed to be a volcano-like area displaying lava’s physical changes, its appearance, smell, temperature, etc. Visitors would feel as if they were at a real volcano site witnessing jadeite’s formation and evolution. Besides its interactive style, the pavilion also provides a coffee zone and a recreational zone, etc. Next to the pavilion are the Huadu Dream Park and a jewellery exchange centre occupying 20,000 sqm. The pavilion, integrating with surrounding tourist attractions, created a jewellery tourism spot providing visitors with business opportunities, sightseeing, media arts, and recreational elements.
Another project is the Huadu Jewelry Town, being formally unveiled during the festival where the 5A scenic spot ceremony was also launched. At the festival, district mayor Lin Zhongjian mentioned: “In recent two years, we would like to transform our jewellery industry, shaping our jewellery manufacturing base into a jewellery town. It involves four transformations: the first is to transform production lines into exhibition areas.
We would like to change the production line to be a sightseeing tour, showing our jewellery creative designs to everyone; the second is to transform factories into headquarters; the third is to transform unused lands to jewellery cultural areas; the fourth is to shape the jewellery park into a 5A scenic spot.” With the theme of jewellery culture, Huadu Jewelry Town opened its Istone Mineral Park, Istone Industry Park, LCHT Silver Sightseeing Factory and IAS Crystal Theme Pavilion, etc. In 2013, the town is going to make use of different jewellery types as the theme to construct different theme parks, such as amber park, nephrite park and coral park, etc. In order to further the transformation development, parks will still open to public after the festival. Huadu Jewelry Town, working together with surrounding tourist attractions, will soon become a jewellery tourism spot.
When it comes to the goal of Huadu jewellery industry, Lin mentioned during the media interview: “Our government aims to build a jewellery culture-oriented innovative city with five main focuses including innovative design, headquarters economy, brand marketing, culture tourism and export processing. In our jewellery production chain, we have manufacturing, processing, research and development, design, exhibiting, marketing, and headquarters economy, as well as other functions including jewellery celebrity night and academically-oriented jewellery summit forum. We would actively push our industry towards the above five focuses, and I believe that there will be a great progress in two to three years.”
In addition, a comparison between Huadu and our Asia’s world city, Hong Kong in terms of their jewellery industry was done. Shi Hongyue, vice president and deputy secretary-general of Gem & Jewelry Trade Association of China, pointed out: “Huadu gets significant advantages of location and transportation. The district has been well developed in its jewellery manufacturing, retailing and design for many years. And it has strong government support at all levels. These are all Huadu’s advantages in the jewellery industry.”
Lin added: “Huadu owns well-developed sea, land and air transportation network, as well as a superior location. We all agree that there is an enormous market in Hong Kong where research and development, marketing, materials are far better than Huadu’s. However, we have lands. A jewellery park occupies nearly a thousand sqm already. We, therefore, must do something different, with probably the culture elements as the starting point.”
This year, with the help of 2012‧Huadu Jewelry Festival, Huadu strengthened its integration of jewellery industry and tourism industry, creating an industry with advantage, as well as expanding its global influence. Reviewing the past, Huadu was determined to develop the jewellery industry in 2001.
Different jewellery enterprises settled there and did businesses one after another, thus soon setting up the Guangzhou Huadu Jewelry City. Jewellery industry then became one of the four pillar industries alongside automobile, leather products and airport. Over the past several years, Huadu became one of the most influential jewellery manufacturing bases in China, attracting a batch of famous enterprises and overseas brands from France, Italy, Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan, etc.
Gathering different international enterprises and brands, the district created the Huadu jewellery retailing street, Yunfeng jewellery exchange centre, and so on. Brands included Chieh Hong Tai Jewelry Co Ltd specializing MGS, jadeite-themed Yunfeng Jewelry Group, French Filon brand and Chinese famous trademark, Istone. After a short development for 10 years, Huadu jewellery industry has built a quite complete industry chain. Buyers can merchandise different kinds of stones and jewellery at the Guangzhou Huadu Jewelry City, such as jadeites, gold, silver, gemstones and corals, etc. Jewellery includes rings, earrings, necklaces and jade artefacts. Jewellery enterprises can enjoy the one-stop service from merchandising to processing, wholesaling and retailing in Huadu.
In fact, the turning point of Huadu’s jewellery industry started several years ago when everyone from all over the world facing the impact of financial crisis. The Chinese government at that time advocated the transformation and upgrading of different industries. In addition to the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan”, Huadu jewellery industry finally started to drive the traditional manufacturing industry by jewellery tourism, creating a new concept of culture tourism and building a world-class jewellery art and culture centre.
Istone, as the pioneer of the transformation journey, was developed in 1997. Main products were accessories in Chinese traditional style and made of different kinds of crystals and gemstones. In 2007, the brand became the Chinese famous trademark and now owns more than 1,000 retail stores. In 2009, Istone took the first step on the transformation journey by setting up the first world mineral themed park – Istone Mineral Park. To accelerate the transformation, Huadu government took the lead and implemented four “transformations”, including transforming from jewellery manufacturing to creative design, from production base to headquarters of enterprises, from original equipment manufacturer to self-owned brand and finally from jewellery manufacturing to culture tourism.
The article was published on Hong Kong Jewellery Magazine Dec 2012 edition.
