Clothing firms look to weave new opportunities

I joked with someone from the Beyond Group, the Ningbo-based garment and home textile company: "You beat my mother's little business 20 years ago!"

My mom had a small business making handmade bed linen in our hometown in Zhejiang province back then. She and my grandmother also made beautiful clothes for the children in our extended family, and they were quite good as self-taught designers.

Before long, due to a rise in costs and less demand for handmade products, my mother turned to selling branded clothes, many of them were from Ningbo enterprises, before she eventually closed her shop.