One out of every three sports caps worldwide is manufactured in Ligezhuang town of Jiaozhou, a county-level city in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province.
The town produces nearly 500 million medium- and high-end sports and leisure caps each year, generating an output value of about 3.5 billion yuan (roughly $489.24 million). Its caps are exported to more than 100 countries and regions, including Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea.
Dubbed "China's hometown of caps," Ligezhuang has built a complete cap industrial chain that reflects the dynamic upgrading of China's traditional manufacturing sector.
At 7 a.m. on Aug. 25, inside the workshop of a local cap maker, robotic arms sliced waterproof fabric with laser precision while an electronic screen displayed real-time data for 30,000 cap orders from Europe and beyond.
"This batch of promotional caps for auto racing will be shipped within five days. Our digital production scheduling system automatically coordinates seven supporting firms to ensure synchronized production," said Wang Junyu, an executive at the company.
According to the executive, the company exports more than 11 million caps of different styles every year, supported by a "5G + Industrial Internet" platform that has ensured the completion of traditional production processes in just eight hours with a 99.6 percent yield rate.
Ligezhuang's cap industry dates back to the 1980s. In 1985, a Hong Kong businessman joined hands with local enterprises to set up a cap factory. Within three years it grew into an industry leader, inspiring family workshops and attracting external suppliers. Gradually, a robust upstream and downstream industrial chain in the cap industry emerged.
In 2008, the town established the cap industry as a leading industry. One year later, it was named "China's hometown of caps."
"Making a single cap involves 18 steps and nearly 10 types of accessories. In the past we had to source materials elsewhere, but today everything is available locally," said Lu Yuzhen, president of the Jiaozhou hat industry chamber of commerce. The town's cap industry features advantages such as low cost, high quality and short manufacturing periods, thanks to a complete industrial chain.
Over four decades of development, the town's cap sector has shifted from low-end processing to high-end customization, evolving from scattered family workshops to an industrial cluster featuring supply chain-wide collaboration.
The town is home to over 400 cap manufacturers and over 200 supporting firms, including 82 cap makers above designated size. 30 percent of its 120,000 residents work in the cap industry.
To meet demand for surging small-batch customized orders, local cap makers have embraced digital and intelligent manufacturing.
"Since 2018, we have been building smart production lines. Now, 60 percent of our key processes are automated," said Wang Aimei, general manager of a local cap manufacturer. The integration of automation, digitalization and the industrial internet has propelled local companies' leapfrog development.
To ease the burden on small and medium-sized enterprises facing limited scale and high equipment costs, the town launched a 2,000-square-meter shared intelligent factory in June 2023. Equipped with more than 130 smart devices, the facility can replace manual labor in 10 of the 18 production processes. Nearly 260 local cap makers have already benefited from the shared factory.
Digital and intelligent transformation has lowered production costs for local cap makers by about 30 percent while almost quadrupling efficiency.
Through years of development, Ligezhuang's cap makers have also developed comprehensive standards covering raw material procurement, production processes and quality testing, laying a solid foundation for the industry's future growth.
(Source: People's Daily)