Innovation Makes Guangbo the Leading Power of Cultural Industries

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Category: Ningbo Business

Published: Thursday, 19 January 2012 18:05

Before the New Year's Eve, the stationeries of Guangbo Group, which integrate traditional Chinese cultural elements such as paper cutting, shadow play, facial masks of Peking Opera sold well in the U.S. and European markets. Through creative innovation, in 2011 Guangbo managed to increase its exports of the independently-designed stationery by more than 30% in 2011, accounting for nearly 40% of the company's total exports.
"Since the country is vigorously developing cultural industries now, we are striving to integrate the manufacturing advantages with creative values and achieve the fission from 'cultural manufacturing' to 'cultural creation', said Wang Liping, president of the Group. In Wang's eyes stationery industry is no longer labor intensive; the new model of "manufacturing plus creation" can facilitate the transformation and upgrading of stationery business.
The derivative products of animation constitute an important force of "cultural fission" of stationery. As early as 2010, Guangbo Group started to cooperate with the national hit "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf", which is the original animation film and developed more than 100 items reflecting the images of the animation. It led to an increase of the sales by over 20%.
The success of this attempt revealed the broad market prospects of stationery as a creative industry. Guangbo Group has established a strategic partnership with domestic animation companies since last year and recently it is negotiating with an overseas company about the cartoon images of a popular game. At the same time, relying on more than 100 overseas designers in the United States, Japan and the Middle East, Guangbo Group keeps pace with the international market in terms of appearance design, mold development, packaging design, product images as well as promotion. "Guangbo is different from other Chinese stationery companies because it knows our culture, so we did not hesitate to sign a cooperation agreement with it", commented Muhammad Bawazan, a dealer from the Middle East. Currently, the self-designed products of Guangbo Group have been put on shelves of international retail giants, namely, Wal-Malt, Disney, and Carrefour. The new industry model of "manufacturing plus creation" allows Guangbo Group to extend production range from traditional stationery to books, printing, copyright cooperation and other fields. Guangbo has spent ten million yuan to introduce the advanced international automatic production line of fine books, having become a key cultural exporting enterprise provincially, as well as the key enterprise of "1235" cultural program municipally. Starting from stationery manufacturing, Guangbo is becoming the leading corporation of cultural industries in Ningbo. "Stationery is not only the writing tool, but also a carrier of cultural transmission. It will play a more important role in future economic development and foreign exchange", said Wang Liping, Guangbo will seize this opportunity to draw up their own "cultural map."