By David Ferguson
China.org.cn staff reporter
On Wednesday, November 5, NE?TIGER will headline the Opening Show for China Fashion Week, the seventh successive year that they have earned this honour. The brand will highlight its Hua Fu series, a range of sensual and elegant clothing based on traditional Chinese designs, materials and techniques.
Zhang Zhifeng, inspiration behind NE?TIGER, makes no secret of his desire to see the name established as China's leading luxury brand, and a worldwide player. But he sees in NE?TIGER values that go far beyond simply the production and marketing of quality fashions and accessories.
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Zhang Zhifeng – inspiration behind NE?TIGER, and blender of design and philosophy from East and West
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The concept of NE?TIGER was born in the freezing forests of Heilongjiang Province in the northeast of China. In a region where the temperature regularly falls into the minus-thirties, and where it can stay below zero for months on end through the winter, warm garments are more than an optional luxury. Furs are a traditional element of clothing manufacture, and in the years following the reform and opening-up, young designers came increasingly to recognize that they could and should be beautiful as well as functional.
Zhang was born in the mid-sixties in the town of Mudanjiang in the southeast of Heilongjiang Province, close to the Russian border. The hard times of the cultural revolution (1966-76) were not propitious for academic study, and with a family background in tailoring, Zhang turned to business. He soon established himself as an OEM supplier to Eastern European markets, but quickly became conscious of the power of "brand" – seeing clothes that he manufactured selling in western markets for up to five times what he was earning.
"Manufacture-to-order business is straightforward and stable," he says. "But you are always placed in a position of inferiority in comparison with your customers. You are limited to using cheap labor on simple and repetitive jobs, leaving others to make the real money. I wanted to be my own master."
The result was the founding of NE?TIGER, based on his own nickname and on the history of his homeland as a habitat of the Siberian Tiger. From 1992 to 1997 the brand gradually established itself in the northeastern provinces through a succession of shows and events. In 1997 a flagship store was opened in the main shopping street of Heilongjiang's capital Harbin, causing a sensation and earning headlines through a policy of showing its wares in the store-front on real models.
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The brand caused a sensation and earned headlines through a policy of showing its furs in the store-front on real models.
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The brand was increasingly attracting the attention of stars from the world of films and modeling, and in 2000 opened its first outlet in Beijing's Saite Building. With the formal establishment of the NE?TIGER brand, the headquarters of the company moved to the capital in 2001, by which time it was also strong enough to host its own fashion show as part of China Fashion Week: "The Tiger in Beijing".
