English 
简体中文 I. A fashion factory turned mask fortress? A 48-hour life-and-death decision
“Mr. Jin, there is an urgent shortage of isolation suits in Songjiang! Can you switch production?” This phone call on the sixth day of the New Year in 2020 kept Jin Min, chairman of Shanghai Jopes Fashion, awake all night. This high-end garment factory, which has been OEM for DKNY and Pacific Bird for 31 years, still has millions of dollars of fabrics from overseas orders piled up in its workshops. But looking at the news paramedics with garbage bags as protective clothing, she slammed the table:”Fashion line all stop! Make isolation suits instead!”
Guess what? There's a lot more to a clothing factory switching to medical supplies than just switching fabrics:
- equipment modification: Replace sewing machine needles with medical grade, press seals on protective clothing with a press iron that shapes shirt collars
- 72-hour deposition: Songjiang District Market Supervision Bureau on-site office, three days to go through the usual three months of medical device filing process
- New Battlefield for MastersThe old ladies who are accustomed to making suits learn to thread a needle and sew the seams of the protective suit overnight.Precision controlWithin 0.3 mm
At that time, a worker muttered, ”We used to serve international brands with these hands, but now we are sewing protective clothing?” Jin Min directly picked up a finished product: ”Look at the stitching! Nowadays, life-saving clothes are real luxuries!”
Second, KN95 mask attack: fashion gene is actually a hidden plug-in
The isolation suit has just been mass-produced, and the foreign customers come to the new demand: ”Can you add the mask?” This time even the engineers shook their heads - the mask machine is ten times more complicated than a sewing machine! But the Jopes team realized thatDoing fashion's watchword becomes the key to break the ice::
1. Material handling expertise
Garment manufacturers know fabric best! While others are getting screwed by meltblown fabrics, Jopes relies on thirty years of fabric experience:
✅ A glance to recognize the inferior meltblown cloth: cloth inspection machine to measure the weight, finger rubbing to listen to the sound of static electricity
✅ The earbands are directly appropriated from underwear technology: baby-grade non-woven fabric + ultra-soft rubber band, goodbye to strangulation of the ear
2. Line modification of God's work
Three KN95 production line into the factory, the workshop supervisor Lao Zhang was dumbfounded: the machine covers an area of hundreds of square meters, but the factory channel is only 2 meters wide! As a result, the masters sacrificed their ancestral skills in the garment industry:
-three-dimensional cutting: Rearranging the layout of equipment as if cutting a suit, hard squeezing line space in the sewing area
-Suspension system migration: Converted the air track for transferring clothing into a flow line for masks, saving 60% of floor space
3. Certification blitz
The compliance team, accustomed to exporting garments, took on the energy of attacking EU textile certification:
- Debugging the machine during the day, video linking to the FDA auditor at 2:00 a.m.
- The GB2626 standard is broken down into 187 rules and regulations, which are posted above each workstation.
10 days to get CE, FDA, GB2626 three certificationTwo months faster than the industry average.
Third, 250,000 / day behind the Chinese speed
Walk into the current Jopes workshop and you'll see the magic scene: the assembly line on the left is making high-end down jackets, and the machine on the right is spitting out KN95 masks.How are 250,000 masks made every day?The secret lies in the three ”superpowers”:
| Traditional clothing industry short board | Joppers Solutions | Increase in production capacity |
|---|---|---|
| Reliance on manual quality control | Transplantation of fabric inspection table light source + magnifier combination | Seconds to determine earband weld points |
| Single-process independent operation | Mouthpiece machine in parallel with the hanging system | Flow Speed Up 40% |
| Slow response to overseas orders | Establishment of exclusive links for epidemic prevention materials | 72 hours direct shipping to Europe and the United States |
furthermorethe art of regenerating marginal materialThe non-woven scraps left over from cutting masks and blending cotton yarn to make protective clothing lining, which reduces the cost by 151TP3 T. Even the Japanese customers are amazed: ”You have made the fine management of the garment industry into a textbook of the medical industry!”
IV. Hardcore support from Matsue's shopkeepers
The most difficult time to transfer production, Jin Min in the office anxious hair: the newly recruited technicians were blocked in the neighborhood, meltblown fabric prices rose three times a day ... The turning point came from the Songjiang Economic and Technological Development Zone, director of the management committee of Wang. The operation of this ”shopkeeper” is magic:
- Talent Sharing Program: Coordination of the shutdown of auto parts factory technicians to install the mask machine, the daily wage government subsidies 50%
- Raw material defense: Utilizing G60 Science and Innovation Corridor resources to lock in 50 tons of meltblown fabric futures from Jiaxing
- Special Logistics Corridor: Fluorescent ”anti-epidemic material” stickers for delivery trucks, priority at highway intersections
Once rushed to the FDA factory inspection, the power supply old Chen with a bunk to live in the distribution room: ”machine without power, I will never withdraw!” This kind ofGovernment as a nanny, enterprises fight with bayonetsThe model that took the production line from zero to 250,000 units/day in just 28 days.
V. Fashion craftsmen's anti-epidemic expedition
When the Qiaopeis masks were shipped to a German hospital, a dramatic scene occurred: the receiving nurse pointed to the ”QIAOPEISI” on the package and asked, ”Is this the same brand as the Milan Fashion Week?” --Yes, these masks with fashion genes are taking to the world stage in a different way:
-Swedish nursing homesThe elderly volunteered to wear ”Oriental masks with ear cushions.”
-Brazilian slums: Ultra-thin breathable design to withstand 40℃ heat
-Convenience Stores in Japan: Cherry Blossom Limited Edition sold out immediately on the shelves
Kim Min's safe is locked with special mementos: a handwritten thank-you card from New York Hospital, pinned to a Joppers mask, which reads in English: ”It's not a respirator, it's the armor of an oriental craftsman.”.
VI. Reflections: cross-border frenzy to the manufacturing industry's inspiration
Looking at the parallel fashion line and mask line in Jopes' workshop, I suddenly realized: the resilience of Made in China is not at all a matter of dead-end technology, but ofTurning Experience into Transformers!
- Doing shirts for thirty years? That knows more about ergonomics, KN95 nose strip directly upgraded memory foam
- Used to international orders? Save Millions in Consulting Fees by Transferring and Reusing Certification Systems
- Experienced a trade war? Supply chain contingency plans apply directly. Raw material shortages? Doesn't exist!
A master teacher said really: ”What cross-border ah, is not the seriousness of sewing shirts to sew masks!” When Germany is still discussing the transformation standard, Songjiang's sewing machine has already stepped out of the global anti-epidemic Chinese beat. What kind of business case is this story? It's clearly a love letter from Eastern wisdom to the world--Guard the freedom of breathing for all mankind with the temperature of the fashionista's fingertips.The
