2025/11/22 Back
On November 22, 2025, the 50th anniversary celebration of the Wensli Group, themed "One Heart on the Silk Road, Splendid Journey Together," was held at the Zhejiang Provincial Great Hall of the People, marking that this well-known Zhejiang enterprise, which has been deeply engaged in the silk industry for half a century, has entered a new stage of development.
Starting from a small commune-run factory in Jianqiao Town, Hangzhou, the enterprise has undergone fifty years of development. Today, the Wensli Group has grown into a leader in China's silk industry and a listed enterprise integrating culture and technology, ranking among China's Top 500 Private Enterprises for 19 consecutive years.
Fifty Years of Forging Ahead: From the Sound of Looms to an Industry Benchmark
In the spring of 1975, Shen Aiqin led 22 farmers to start their entrepreneurial journey in two old factory buildings with more than a dozen old-style looms. The original simple wish was to "let farmers receive wages like city people." In the early days of entrepreneurship, the first generation of Wensli people upheld the "Four Thousand Spirit," traveling far and wide to open up markets under the planned economy and laying the foundation for the company's development.
Over the past half century, Wensli has delivered impressive results in both industrial development and social responsibility. The group's various industrial segments have accumulated total sales exceeding 200 billion yuan, generated profits and taxes exceeding 8 billion yuan, provided nearly 50,000 jobs for society, and made cumulative charitable donations exceeding 100 million yuan.
From its restructuring and transformation in 2000, to achieving a leap from traditional manufacturing to cultural creation during the 2008 Beijing Olympics; from the 2016 G20 Hangzhou Summit giving rise to the new "silk + X" model, to its 2021 A-share listing making it "China's first listed silk cultural and creative company," Wensli has always used innovation as its engine and continuously explored new paths for industry development.
Cross-Boundary Breakthrough: Four Major Tracks Reconstruct Industrial Value
"We must closely revolve around silkworms, mulberry, silk, and satin, and jump out of silk to do silk!" Li Jianhua, Chairman of Wensli Silk, made clear the company's future development direction in a speech titled "Breaking Out of the Cocoon." He likened Wensli to "a cultivator on the Silk Road," compared the company's growth to Xuanzang's journey to obtain Buddhist scriptures, and emphasized the development philosophy of "constant self-renewal."
Based on this approach, Wensli has laid out four hundred-billion-yuan industrial sectors to inject new momentum into the traditional silk industry:
• Classic silk industry: expanding application scenarios such as real silk calligraphy and painting, real silk home decoration, and cultural tourism and creative products, and promoting the broader integration of silk into modern life;
• Textile printing and dyeing all-in-one machine: independently developing waterless printing and dyeing technology, with the goal of enabling 300 billion meters of global textile printing and dyeing fabrics to achieve zero pollution and zero emissions, and helping the industry's green transformation;
• Silk big health industry: jointly launching the "Golden Silkworm No. 1 · Yishen" series of products with top scientific research institutions, exploring the application of silk in auxiliary intervention for conditions such as Alzheimer's disease and ALS;
• Wensli AI intelligent agent: through a "hyper-converged intelligence" architecture, integrating more than 20 industrial-grade AI tools to achieve full-chain intelligence from voice ordering to delivery. It has currently achieved an industry breakthrough of rapid delivery of a silk scarf in 5 minutes.
Setting Sail for a Century: Dual-Wheel Drive Forges a New Brand Chapter
"The golden signboard of Wensli carries the company's responsibility and contribution to consumers, customers, the industry, and society," said Tu Hongyan, Chairman of the Wensli Group, in her keynote speech. As a Zhejiang entrepreneur rooted in Zhejiang, running a business with dedication and safeguarding brand reputation is an important contribution entrepreneurs make to society.
Looking to the future, Wensli has established the core strategy of "refining the main silk business, strengthening the real economy, and building a century-old brand," and will drive development with a dual-wheel strategy of "talent development" and "brand strategy." In the next ten years, the brand strategy will focus on a "trinity" deployment: deepening the domestic market to consolidate its foundation, expanding overseas markets to enhance international influence, and strengthening cultural empowerment to shape its brand image.
In the current era of rapid AI development, Wensli is opening a new development leap through industrial reconstruction. From a small commune-run factory to a hundred-billion-yuan industrial layout, this company's fifty-year journey is both a microcosm of the growth of China's private economy and a vivid practice of traditional industries achieving transformation and upgrading through cultural empowerment and technological innovation, injecting sustained momentum into Chinese silk going global.
