Haining Leather City, a National Brand, Uses DingTalk: A "Digital Partner" for Ten Thousand Businesses

October in Haining is filled with the deepening air of autumn. Having just wrapped up a bustling merchant ordering season, Haining Leather City is quietly preparing to welcome the influx of individual shoppers following the fall peak. On regular workdays, the market buzzes less than usual; instead, the constant sound of packing tape echoes through the halls—merchants busy shipping orders across the country, a quiet yet solid sense of productivity in the air.

This is Haining Leather City, a household name etched into the collective memory of China—a nationwide brand and China’s largest, most influential professional leather market, established and opened in 1994. Now celebrating its 31st year, it has evolved beyond being merely a transaction hub with hundreds of billions in annual trade volume. In the wave of digital transformation, it has undergone a comprehensive, inside-out intelligent upgrade.

In 2018, Haining Leather City officially began its digital transformation journey, choosing DingTalk as its unified workplace platform and entry point. It now efficiently serves over 6,000 merchants and tens of thousands of stalls within the Leather City complex, transforming itself from a mere "landlord" into a "digital partner."

Integration of Three Flows: Unifying Business, Approval, and Data

The scale of Haining Leather City is massive, with seven branch markets nationwide and a total area exceeding 3.2 million square meters. Managing such a vast commercial empire had become impossible using traditional methods.

"As our business grows, the types of operations increase and processes become extremely complex," said Yao Zhengyu, General Manager of Haining Leather City Network Co., reflecting on past challenges. "At the beginning of our digitalization journey, we faced a choice: build a small, easy closed-loop system or take a holistic approach. We initially chose the former, only to find that the system was too thin to support the group's overall operational structure."

After deep reflection, the company clarified its digital strategy: standardizing processes, systematizing rules, and digitizing content. After any period of rapid growth, businesses must reorganize their operations, establish standardized workflows, and ensure data is properly captured and fully utilized.

Guided by this vision, the Leather City deployed a customized version of DingTalk, launching a digital transformation centered on the "integration of three flows"—seamlessly connecting business flow, approval flow, and data flow.

Contract Management: From Cumbersome and Inefficient to Fast and Accurate

For a state-owned listed enterprise, contract approval is a core and highly rigorous process. In the past, a single contract—from drafting to signing—required multiple rounds of review by business, finance, legal, and departmental leadership teams. With numerous versions circulating, errors were common.

"We once sent a contract to a client that wasn’t even the final approved version from the DingTalk workflow," recalled Yao Zhengyu. "Because multiple people revised the same document, filenames became something like 'XX_Contract_Reviewed_by_Manager_Wang_Finance_Approved_Date,' and six or seven versions would pile up in one folder. The handler could easily send the wrong one. Once signed, a contract is legally binding—so the risk was extremely high."

To address this pain point, the Leather City leveraged DingTalk’s open integration capabilities to fully connect its DingTalk approval workflows with its self-developed big data platform’s business processes.

Now, once a contract completes its approval process on DingTalk, the attached file automatically flows into the contract module of the big data platform. Simultaneously, the platform auto-fills key rental details—such as annual rent—into the blank fields of the contract template. Without any manual download or upload, staff can directly send this single, authoritative electronic version to clients via the merchant portal for e-signature.

This "three-flows-integrated" upgrade delivered immediate results:

◉ Doubled Efficiency: Contract signing time reduced from an average of 1–7 days to as fast as two hours, at most one day.

◉ Significant Cost Reduction: With 23,000 contracts signed annually and each requiring at least six pages, printing costs alone are reduced by over 100,000 RMB per year.

◉ Risk Eliminated: Version confusion and associated legal and compliance risks are completely eliminated. All steps are recorded in the system, traceable and auditable.

Permission Management: Automated Synchronization for Security and Efficiency

As a large corporate group, managing information security and access rights during employee transfers or departures presents another major challenge.

"Personnel transfers are frequent in state-owned enterprises. When someone moves from Company A to Company B, their access rights across all business systems must be updated accordingly," said Yao Zhengyu. "Previously, HR had to manually adjust permissions—an enormous workload that often led to awkward interpersonal situations."

DingTalk provided the perfect solution. The Leather City made DingTalk’s organizational structure the single source of truth. Whenever an employee’s position changes in DingTalk, the update is automatically and seamlessly synced via API to all integrated systems—including the big data platform, CRM, and others.

This means that when an employee changes roles or leaves, their access rights in DingTalk and connected systems are instantly and automatically updated. Access to former departments is immediately revoked, while new department permissions are granted. This ensures tight security control while eliminating the hassle and discomfort of manual adjustments—achieving automated, precise permission management.

Data Empowerment: From Landlord to Digital Service Provider

For Haining Leather City, the ultimate goal of digitalization is better service for merchants. The company has built a powerful big data platform enabling multidimensional, analyzable management of tens of thousands of stalls—one profile per merchant.

Each stall profile includes not only fixed attributes like location and size, but also dynamic business data such as product categories, brands, historical rent, customer traffic heatmaps, and even consumer "bag rate" (purchase conversion rate). These data points are accessed through the DingTalk workspace, providing robust decision-making support for both managers and merchants.

In asset management, the process has moved beyond simple record-keeping to accurately evaluating the value of each storefront, providing data-driven insights for leasing strategies and eliminating low-price competition.

In market operations, the newly established retail membership marketing center has replaced outdated, broad-brush tactics like "bus-pulling" and headcount-based promotions. Instead, it enables precise targeting and settlement based on customer profiles, ensuring every marketing dollar is spent effectively.

For merchant services, utilities payment, contract signing, and logistics ordering have been integrated into a seamless digital experience. Merchants can handle everything conveniently through the DingTalk portal, greatly improving efficiency and user satisfaction.

"The fundamental change brought by digital transformation is a complete shift in business model," summarized Yao Zhengyu. "We’ve transformed from a traditional 'landlord' into a 'digital enabler' that empowers merchants’ operations. This evolution has even given rise to our sixth major business segment—the e-commerce division—which achieved sales exceeding 20 billion RMB last year."

Looking ahead, beyond serving its own merchants, Haining Leather City Network Co. plans to share its decade-long digital transformation experience with more local enterprises in Haining, helping them upgrade digitally. At the same time, it will collaborate further with DingTalk to explore more AI-powered use cases, opening a new chapter in the AI era.

From launching its digital journey in 2018 to today’s reality of efficiently serving over 6,000 merchants and tens of thousands of stalls, Haining Leather City has used DingTalk as its digital foundation, embedding the "integration of three flows" philosophy deeply into its operations—achieving a leap from improved efficiency to innovative business models.

This national brand’s digital story proves that true digital transformation isn’t about technology for technology’s sake, but about solving real business problems and creating tangible value. On this journey, DingTalk is becoming the trusted partner of practical, forward-thinking Chinese brands like Haining Leather City, empowering their intelligent upgrades.

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