"Shanghai Custom" Amazing Operation: Foreign travelers transiting at Pudong Airport receive a full set of services with Haipai Qipao "going against the flow"

“Shanghai Custom-Made” is unlocking new meaning for the city’s calling card. It’s not enough to deliver outstanding design and reliable quality—service experience and emotional value must be taken to the max as well. Recently, Cici, a Singaporean national, came to China for business travel and wanted to customize several sets of Shanghai qipaos during her layover at Pudong Airport. Two weeks ago, she called the Haipai qipao brand Maanlonglan. This “most unreasonable request” was answered immediately on the spot: “No problem—we’ll bring the entire process to the airport!”

Founded in 1997, Maanlonglan produces about 40k qipaos every year, with more than one third being high-end made-to-order. Mary, a senior measuring technician at Maanlonglan, told reporters that in March last year, Maanlonglan held an exhibition in Singapore titled “Haipai Qipao Shines on Singapore,” where Cici first encountered Maanlonglan at the event. This time, she would be transferring from Pudong Airport to Chengdu—only about a one-hour window. She couldn’t make it to Maanlonglan’s store in central Shanghai, and she also didn’t want to miss the beautiful outfits she had her eye on. So with a try-it-and-see mindset, she contacted the brand.

“The Haipai Qipao Shines on Singapore” exhibition.

In fact, breaking the limits of time and space to go to customers’ homes in other cities—or to serve them at airports there—providing full-process services such as on-site measuring and design communication, is not a special case for the brand, but a standard practice. Therefore, after more than 20 years in the industry, Mary has always been an “airborne traveler.”

By first applying to Pudong Airport in advance, in early April, Mary and senior consultant Happy brought all their equipment and “moved backward” from central Shanghai to wait early at Maanlonglan’s airport store in the T2 domestic mixed-traffic level at Pudong Airport.

Before long, Cici arrived as scheduled, pulling her luggage. Happy immediately stepped forward and handed over the fabric and style lookbook. “The Haipai-inspired modified version you liked last year—we’ve kept the pattern for you. The mandarin collar will look very sharp. The side slits are tasteful. The Su embroidery underlayer is subtle and understated. The misty violet and deep navy colorway will complement your skin tone. The true silk heavy crepe has a strong anti-wrinkle quality and is easy to maintain. Whether it’s dinner with close friends or a business banquet, it’s all appropriate.”

Cici liked this one a lot. After trying it on, she decided on the spot: “This is the one.” Mary then took out the soft measuring tape and gently measured the client, recording 26 data points without a single discrepancy—shoulder width, bust, waist, hip, the length of front-and-back waist line segments, and more. While doing so, she also communicated the details with the customer: “Your figure is upright, and the shoulder-enclosing design will be even more streamlined. Your waist segment will be set slightly higher, which will make you look longer and more elegant. The slit height will be adjusted according to your preference…”

Cici tries on the outfit.

After about 40 minutes, Cici had already completed style selection, measuring, and detail confirmation at the airport. Maanlonglan will finish making the white-blank sample garments at the Shanghai workshop, taking 7 to 10 days. Then, it will be sent to Singapore via SF Express. Afterward, Maanlonglan will refine and adjust the final details based on the customer’s try-on feedback, polish the completed pieces, and follow up on a one-to-one basis throughout the entire process, closing the loop in about three months.

Cici is one of Maanlonglan’s 100k+ tier of senior high-end customers. Seventy percent of this group only spends on big-name and luxury brands. At Maanlonglan’s Shanghai Jinjiang Dixin store, 40% of the customers are foreign nationals, and the in-store conversion rate is as high as one-third. Average spend exceeds 20k yuan per person. There was even a Chinese woman from Melbourne who brought seven sisters to Shanghai to attend her son’s wedding—each of them picked a qipao, and the total amount came to over 110k yuan.

At Maanlonglan’s Jinjiang Dixin store, 40% of the spending customers are foreign nationals.

Public data shows that luxury goods sales in Shanghai account for more than half of the domestic market. In 2024, the five major international top luxury brands—including Hermès and Chanel—achieved sales revenue in Shanghai of 57.26 billion yuan. But as a fashion and consumer capital, Shanghai is even more committed to building up its own local luxury labels.

According to the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology’s department for consumer goods and fashion industry development, in recent years, Shanghai brands founded by high couture designers such as GRACE CHEN and GuoPei have begun exploring the “high-luxury style” route. Maanlonglan’s chairman, Qiu Liming, believes this requires systematic design of a high-luxury approach across brand image quality, pricing systems, pre-sales and after-sales service, cultural connotations, and more.

Maanlonglan is committed to building Chinese luxury brands.

Qiu Liming sighs that the path of exploring high luxury is not easy.

It requires making your own trade-offs and sticking to your principles amid intense market “involution.” Maanlonglan is one of the main drafters of the qipao national standard (GB/T 22703-2019), which it has implemented since 2020. It has zero tolerance for imperfections in real silk. Any quality flaw—no matter how expensive the couture piece is, even one priced at more than 100,000 yuan—will still be destroyed.

It also requires having friends in time. Maanlonglan released a promise of “free-of-charge alterations for life.” All side seams are widened by 1.5 centimeters so that adjustments and re-fitting can be made later. In addition, like other well-known luxury brands, Maanlonglan sets up dedicated teams to form long-term, effective interaction with senior customers, meeting as many of their various exclusive and long-tail needs as possible. Many customers have followed the brand for more than 20 years, wearing it from their young girl days into gentle middle age. For that, the brand has created an enormous customer database and discovered a pattern: women’s highest bust point and hip-line measurements will change after age 34 and 47, respectively. Therefore, when old customers come back to make custom orders, Maanlonglan will definitely make fine-tuning based on their historical data to achieve an even more perfect fit.

All these details are the proper meaning of high-end made-to-order service.

Maanlonglan makes the combination of crystal elements and embroidery feel completely natural.

Qiu Liming entered the apparel industry in 1987. She experienced that nearly crazy era depicted in the TV drama “繁花”—outside the counters of crowded department stores, where everywhere you saw products from Shanghai, everything had to be bought with tickets, queued for, and ended up selling out quickly. National customers who held shopping lists all took pride in purchasing Shanghai goods.

And now, Shanghai’s products’ influence has expanded from across the country to the entire globe—and comes with an even louder name: “Shanghai Custom-Made.”