"I'm a soulless foodie" "I'm a soulless passenger" "I'm a soulless alcohol container"... It's not that there are more emotionless people, but that a personalized signature mask has become popular on e-commerce platforms. It doesn't matter if you don't want to be a heartless person. There are also colorful masks and retro masks for people to choose from on e-commerce platforms. The artistic atmosphere is very strong.

The emergence of personalized masks means that the mask market has changed. Thanks to the fact that China took the lead in the world in controlling the COVID-19 epidemic, the growth rate of China's foreign trade imports and exports has also turned positive by the third quarter. In the first three quarters of this year, China's total import and export of goods totaled 23.12 trillion yuan, up 0.7 percent over the same period last year. Among them, masks, protective clothing, medical equipment and other epidemic prevention materials continue to be popular in the international market. The export volume of textiles, including masks, reached 828.78 billion yuan, up 37.5%. As the epidemic stabilizes in some countries, China's mask export will gradually enter the second half.

"Foreign demand for medical and ordinary civilian protective masks is shrinking and competition is getting fiercer. If we want to sell our masks, we have to find a different way." Lai Kairu, vice-president of Sales of Sentol's Company Happy Masks, recognises that Masks have now joined the ranks of essentials for daily life, and international fashion brands such as Chanel have gone with the trend by rolling out trend ingredients. Sentol, which used to focus on clothing, also saw business opportunities and began to design and produce artistic masks for the domestic market as well as selling them abroad.

Currently, the export of Happy Masks is almost all custom orders from overseas Chinese. It aims at sea Masks for people with artistic and aesthetic pursuits. The project is now in its fourth month of operation, with exports of about $500,000 and rising.

"Buyers who receive our masks are basically surprised at first. For example, our fantasy line, which plays with seven colors a week, gives buyers a good mood when they open the package and see it." Lai said that the company came up with the idea of making artistic masks in early May this year, when the epidemic in China was basically under control, but the epidemic abroad was still spreading, and masks had become a necessity in People's Daily life because of the need to keep on preventing and controlling the epidemic. However, most people resist wearing masks because their uniform colors of blue, white and black both lose their identity and hinder communication.

If we make some characteristic and customized masks, will it increase people's awareness of wearing masks? This not only takes care of people's personality, and to ensure health and safety. Lai Kairu has several friends talking about personalised production of Masks, so she has invented the Happy Masks project.

"This is in line with the aesthetic interests of young people today, for whom a single boring mask is soulless, so we want to open up the market so that people can feel free to be themselves even in special times when they need to maintain a safe distance." "Even a simple white mask with words can have its own style," Ms. Lai said.

It has put a lot of effort into building around the Happy Masks project. The team with Happy Masks is made up of 5 founders, each responsible for different aspects, such as design, funding, sales and operation. Cui Bo, an architect born in the 1990s after returning from studying in the UK, has a unique perspective on artistic aesthetics and product design. He has had a collision of ideas with designers with many years of experience in the fashion industry of the company, thus turning the plan into a product.

Despite the increasingly fierce competition in the mask market, Lai believes that as long as we adhere to the concept that fashion originates from life, the export prospects of fashion creative masks are still considerable. Because it not only has the protective function, also is to some literary youth take a picture small prop, can increase a lot of fun thereby.