Inside The Fine Art Factories of Yiwu, China
This article talks a lot about Dafen but not so much about Yiwu so I thought I would fill in.<p>Yiwu itself is something of an enigma. Most people in Silicon Valley haven&#x27;t heard of it. It&#x27;s not political like Beijing, it&#x27;s not financial like Shanghai, and it&#x27;s not electronics or fashion like Shenzhen&#x2F;Guangdong. The land is barren so the area has focused on International Trade and Commodity Production. Most of it&#x27;s goods don&#x27;t even go to the US.
Yiwu is the largest exporter of &quot;petty goods&quot; or &quot;small commodities&quot; in the world. What&#x27;s a petty good? It&#x27;s pretty much 100% of the things you would find in a dollar store and most of the things you would find in a Walmart. Cheap umbrellas, bags, metal pencil holders, hammers, hair dryers, pots, pans, artificial flowers, stock art, lawn ornaments, flashlights, hair clips, lucky cat figurines, toilet plungers, mailboxes and battery jumpers. I.e. most of the things you buy in stores that you don&#x27;t eat (commodities). It&#x27;s also usually the first thing that comes to mind when you hear &quot;Made in China.&quot;<p>Yes, the Christmas mall is there. Yes it is an attraction. But it&#x27;s not the <i>main</i> attraction.<p>There is a mall in Yiwu nick-named &#x27;the Snake.&#x27; It&#x27;s 4 miles long, 1000 feet wide and has representatives from over 100,000 companies. There&#x27;s something like 50,000+ 10x10 foot stores. You could spend 6 seconds in each store and given another 3 seconds to walk between stalls you still wouldn&#x27;t see the whole thing after a year. Given spaces change their stock or go out of business at least every 3 months you can&#x27;t tackle this like a Sunday shopping trip.<p>The thing is though, all these booths? They&#x27;re all wholesale. Most of the goods on display are commercial samples. Most of the clerks are representing factories or consortiums. Yes, you can go there to buy some touristy trinkets but you&#x27;ll get dirty looks if you&#x27;re not representing a &#x27;Buyer&#x27; with a capital &#x27;B&#x27;. You don&#x27;t go there with a shopping cart; you go there with a business card and a promise to fill a 40 foot container every 2 weeks.<p>Buyers are sometimes from brand name stores looking to sell store-brand goods - those Walgreen&#x27;s brand picture frame hangers? Bought at Yiwu. Pretty much anything you find at Claire&#x27;s boutique. Anything you find on the check-out counter or in those cheesy glass curios at any truck stop in this country.<p>Most of the buyers however aren&#x27;t American. They&#x27;re from Brazil, they&#x27;re from Africa, and in particular they&#x27;re from the Middle East. After 2001 it became difficult for representatives from small business in the Middle East to get Visas for some of the US product exhibitions so they shifted their sourcing to Yiwu. These are guys that have a state level franchise like Railey&#x27;s of Lebanon or Dollar Tree of Bangalore that need to fill shelves - frequently they&#x27;ll buy whatever they get a good deal on if they hear the factory has excess or needs to liquidate stock because another buyer went belly-up. You go to north Dubai and you see a mirror image of the goods in Yiwu, just marked for consumer prices and packaged for individual sale.<p>So yeah, Yiwu has an office goods supply mall, a cabinet hardware mall, and yes, even a Christmas mall.<p>Stability is a good thing and seasonal goods in particular are problematic. If your company is producing something that requires very specialized tooling and training that&#x27;s only in demand 1 month a year you&#x27;re going to have a hard time keeping those trained workers around for the other 11 months.<p>The Christmas mall is a bit like this - they&#x27;re open from March to May when buyers for TJMax and Tesco inspect goods and place orders. The factories are in production from June to September and then the stuff is sea-freighted out (1 month) to warehouse centers and fulfillment to prepare for the end of October, beginning of November delivery. Because of the seasonal nature, most of the prime-time work gets sub-contracted out to everybody and their auntie. This video has a pretty good look into what most of this production looks like: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vimeo.com&#x2F;92736460" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vimeo.com&#x2F;92736460</a><p>For the most part, Christmas decor is low skill - just slather this plastic bit with chrome paint and sparkles. This makes it easy for factories to hire a bunch of workers on short notice and let them go again when demand drops off. Because the workers are seasonal there is little care that goes to protecting their well being. The conditions are bad, and after seeing it at the source, it&#x27;s why I don&#x27;t buy cheap seasonal decorations anymore.