Chinese Confession – Yiwu – The City of Socks

One of the many perks of this study abroad program is that travel opportunities are abundant. In fact, some are even mandatory, which is great for peeling me away from this computer and classes and out into the real world. Early this month we had the chance to go to a couple of cities near Shanghai. Well, I use “near” in the loose sense, meaning that they were both within 3 hours of the city by train.

The first city we went to was Yiwu. Okay, some background information on Yiwu: if you have even heard of the place, I would be quite surprised. None of us had. It’s a tiny city with just 650,000 people. What the city has going, however, is nothing short of amazing. In all of the world, amongst its 6 billion inhabitants, there are somewhere between 500,000 and 750,000 components manufactured (I have the actual number written down somewhere, but I can’t find it. Either way, it’s a lot). About 2/3 of all of them can be found in Yiwu. It is basically the wholesale market of the world, and it makes Sams Club look like a lemonade stand. No other place anywhere in the world even comes close to it. And we got to see firsthand where it all takes place.

There is a three phase development in the city that is basically a giant wholesale mall. Phases one and two are already complete, while phase three is under planning and construction. It would be virtually impossible to get a picture of it, but here’s a top view of it from google earth:

http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=29.332278&lon=120.099514&z=16&l=0&m=a&v=2

By the way, it is relatively new, so this only shows phase one as being complete. The area for phase three isn’t even on the map yet.

It’s enormous. It’s way bigger than any mall, but I suppose that’s to be expected if it has 2/3 of all the different things manufactured in the world. All of these manufacturers come here and set up a store front in a small shop about the size of bedroom. There they display everything they produce and have a representative or two to negotiate purchases, shipping, and everything else. It’s not much of a retail front, so don’t plan on going on a shopping spree unless you really can’t resist buying 3,000 meters of LED rope light, 100 Chinese throwing stars, a few hundred vacuum cleaners, or a few dozen ATVs. You could even get cotton candy machines if you’d like. Actually, there is a “small” retail tourist shopping area where they actually sell things at great prices.

There are so many of these wholesale stores housed in this giant complex that they actually name the “streets” and alleys, have “blocks” and addresses, and have maps. If you were to spend just three minutes in each store, looking at what they have to offer, it would take you an entire year to see them all. And then, of course, you have to go back and see the ones that opened up over the course of that same year. Oh, and don’t forget phase three that is under construction. When that part is done, it will be bigger than phases one and two combined. That means you would have to spend another year or two seeing all of those stores there along with the ones that would open while you are spending three minutes in each. It would basically be never-ending.

The place is just mind-boggling, and yet so few people have ever heard of it. It is a very recent development, which is one of the reasons. There are also virtually no Americans setting up or doing business there. The way of doing business is so different that most who have tried have given up. This, of course, does mean that there is tremendous opportunity, but it will require a lot of patience, hard work, and devotion. Yiwu will be an incredibly fascinating place to see it in twenty years or so. It is a pretty small city, but it felt very, very international, especially in terms of the presence of people from Western Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. The city is just in the beginning phases of its explosive growth, and it looks like it will be an incredibly wealthy, entrepreneurial area. It is already the most entrepreneurial area in all of China, and a staggering amount of companies can trace their roots to this specific area and province. Right now the entire city is pretty much one massive construction zone.

One of the things that kept going through my mind is that it would be so easy for someone in America to set up business with connections in Yiwu. You can get direct access to 2/3 of everything manufactured in the world, so the possibilities are endless. You could just contact a supplier in Yiwu and buy the products directly from the manufacturer. Or if you don’t want to find them yourself, you could easily find a buyer’s agent readily available that could help arrange the logistics and get the products to the US or anywhere else in the world. As long as you aren’t positioning yourself in an oversaturated niche of the market, it would be quite easy. Suddenly it just doesn’t seem so impressive when I think about those people who “know someone who knows someone who knows someone” who can hook them up with inexpensive wholesale goods direct from China. I know exactly how it works and I’ve seen it first hand. Not even Wal-Mart seems impressive anymore.

I got a picture of one of the entrances to phase two:

Here is a model of phase two that was on display. It’s huge.

Just for kicks, I decided to walk around the Christmas section of the mall and snap pictures of Christmas trees, pretending like I was actual doing product research. It must be a pretty common thing for company representatives to go around like that because it didn’t seem strange to them. There were still plenty more that I didn’t even get to check out before we had to leave.

Here are some outside shots of the commodity center phase two.

And if you can stand it, you can even buy the biggest sticks of incense that you’ll probably ever see, as shown by my friend Kirsten.

And on a random note, here is a picture of the round-about outside our hotel. If you look in the middle, there is a screen that displays the volume of the commotion in the city. As noble of an effort as it seemed to be, I don’t think it actually did anything because it always read between 68dB and 70dB morning, noon, and night. I figure it was meant to just impress tourists who wouldn’t actually take a closer look.

Another random fact about the city: they produce over 3 billion pairs of socks every year. It’s the sock capital of China. Actually, it’s probably the sock capital of the world. I doubt any other city produces nearly that many.

After Yiwu, we went to Xitang, which is another canal city not far from Shanghai. It is a lot like Suzhou except it has preserved more of the traditional Chinese feel and character. I have a lot more photos of that city, and I will post them with a new blog once I get them all sorted and organized. Of course, I also have to apologize for the randomness of my recent blogs. They aren’t exactly in chronological order, but rather in the order of ease of writing. Hopefully they at least offer an interesting view of China.