Sourcing the right product in China can be very tough and face to face meetings with suppliers are key to finding the right product at the right price.

The Canton fair is hugely popular and critical for many importers, but it occurs just twice a year . With their “permanent trade fair” model Yiwu has been experiencing a lot of growth recently.

The Yiwu markets cover an amazing surface (more than 1 million sqm) and showcase an amazing range of products (more than 300K), from promotional to industrial products.  Yiwu is just a 3-hour train ride away from our office by the Shanghai Railway station.

This means we can send a merchandising team there to tackle any urgent product development work at a days notice.  Since sourcing like this requires a dedicated buying mission ODM usually require a retainer for this service.

However, this is more than made up for by the fact that we can buy small production runs from multiple wholesalers whilst there.  If we can tap into this stock we can also avoid long production times / air shipments etc…

Our staff was so excited by talks with one of his suppliers that he was under the impression that Christmas was arriving early.