Yiwu, Zhejiang: Vigorously promoting small commodities to brave the big market
Buyers come in a continuous stream, eagerly lingering in different stores to select products and inquire about prices; Business owners warmly welcome customers, reply to online messages during leisure time, and rush to arrange holiday shipping orders… As the Spring Festival approaches, entering the Yiwu International Trade City in Zhejiang, one can still feel the vitality surging everywhere.
The Flying Dragon Craft Shop located in Zone 1 of the Trade City boasts a dazzling array of handicrafts, including the Eiffel Tower in France, the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy, and the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. In recent days, the boss’s wife Liu Qiaohong has been busy rushing to ship the goods ordered during the Spring Festival.
In the past year, despite facing many changes and challenges, many business owners in the market feel that their business is doing well. Liu Qiaohong said that her store’s revenue will increase by about 40% year-on-year in 2024, and she has also expanded a new store due to business needs.
According to statistics from Zhejiang China Small Commodity City Group Co., Ltd., in 2024, the Yiwu China Small Commodity Market achieved a transaction volume of 279.803 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.02%; The daily average flow of people is 224300, of which the daily average number of foreign visitors exceeds 3900, a year-on-year increase of 4.89%, both reaching a historical high.
The trend of online and offline integration in international trade, as well as the bundling of small orders, is becoming increasingly evident. In Liu Qiaohong’s view, the stable growth of business volume is closely related to the Mall Group’s active guidance of digital trade transformation, empowering business owners with new technologies such as artificial intelligence.
In October 2023, the big language model for commodity trade and the newly upgraded Chinagoods AI intelligent creation service platform made their debut at the Yiwu Expo. It can automatically generate versions in over 30 languages based on a video recorded in Chinese.
Nowadays, when opening the Chinagoods online platform of the International Trade City, more and more online stores can see introduction videos of foreign languages such as French, Spanish, Arabic, etc. generated by artificial intelligence. More customers can intuitively understand our products, and online communication is constantly laying the foundation for offline traffic, “said Liu Qiaohong.
In addition to empowering business owners, we are deeply promoting standards and design into the market, strengthening standards, innovation, and brand leadership around another core element of international trade, ‘goods’, “said Gong Chenghao, Deputy General Manager of Shangcheng Group.
Oulin Beilin is a shop specializing in accessories, with over 20 years of experience in the industry. The product codes have been compiled to more than 80000. Every month, we launch four to five hundred new products. ‘Entering the market with standards’ drives us to improve the design and quality of our products, so that more customers can recognize our products and form a virtuous cycle, “said Wu Lihua, the store manager.
At present, the proportion of foreign customers of Oulin Beilin has increased from around 10% in 2023 to about 30%. Wu Lihua said, “The quality of small commodities and the popularity of international trade cities are constantly improving, and we are confident in our development this year
In December 2024, the State Council replied and agreed to launch a new round of comprehensive international trade reform in Yiwu, with a focus on accelerating breakthroughs in the “buy global” aspect of imports.
In the fifth district of the International Trade City, which specializes in imported goods, Lou Wenying, the general manager of Kangzhan Import and Export Co., Ltd. in Yiwu, operates an imported food supermarket that covers over 3000 types of goods from more than 20 countries. After entering the commercial city in 2015, Lou Wenying felt a great sense of accomplishment. In addition to the rent reduction policy, the shopping mall group tries every means to attract business owners. Every year, it organizes business owners to participate in various exhibitions in groups to broaden its channels of contact with consumers
According to Luo Yuan, Deputy General Manager of the Fifth Branch of Shangcheng Group International Trade City, after more than 10 years of cultivation, the scale of the fifth district of the International Trade City has expanded from more than 20000 square meters and dozens of operating households to 100000 square meters and 173 market operating entities, providing consumers with about 150000 types of imported goods.
To the east of Zone 5 of the International Trade City, the construction of the sixth generation market core project in Yiwu – the Global Digital Trade Center – is in full swing and will be put into operation in 2025; The Yiwu West Railway Station, with non-stop China Europe freight trains connecting more than 50 countries such as Kazakhstan, Poland, and Germany, injects a continuous stream of power into international trade with an increasingly diverse range of goods… Small commodities explore larger markets and constantly innovate to achieve glory.