Yiwu: small commodities, small minimums

Yiwu is not a factory city, it is a market city — and that distinction is the whole reason to go. The Yiwu International Trade City, which everyone calls Futian market, is the largest small-commodities wholesale market in the world, and it is built for buyers who want a hundred of something rather than ten thousand.

How the Trade City is organised

The market is divided into districts, each district into floors, and each floor into product families — toys and inflatables in one, jewelry and hair accessories in another, then hardware, stationery, luggage, socks and hosiery, umbrellas, kitchenware, festive and party goods, and so on. The organisation is the feature: you can walk a floor and see every supplier of one product category in an afternoon. It is also genuinely enormous, so pick your districts before you arrive rather than wandering.

Booths are showrooms. The person in front of you may be the manufacturer, a trading company, or both depending on the order size, and asking directly is normal and not rude. Photograph every booth number next to its sample and its quoted price, because by day three you will not remember which was which.

Why buyers choose Yiwu over Guangzhou

• Minimums are low. Many booths will sell a carton. This is the city for a first order, a test assortment, or a market stall's worth of mixed stock.
• Mixed containers are the norm. The local forwarding trade exists to consolidate dozens of small purchases into one shipment, and the market-adjacent agents do it routinely.
• Breadth over depth. If you want one supplier making one thing to a tight spec, Guangzhou or a factory visit serves you better. If you want three hundred different cheap things, this is the place.

The trade-off is that low minimums and trading-company booths mean less control over production. Order samples and test them before the balance payment anyway — the sourcing guide's sample-and-inspection discipline is not optional just because the order is small.

The city itself

Yiwu has an unusually international street life for a city of its size, with a long-established Middle Eastern and Muslim trading community and the restaurants and halal food to match — the area around Maedah and Binwang is the obvious place to eat. Bullet trains connect to Hangzhou and Shanghai, which is also how most visitors arrive. Nobody comes to Yiwu for Yiwu, and that is fine: it is a working market town that has made itself extremely good at one thing.

Other cities

The city overview covers how to choose between them, and the cross-cutting guides — living in China, working in China, wholesale markets — apply everywhere.