'World's supermarket' Yiwu embraces surging orders driven by Asian Games

(ECNS) -Yiwu in East China's Zhejiang Province, dubbed the world's supermarket or the world's small commodity capital, is witnessing surging orders as the 19th Asian Games Hangzhou approaches.

According to statistics from Yiwu Customs, export of sports goods from Yiwu reached 2.85 billion yuan ($0.4 billion) in the first five months of this year, an increase of 15.6 percent over the same period last year.

The purchasing volume from Asian customers has significantly increased recently, local business owners told CCTV.

“Previously, we sold rackets to Africa mostly, with an average of around 7,000 pairs per month, compared to around 4,000 pairs to Asia. But now, we are selling more to Asia,” said Li Zhi, a racket shop owner.

In addition to increasing orders from Asian countries, the Asian Games Hangzhou has also fueled the popularity of customized sports goods.

Xiang Lili has been running various ball sports goods in Yiwu for over a decade. She said many of the orders nowadays are customized goods. Although they are mostly small in value and quantity, the customers generally have higher quality requirements for the balls, which leads to higher prices and relatively larger profit margins.

Manufacturers have also enjoyed good business. Even though some companies’ production equipment is running at full capacity, they still can't keep up with the demand for orders.

Business owner Chen Xianchun said some of the factories are too busy to only deliver the goods after three months.

“This year, we have gained some new Asian customers. Due to the hosting of the Asian Games, customers from countries like Vietnam and the Philippines have come to make purchases. Each customer places orders for around 400 or 500 pieces, with 50 items per piece. However, due to our limited production capacity, we can only allocate around 200 or 300 pieces to each customer and deliver them gradually,” said Zheng Guojun, a representative of a football manufacturing company.

Many sports goods businesses in Yiwu have increased collaboration with manufacturers from various regions across the country to cope with the surge in orders.