Wholesale Team China in Action - AW Gifts Europe - Giftware & Aromatherapy Supplier

Greetings from Yiwu, China.

Hope things are going well for you and you are all ready and prepared for Easter weekend - coming soon!

I'm finally in Yiwu now with Coco and a few days ago Tomas arrived.

Last week I was telling you about our journey from Pokhara to Kathmandu to Guangzhou to Yiwu.. including a leg on the world's most dangerous airline. If you missed it you can catch up here.

Since then Tomas arrived on a flight to Hangzhou and Coco arranged a car to pick him up and bring him. We met him just as he checked into his downtown hotel. Which was lucky because credit cards often don't work, nobody accepts cash and anyway, most ATMs don't like Visa or Mastercard's. So lucky Coco was on hand to make his room deposit. So the "A" team is reunited. Tomas, Coco and Myself... This is Tomas's first visit to China since before the pandemic.. so a lot of catching up to do.

Downtown Yiwu is looking more and more like Shanghai these days.

Well, it's been a frantic busy week so far... Tomas arrived with a huge wish list (collected from you our customers) and a selection of mood-board-type creative ideas from our talented designers. Our time here is a little limited so off to a hectic schedule.. on top of this we have a back-log of compliance paperwork to bring up to scratch.. much of this needs to be dealt with face to face to make sure we are actually fully compliant and all the relevant tests and certificates can be properly done. On Top of this, our warehouse landlord has gone bankrupt, and we need a new place to store and load containers.. so between factory visits we are viewing potential warehouses.

It's pretty hard work, most of the warehouses are dank, dark and totally unsuitable. I suspect our property agent, a natty-dressed young chap driving a Tesla, is playing the usual game all agents do... showing us a few bad and expensive places first in order for something half good to look great.

Coco and Tomas posing outside the main entrance to the wholesale market.

The last time I was here 6 months ago, it was dead quiet in the market with traders complaining of practically no business. But now something has changed. The place is buzzing again, although with South Americans, Russians and Africans are the main buyers. Not so many Americans or Europeans. Some but not so many - so our suppliers are super happy to see us. But when business has been slow it leads to much more innovation, new products and ideas aplenty as traders work hard to attract trade.

We spent one day doing factory visits, and another exploring the main giftware parts of the market saying hello to old suppliers. But then we just had to go visit the gemstone market - it's not in the Yiwu official market.. in the back streets old school traders.. and wow it's full of fresh ideas! Whole days are eaten up checking out the new amazing stuff here this time. Yesterday and today we spent many hours totally immersed in gemstones. Beautiful things that I'm sure your customers will just fall in love with. In China, the internet is restricted (as you probably know - even VPNs don't work too good now) but fortunately, I found a way to hack the phone and internet so that we have a pretty good connection and can research on the spot online and check market prices.. this is speeding up things no end. Thus we have access to Google lense and this is also a major boon to check if the prices given are good enough for you to compete...

Tomas making selections...

Meanwhile back in the warehouse.

Containers from Nepal and Indonesia just came, so lots of new stock and fast-selling things are back in stock...

See details below.

Take care and more updates next week.

All the best

David