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YIWU, China: At Yiwu Fuye’s Christmas factory in east China, sew and check Santa’s toys, verifying that they play a Christmas song at the touch of a button.
But jingles are seasonal joy in the factory in the city of Yiwu, which produces 80% of the Christmas products of customers exported worldwide, according to the public broadcaster CCTV.
“There’s no way to save this year,” Luo Jingjing, the company’s co-owner, told Reuters, after wasting almost a portion of its consumers on the coronavirus pandemic.
“Let’s see if the virus will come back when the weather gets bloodless and if it does, my next year will be over too,” he added.
Yiwu is a year-round Christmas town full of factories, showrooms and delivering decorations and toys to destinations around the world.
Last year, the city exported about 1. 92 billion yuan ($278. 02 million) of Christmas products between January and October, 23. 9% more than last year, according to government data.
This year’s data has not yet been published, however, the anecdotal evidence is grim after the global pandemic that virtually disrupted foreign business when many countries banned foreigners from entering.
Christmas department stores in the city markets are filled with samples of reindeer toys, fake Christmas trees, doing a song and dancing Figures of Santa Claus and other balls. The presentations are designed to attract consumers from as far away as the United States and Brazil, who sometimes come to Yiwu in the summer months to place wholesale orders for the holidays.
“It’s not comparable if we communicate about the domestic consumers of the raw fabric market this year,” said Liu Jufang, surrounded by dozens of Christmas trees in his showroom at a gigantic grocery mall. “There’s nothing here. Foreigners can’t input (China at all). It’s an empty market. That’s all. “
Yiwu would also have been in superior production mode in recent months, preparing to ship products until October. Even without the same increase in production this year, many distributors will retain excess inventory.
It’s hard to find other buyers. There is little interest in national e-commerce platforms, as Christmas is not historically celebrated in China and sales to cross-border sites such as Amazon or AliExpress were not feasible due to the huge amounts needed to justify shipping costs.
The wholesale costs of decorations are modest, a few dollars each for smaller pieces. Even Fuye’s life-size Santa song costs no more than two hundred yuan ($30).
In another showroom, Yue Yuanyuan spends much of his time looking to organize online video conferences with former clients, employing a translator to show them his samples in an attempt to attract a sale.
“We have to paint a lot for a lot fewer orders this year,” he told Reuters.
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