China Factory Visit Buyer Diary #35 – Yiwu

Here is the China Factory Visit Buyer Diary #35 that you all have been waiting for. We still are in China, on the way back from Yiwu where we did a China factory visit. Yiwu is quite a big city, with more than a million inhabitants. It’s located about 200 kilometers away from Shanghai. Yiwu , known as a “factories hub”,  is the largest market of petty commodity wholesales in the world where various foreign buyers go to place orders; according to Morgan Stanley, the UN as well as the World Bank. Just to give you an idea, three billion pairs of socks are manufactured in Yiwu every year. We were really looking forward to arrive, and to see ourselves this part of China we only knew from TV reports and Geography lectures.

The arrival in Yiwu for our china factory visit

After two and a half hours of train from Shanghai we arrived at Yiwu. Yiwu train station is actually pretty big. We managed to find our way to our appointment with a factory employee though – Mrs Zhang. She and two other of her colleagues were waiting for us outside the train station. They drove us to the factory location, about twenty minutes away from the train station. There we finally saw what we had came for: the LED Maracas samples, and machines used for their production.

The LED Maracas’ manufacture

Actually the process is quite simple, and there were only three different machines used in order to manufacture the LED Maracas. Two of the machines are aimed to get the plastic take the shape we want. In this case we want the plastic to be either half the Maracas’ bulb or half its stick. Once we got them the last machine is used to assemble the “half-bulbs” together, while the sticks are hand-assembled. Finally, after the LED has been plugged in the sticks: the bulbs are put on top to finish the manufacture.

 

Every single maracas is then controlled by the workers, and the manufacture keeps on until we get the required amount of maracas with no flaw.

After we understood the process of the Maracas manufacture, we proceeded to the quality control. In this case, we realized a few “exercises” in order to check their resistance/performance. For example we made the maracas fall on the floor in order to see if they’d get broken. We also turned on and off the light fifty times, and let the light on for half a hour, to test its performance. For all of the controls we realized the conclusion has been good, and sure that our clients will be satisfied. Thus, since they fit all of our requirements, the LED Maracas will be manufactured and then sold to our client.

It’s been a great experience for us, it’s now time to go back to Hong Kong office. A great thank you to Mrs. Zhang and her colleagues who welcomed us for our China factory visit.