China’s holiday ornament industry is beating the economic chill in Europe and America by boosting sales at home, where Christmas trappings are an increasingly popular marketing tool for local retailers.
While Chinese manufacturing activity is shrinking for the first time in almost three years, the mainland’s Christmas decoration industry is reporting strong sales and a rush by new entrants into the industry.
In Yiwu, a manufacturing centre in eastern Zhejiang province that claims to be the Christmas ornament capital of the world, exports are up about 10 per cent for the industry as a whole and some manufacturers are reporting their best year to date. Over the past three years, the number of Christmas decoration manufacturers in Yiwu has snowballed from 80 to 600.