Following a brief respite for the Spring Festival, Yiwu, the "World's Supermarket," once again welcomed a peak in customer traffic. On February 28, the twelfth day of the first lunar month, the Yiwu International Trade City and Yiwu Global Digital Trade Center—the world's largest small commodities distribution center—opened for business, with 80,000 commercial entities resuming operations to welcome global merchants. Unlike last year, this year's opening ceremony was held for the first time at the Global Digital Trade Center. Having just opened four months ago as the main stage for the CCTV Spring Festival Gala's Yiwu sub-venue, the Global Digital Trade Center has become a microcosm of Yiwu's "Gala Effect."

       Opening day data showed that the first-day opening rate for Yiwu International Trade City, Global Digital Trade Center, Huangyuan Garment Market, and International Production Materials Market reached 97.4%, up 2.3 percentage points from the 2025 opening day. Total market foot traffic reached 291,000 visits, up 23.8% year-on-year, with the Yiwu Global Digital Trade Center alone accounting for 62,000 visits.

1. Building Brands to Enhance "Quality-Price Ratio"

       On opening day, several tourist buses were neatly lined up outside the main entrance of the Global Digital Trade Center, with no shortage of consumers traveling from surrounding areas for "procurement-style tourism." Benefiting from the popularity brought by the Spring Festival Gala, Zhu Sufang, head of the fashion accessories brand "Yindi," found that foot traffic in her store this year had multiplied several-fold compared to previous years. She noted that increased foot traffic corresponds directly to order volume, with "Gala same-style" products displayed prominently in the store having already generated pre-sales exceeding 700,000 yuan.

       Riding the "Gala Effect," Yiwu topped the rankings for county-level tourism popularity during this year's Spring Festival. Third-party platform data shows that as of February 23, Yiwu tourist visits grew 83% year-on-year, with tourism revenue up 84%. Beneath this bustling surface, global business remains the main protagonist. On how to navigate an increasingly uncertain global market in 2026, Yiwu's foreign trade professionals already have their answers. Whether facing the challenge of industrial relocation in textile and fabric sectors, the impact of declining birth rates on infant and toddler products, or traditional daily necessities like plastics and rubber, few signs of decline are visible in the Yiwu market. Particularly, the Global Digital Trade Center's positioning—which seeks to transform traditional trade models and disrupt existing business inertia—has genuinely accelerated the pace of digitalization, branding, and differentiation among Yiwu's traditional foreign trade practitioners.

       Innovation injects vitality into brands, while brands transform innovation into influence. A key focus for Zhong Chulong this year is strengthening brand building. Unlike traditional apparel brands, their brand strategy will rely more heavily on online channels to build brand recognition at lower costs. To mitigate the impact of intense domestic competition, he also plans to sell their innovative fabrics directly to industry peers—rather than letting others imitate them, he prefers to establish "secondary wholesale" operations to maintain control over supply advantages. The ability to create opening-day bestsellers in the form of "Gala same-style" products stems from Zhu Sufang's team's innovative capabilities. Their primary customer base is in South Korea, where they have accumulated years of market sensitivity and strong design capabilities in fashion accessories. "Before New Year's Eve, the CCTV cultural creative team came to the Yiwu market to select products and recognized our design capabilities," she said. Two products her team rushed to complete in ten days were both selected by CCTV cultural creatives, "and production began on the fourth day of the first lunar month." Facing fluctuations in consumer markets, Zhu Sufang achieved record-breaking revenue last year with 20-30% growth. Having opened a new store at the Global Digital Trade Center and planning to gradually open more brand stores offline, they aim to achieve 50% growth in the Year of the Horse. Fang Qing's maternal and infant products business is 90% export-oriented; through diversified market development, the company achieved stable growth of approximately 20% in 2025. Having also shifted their focus to the Global Digital Trade Center, their priority this year is to "move upmarket," upgrading product value to "align brand and corporate positioning with new markets."

2. Opportunities Abound When You "Go Out"

       Beyond differentiated innovation and branding, another key focus for Zhong Chulong this year is expanding foreign trade. To develop export business, he has already established a sales team, with supply chain research prepared to develop the foreign trade segment. Of course, this does not affect their continued deep cultivation of the domestic market—"there's still a long road ahead in domestic sales"—while export markets will become one of the company's largest growth drivers this year.

       With the team now in place, as the company's leader, Zhong Chulong will also take steps to "go out" this year. He plans to visit two or three countries, leveraging resources from the Chaoshan Chamber of Commerce and Yiwu International Trade City to visit local garment factories and quickly familiarize himself with overseas markets.

       Affected by global economic fluctuations last year, Huang Ping's orders remained basically flat. Although this year's opening was later than in previous years, orders in hand are actually higher, "just waiting for workers to return to the factories." While launching integrated domestic trade development this year, she will participate in overseas exhibitions for the first time, first to Southeast Asia, then to South America. "Relevant policies are encouraging us to go out, and with new storefronts, we need to take the initiative." According to official data, Yiwu's total import and export value in 2025 exceeded 800 billion yuan for the first time—reaching 836.5 billion yuan for the full year, up 25.1% year-on-year; exports totaled 730.7 billion yuan, up 24.1%; imports reached 105.8 billion yuan, up 32.3%.