How to plan one sourcing day at Yiwu International Trade City District 1

District 1 is the toys, jewellery and crafts building of the Yiwu International Trade City. Here is how to turn one day there into a shortlist, a sample bag and a consolidated load.

Yiwu markets: Yiwu International Trade City District 1

Arriving and setting your route

District 1 opened in October 2002 and covers 420 mu with a floor area of 340,000 square metres. More than 10,000 booths sit in the building, run by over 10,500 registered business households. One trade dominates each floor, so the building rewards a route planned by category rather than by aisle.

The floor logic is simple: flowers and toys on floor 1, hair accessories and jewellery on floor 2, festive and decorative crafts, porcelain, crystal, picture frames and jewellery parts on floor 3, and a direct-sales centre for small and medium manufacturers on floor 4. Thirty-seven lifts and escalators move people between floors, and cars can drive directly to floors 2 to 4, which matters later in the day when you are carrying cartons rather than catalogues.

Before you enter, decide which two floors carry your categories and walk those fully. Confirm current trading hours with the market or your suppliers before travelling, because stall-keeping rhythms shift through the year.

The morning: walk one floor end to end

Start at the end of the floor farthest from the entrance and work back, so your last meetings are nearest the exit. Booths on the same floor sell comparable goods, which makes pricing a matter of walking rather than commuting between buildings.

Keep one notebook per category and record the booth number, the contact and what the booth actually makes rather than what the sign says. Ask each booth for its minimum order and its sample policy at the same time; the two answers together tell you whether the supplier is realistic for your volume.

Lunch and the sample handover

Food outlets cluster in and around the building, and the east annex houses service functions for traders. Treat lunch as a checkpoint: photograph every sample you have collected, log which booth it came from, and discard anything you will not quote.

If a purchasing agent or freight forwarder is collecting on your behalf, hand over a written list of booth numbers and quantities. Samples that travel without a list have a habit of losing their provenance, and provenance is what your inspection team will ask for later.

The afternoon: second floor, then the shortlist

Spend the afternoon on your second category floor, then return to the booths that impressed you in the morning. Second conversations move faster: quantities, packaging and lead times get discussed once the sample question is settled.

Floor 4 holds a direct-sales centre for small and medium manufacturing enterprises, including a hall for Taiwan merchants, and the east annex hosts a sourcing service centre for foreign-trade enterprises. If your item needs factory-level customisation rather than catalogue goods, this is the floor to raise it.

Closing the day: consolidation

Before you leave, group purchases by supplier and label each lot. Goods from different booths that travel together in one shipment need to be reconciled at a collection point before they reach a freight forwarder, and that reconciliation starts with your labels.

The market-specific path from booth to port is described in our district consolidation guide, and the core guide to consolidation covers the forwarder paperwork that applies anywhere. Leave the building with a photo record of every lot and an agreed date for balance payments.

Trading hours, layouts and stall line-ups change; confirm with the market or your supplier before you travel.