15 March 2007

Guang Zhou Wholesale Market

This is one of my most look forward places in the whole itenary. Before entering the place, all you could think of is “Marketing Research”, slashing prices at an unbelievable rate and getting a hand full of goods. But after actually going there, THINK AGAIN!

Explanation:
When entering the place, it looks quite the way you thought it would be. There are many stories of shop houses. We were all very excited!

But we realized that they mostly sell only in bulk and if you were to get just one piece, they usually jerked up the prices by a lot. Which means either you buy in bulk of like 10 pieces or you buy only 1 piece at a price that is not really worth. The people there also have very bad attitude and very bad service. They would not slash the prices for you despite how good your bargaining skills are. Even if you said you were to use it for business purposes or as samples for company, they too would not bother you that much.

The goods at the top floors are priced slightly higher than those at the lower floors. I guess the reason why they would not sell it to us at a lower rate is because most of us are dressed in formal attire and quite a large majority are in Ngee Ann blazers. Therefore the shop holders would have recognized us at a distance. Many of us also used the same tagline such as :”We are here to do market research…blah blah” resulting in them knowing that we are all from the same place. Lesson learnt! Next time when going there, dress casually! But I doubt I’ll be going back there unless I am getting goods in bulk.

I also realized that most of the shops sell imitation goods. Even their imitation goods are priced at steep prices. And when the police officers are patrolling the places, they would hurriedly off the lights in the store, close the curtains and locking up the doors. They would then sit outside their shops waiting for the coast to be cleared before reopening their stores. I had one experience where I was locked inside one of the shops when looking around their goods. But they let me out when I requested to leave. So no harm done!

Overall, quite a bad experience and a lot us went back empty handed.

I’ve learnt that you have to build relationship first unless they refuse to sell it to you thinking that you are buying for personal use. A lot of talking and negotiations have to be done before buying first. That is if you meet a good shop holder. It is also a good place for business people to get items in bulk at cheaper rate but not a good place for casual shoppers like me! =)