Tucked inside the Yiwu market is a thriving cosmetics industry cluster with over 1,200 business entities. Local brands such as BOB are winning overseas buyers in South America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, with some clients placing repeat orders of hundreds of thousands of units.
A nationwide-first reform allowing market-procurement export cosmetics to be inspected at the place of purchase has removed a long-standing bottleneck, letting merchants ship goods far faster and boosting Yiwu's small-commodity export competitiveness.
The case shows how policy tweaks for small traders can unlock sizable export growth.
