Tradesparq

If you’re looking for a long list of good blog sites with in-depth coverage of the China-made toys export industry we wish we had some better news.

Sure, if there’s a breaking story about a major recall or safety issue you’ll be able to find it (maybe with a nice sensational angle) on everything from the Financial Times to the Washington Post. But for every day, hard biting, industry information you’ll have to look a little deeper and maybe still won’t be entirely satisfied.

Understanding this situation, we tried to track down some good sites with China toy industry coverage and came up with the following short list. As usual, we welcome and additions of sites we may have missed –please just add them to the comments section below.

TD Monthly

Toy Industry Association

Playthings

China Toy Association

Global Toy News

International Council of Toy Industries

TD Monthly (www.toydirectory.com/monthly) is a trade magazine for the toys, hobbies, games, and gifts industry.  The related site has a heavy retail focus with sections on top toys, retail tips and so forth as well as a manufacturers’ corner that includes patent-related news.  There is also a neat section of industry resources that includes info on toy recalls and safety issues.

Playthings (www.playthings.com), is another retail-focused trade site with a print magazine tie-in.  While it is not China-focused, it does provide frequent good coverage of China industry news and statistics. It includes manufacturing, licensing, and international news sections as well as opinion and blogs.

The Toy Industry Association website (www.toyassociation.org) covers more high-level industry news and has a good section for statistics. As a site for North American manufacturers it is obviously not China-focused but it will cover China issues that affect the industry.

The China Toy Association (http://www.toys-yourlinktochina.org) provides local China coverage of the industry and includes press releases and information from local manufacturers. It has a section on China statistics, covers the frequent trade shows across the country, and is also trying to earn revenue through the sales of industry reports. Like many China sites it tries to promote local suppliers and manages to open a new page any time you click on something.

So where should you go when you want news and insight on the China automotive industry?

Actually, there are several good news sites focused exclusively on China automobile makers, the China auto parts industry, and the local consumer markets.  Not a big surprise when you think about the size and growth rate of the China auto sector.

We’ve listed several of the more prominent sites here and tried to highlight a few of the ways that they differ from each other.

• China Car Times
• Gasgoo Auto News
• Go China Auto
• China Automotive Review
• Automotive News China

China Car Times (www.chinacartimes.com) has been up since 2006 and is one of the larger English-language sites to focus on the China Auto industry. It provides daily news, covers new model launches, industry trends, and industry events. It also has a neat little section titled Spy Shots, which shows photos of the latest cars spotted on the roads in China. The site also has a small but decent section with statistics.

The Gasgoo news section (http://autonews.gasgoo.com/) is fairly comprehensive as well. Gasgoo is targeted more toward importers and exporters of car parts and its main business is to try and help primarily China suppliers hook up with buyers. However, that doesn’t take away from the fact that it puts up some good industry news, blogs, interviews, and commentary on the China auto industry.

Go China Auto (www.gochinaauto.com) is a typical content site with China industry news pulled from a variety of sources and statistics from the China government. However, there is also an interesting blog giving a view of the auto sector from the local China perspective.

One site that has been around quite a bit longer and originated with print publications is the China Automotive Review (www.chinaautoreview.com). It’s been publishing weekly newsletters since 1995, has a monthly 4-color magazine, and organizes international conferences on the auto industry. The site is less elegant visually but is content rich and a good source of news, insight and statistics.

Another site you may want to glance at is Automotive News China (www.autonewschina.com). The site is built around its weekly newsletter covering domestic China automakers that export as well as the parts industry in China. It includes commentary and opinion as well as covers government regulations.

If you think we’ve missed one of the big sites (or you think your site should be listed), please add your suggestions to the comments section below.

China wood furniture sales have recovered early 2010 but it looks like prices will probably still rise. One major factor will be the increasing cost of domestic and imported wood for China manufacturers.

The China government, which has been concerned about deforestation and climate change in the country, hinted at the 2010 National People’s Congress that there will be a further scaling down of domestic harvesting of wood. This is a continuing of an existing trend, but will certainly mean the domestic wood prices will remain high and likely rise.

• China exported 38.9 billion worth of furniture in 2009, a drop of 9.1 from 2008
• About 25% of the world furniture trade (approx 1/3 of value to EU)

This isn’t shocking to China furniture manufacturers but prices are also rising in the United States and Russia, where China furniture makers already get 40% of their wood. Russia has been steadily raising export tariffs, which are already at about 25% or near $18 per cubic meter, and United States exporters face environmental issues themselves.

In addition, with China’s economy running strong, especially the housing sector, domestic demand is also increasing for both furniture and wood flooring. With so much pressure on wood prices, the price of wood furniture is bound to rise.

• Timber consumption for domestic home decoration and furniture production is said to account for 65% of the end use of wood in China

Concerned about how price increases will affect their exports, China manufacturers are focusing on reducing waste in production (for example reusing scrap wood for table legs) and trying to improve designs for export. Those changes aside, it looks like volume buyers in their target export markets of the United States and European Union will not have much hope for price relief this year.

The 35% tariff on China tire imports that was imposed by the United States in late 2009 is only the largest of several problems to affect the China tire industry in 2010. Add the skyrocketing price of natural and synthetic rubber and the steadily increasing price of oil and it’s not hard to imagine you’ll be paying a bit more to replace your car tires this year, whether in China or abroad.

To get a better picture of the tire market it helps to look at a few statistics.

• China produced 654 million tires in 2009 (up 18% year on year)
• China produced 57 million tires in December 2009 alone
• 40% of China tires are exported
• 33% of all China tire exports go the United States
• China’s market share in the US has gone from under 5% in 2004 to 17% in 2008

Clearly the issue for US tire makers is the last bullet above. China imports cost quite a bit less then US tires and therefore have been eating into the market share of US makers. By adding a 35% import tariff, prices of China-made tires will go up. It’s not a big guess as to which direction US makers hope the market share will go.

Regardless of the tariff issue, it looks like prices of China-made tires were going to go up anyway in 2010 because of raw material costs.

• China imported 170,000 tons of natural rubber in January 2010 (up 190% year on year)
• The price of natural rubber in January was $3633 dollars per ton–(double the price last year at this time
• The price of oil has risen which affects manufacturing costs

China tire makers are hoping the domestic market will help them maintain profits. Most makers are anticipating price hikes of up to 10% this year, which will increase costs for China buyers. In addition, tire makers are focusing on synthetic materials as an alternative to natural rubber. Synthetic rubber production is up by 8.7% this year in China.

It looks like China exports of shoes are back to normal. China exported US$5.3 billion of shoes in the first 2 months of 2010, which brings the industry back to pre-economic crisis levels. This is despite the fact that a European court has ruled that an earlier decision to impose anti-dumping measures on China shoes was valid and that anti-dumping duties will remain in place.

Here are some interesting shoe facts.

• China exported 8.17 billion shoes in 2009
• The total export value was $26.57 billion
• Yes, that’s an average export price of $3.25 per shoe (that’s down 4.8% from 2008)

The economic crisis led to quite a drop in shoe exports to developed countries, but sales to ASEAN countries actually increased quite a bit.

• United States imported 1.73 billion pairs of shoes (down 10%)
• European Union imported 1.34 billion pairs of shoes (down 3.4%)
• Japan imported 520 million pairs (down 2.1%)
• ASEAN Countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines etc.) imported 760 million pairs (up 61.5%)

The main Shoe manufacturing countries in Asia are China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand. In Europe, the major manufacturers are Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Finally, in South America the big producer is Brazil.

There are approximately 3 to 4 million companies involved the in footwear industry (including materials) and it employs probably close to 10 million people worldwide.

In China, the three main provinces involved in shoe production are Guangdong (3.49 billion pairs), Fujian (1.72 billion pairs), and Zhejiang (1.17 billion pairs). This is starting to shift a little bit as pricing and competition is forcing some of the China makers to move production to inland provinces where costs are lower.

However, a shortage of skilled labor (it takes around 2 years for someone to become a proficient factory worker in the shoe industry) and logistics issues means it will be some time before most production moves away from the coast.

One interesting change you will see in China, however, is the likely switch of makers moving to production of more synthetic leather shoes as opposed to pure leather. With the EU anti-dumping duties targeted to leather shoes and the increasing quality and styling of synthetic materials, manufacturers are finding it more advantageous to make shift.

Tradesparq (www.tradesparq.com) has become the first B2B trade portal to use social networking tools to help buyers and suppliers verify each other online. The international trade portal has adopted the same social features found on sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook to improve online verification and help solve one of the biggest problems with B2B trade.

This approach improves on existing Web 1.0 B2B sites which rely strictly on search results and internal ranking systems. Instead of ranking suppliers, Tradesparq provides verification by allowing foreign buyers and Chinese suppliers to connect. Once connected, they can view and contact each others shared connections for references and referrals.

This means a foreign buyer can use their existing trade network–companies they have worked with before–to verify a potential new supplier. To facilitate the process, Tradesparq uses products and product categories to match potential trade partners then turns mutual contacts into the first line of defense for verifying a supplier’s capability, quality, and reliability.

“The most powerful verification tool a buyer has can often be an existing trade partner,” said Brian Hager, General Manager at Tradesparq. “Being able to quickly identify and contact someone you know who has worked with a supplier previously can save a tremendous amount of trouble, time, and money and is more reliable than an online ranking system.”

While the majority of attention has been focused on helping buyers verify suppliers, the same social networking tools also improve the ability of China suppliers to verify potential buyers. Increasingly, companies in China are faced with fraudulent buyers looking for free samples or, worse, promoting fake companies, pushing fake checks, and even forging or faking letter of credit documents.

Although suppliers compete heavily with each other in China, they are often also part of a local network of companies that sell into the same market. By using social networking tools, they are able to leverage local knowledge to help weed out fraudulent buyers.

Tradesparq is the first B2B site to combine business networking tools with traditional online trade advertising. This service returns better search results for buyers and offers a more proactive marketing service to suppliers. Companies post products and services on www.tradesparq.com for international and domestic buyers to find and send inquiries. More importantly, suppliers and buyers can connect with each other, view details, check references, and send real-time automatic product and service updates. Tradesparq has tens of thousands of supplier, buyer, and product profiles online. For more information, feel free to leave a comment below.