China’s Toy Wholesale Markets — and Which One You Actually Need

Chenghai, in Shantou. The plastic toy capital: cars, blasters, figures, construction sets, dolls. This is where moulds live, and where a product with your own brand is actually made. Our partner group is here — three production sites and its own engineering department; AJT, an ISO/IEC 17025 testing laboratory historically linked with the group’s founding family, works in the same Chenghai ecosystem.

Guangzhou. Electronics, radio-controlled, ride-ons, anything with a battery or a circuit board. The quoting is different because the bill of materials is different, and minimums tend to be higher.

Yiwu. Small goods at enormous breadth: party items, keychains, novelties, stationery, decorations. Bought by the carton and mixed freely. We keep an office here.

The mould owner — paid for the steel tooling, runs the machines. Lowest price on their own items, no flexibility on anything else.

The assembler — buys parts, puts them together, packs. Flexible, but the price includes someone else’s margin already.

The trading company — owns nothing, resells everything, answers fastest and in the best English. Useful, but you are paying for the answer.

All three will introduce themselves as a factory. The difference decides your price, your minimum and your risk, and it is spelled out on our Shantou factory page.

Measured across our own catalogue, median price per piece by category: party decor ¥2.30, novelty toys ¥2.40, keychains ¥3.30, board games ¥6.50, toy cars ¥8.60, plush ¥13.00, building sets ¥14.50, radio-controlled ¥28.80.

Anything with a motor or a radio jumps a tier. Anything inflatable costs more to ship than to buy — beach and pool goods run 2.61 times their real weight on air freight, against 1.09 for keychains.

A catalogue of 385,341 items with prices published per piece and per carton, the factory named on each card, the carton quantity stated, and the certificate field shown empty when nothing was supplied. Consolidation from several factories into one shipment, acceptance inspection with photo and video before the cartons are taped, and published transit ranges for 62 destinations.

What a trip still buys you is touching the goods. That is a real advantage, and if you want it, our partner keeps a showroom in Shantou.