(Yicai) Oct. 16 -- Yiwu, known as the world’s capital of small commodities, has opened its sixth-generation market, continuing to enhance traditional trade through digital innovations.

The Global Digital Trade Center has attracted over 30,000 buyers since opening on Oct. 14, with more than 3,700 merchants already setting up shop. Its market area spans over 410,000 square meters and hosts sellers from eight new industries, including fashion jewelry, trendy toys, and smart equipment, with more than half of them selling products under their own proprietary brands or intellectual properties.

The new center covers an area of over 1.25 million sqm, integrating five major functional sections: a market, commercial offices, a business district, residential apartments, and a digital trade port. The model creates an integrated upstream-downstream ecosystem that enables a “sample downstairs, purchase upstairs” workflow.

The Global Digital Trade Center features precise booth navigation to handle the problem of buyers having to spend plenty of time searching for products and booths, which led to low efficiency, said Zhou Jian, general manager of Yiwu China Small Commodity City Big Data. Functions such as product search, booth lookup, and image recognition will also significantly enhance the procurement experience, Zhou pointed out.

The sixth-gen market is a clear identity upgrade, Huang Zixuan, head of Tang Tang Tang Cultural Communication, told Yicai. “It’s no longer a traditional wholesale market, but instead, it integrates concepts of culture and tourism, digitalization and intelligence, and branding, creating an ecosystem that is more attractive to young people, better at retaining customer traffic, and more conducive to conversion.”

Over the past 40-plus years, Yiwu’s market has undergone six relocations, ten expansions, and six generational upgrades, expanding its business scope from “trading nationwide” to “trading globally.” It will continue exploring digitalization to unlock new businesses, providing digital empowerment for traditional trade.

The launch of the Global Digital Trade Center is not just a physical upgrade to Yiwu’s market but a preview of the future of trade. With the deep integration of traditional commerce and the digital world, the resilience of China’s foreign trade is poised to gain an even more solid foundation.

Editor: Martin Kadiev