Beijing's famous must-see shopping experience for tourists, Xiushui
Street Market, is being reorganized to emphasize silk, its premier
commodity, as well as enhance the quality of goods for sale and to
crack down a fake brand-name products.
According to Beijing Xiushui Clothing Co Ltd, operator of the
market, Famous and Old Silk Brands Street and Quality Silk District
will be established to provide high-quality silk cloth and garments
as well as tailoring services for consumers.
"Both the quality and quantity of our silk products are to be
upgraded and expanded, and there will be no counterfeit brand-name
commodities here," said Wang Zili, general manager of the
company.
Some famous silk stores with more than a century of history,
such as Ruifuxiang and Neiliansheng, will also be introduced so
"the old Xiushui silk vendors should adjust their commodity
structure to meet with the united quality requirements of the
market", Wang said.?
Some 90 vendors selling counterfeit Armani, Hugo Boss and
Ermenegildo Zegna clothes and accessories have been cleaned out of
the market. Their booths will be consolidated into the Quality Silk
District.
After reorganization, the Xiushui Market will officially open on
July 15 with 196 silk booths to become China's largest silk
retailing and service market catering to foreigners.
In anticipation of the change, existing vendors are clearing
stock, selling goods at discounts of 70 to 80 percent.
"We were ordered by the market to sell high-quality products and
all (others) should disappear, so we are trying to minimize our
losses by cleaning out our storage," said a Zhejiang silk vendor
who did not want to be named.
"Actually, have they (the Xiuhshui Market operator) thought
carefully (about the changes)? Why do consumers come here? They
come for affordable and nice silk products instead of those with
high-price tags in luxury department stores," he said.
He added that the change caused him to lose hundreds of
thousands of yuan.
Wang Zili noted that the market has paid a total of 3 million
yuan to vendors as compensation.
"The money is from our 30 million yuan intellectual property
right (IPR) protection fund" set up last year, aiming to help build
Xiushui from a so-called fake brand-name products hub into a
reliable and IPR-qualified market," said Wang.
According to Fan Yanru, deputy secretary-general of the Retail
Enterprises Committee of the China Commerce Association for General
Merchandise, Xiushui Market is attractive to visitors, especially
to foreigners, for its local shopping atmosphere, such as
bargaining and affordable prices.
"Of course, business concentration is good to identify Xiushui
from other competitors, but the market should in the meantime hold
on to its characteristics," said Fan.
Xiushui Market has long been popular with overseas tourists who
have flocked there to buy counterfeit luxury clothes and
accessories since 1985.
Surrounded by foreign embassies and luxury hotels in the
Chaoyang district, the market is ranked as the third best-known
tourist site around the capital after the Palace Museum and the
Great Wall.
It once drew 100,000 shoppers a day, generating more than 10
million yuan in taxes annually from sales of more than 100 million
yuan a year.
The Xiushui company razed the old outdoor market in January
2005, moving the stalls indoors into a new multi-story
building.
(China Daily July 4, 2007)
