China's Yiwu Merchants: Not Guessing World Cup Champion, But Next Hot Commodity

Text | Baobian, Author | Gao Ze, Editor | Xing Yun

The 2026 FIFA World Cup across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico has just kicked off.  In Yiwu, Zhejiang, thousands of kilometers away, preparations actually shifted into full gear as early as a year ago.

World Cup peripheral products made here once accounted for over 70% of the global market. Every World Cup is an annual business milestone for this “world supermarket.”

From the early days of basic soccer balls, wigs, and jerseys, to the “vuvuzela” that swept the globe at the 2010 South Africa World Cup, and now the wildly popular “Messi GOAT” little sheep keychain, people have discovered something new: as pet jerseys and creative designer toys replace traditional flags, Yiwu is no longer the OEM factory that only knows how to “move volume at low prices.” It has started playing the IP game, selling emotions, and riding memes.

Behind the buzz are tougher questions: How do small and mid-sized merchants without official authorization get past copyright hurdles? Has the long-standing problem of cutthroat low-price competition really been cured? After the World Cup party ends, how can Yiwu’s event-driven business keep pushing upward and breaking through?

Every World Cup frenzy is both a booster for Yiwu’s industrial upgrade and a magnifying glass that reveals its progress—and its predicaments.

Yiwu Starts Playing Football “Memes”

Turn the clock back to 2002. That year’s Korea–Japan World Cup saw China’s men’s national team reach the finals for the first time, igniting nationwide football fever. For the first time, Yiwu’s merchants felt the magic of the “event economy.”

Back then, the Yiwu market mainly sold basic, standardized items: classic black-and-white soccer balls, simple fan apparel, and flags in every color. Designs were monotonous and function came first; merchants competed only on capacity and price. Buyers often showed up to find warehouses sold out—leading to scenes of overnight scrambles for stock.

By the 2010 South Africa World Cup, vuvuzelas made in Yiwu became a must-have hit in the stands. More than 90% of these simple plastic horns were produced in Yiwu; powered by massive orders, the model was still the typical high-volume, low-margin play.

By the 2022 Qatar World Cup, the plush mascot “La’eeb” went viral. Products started to carry a bit of a cultural-creative vibe, but the mainstream categories still hadn’t moved beyond the realm of traditional fan goods.

For this U.S.–Canada–Mexico World Cup, the logic behind Yiwu’s World Cup merchandise has begun shifting toward new growth drivers such as IP empowerment and emotional value. All kinds of creative designer toys and crossover products are emerging one after another, completely breaking through the limits of traditional categories.

Across Yiwu’s major markets, you can find cute character keychains printed with star players, team-themed pet outfits, and creative tournament ornaments everywhere. Among them, the “Messi GOAT” lamb charm has remained highly popular. This charm plays on football’s “GOAT (Greatest of All Time)” idea, blending Argentina’s team colors with Messi’s signature in the design. With its playful meaning and adorable look, it has become a viral must-have among young consumers.

Meanwhile, the “football screaming chicken,” dressed in a team jersey, has also gone global, with buyers from multiple countries placing bulk orders. These lightweight creative toys break out of the traditional “cheering prop” mold, leaning into pure entertainment and fitting today’s fans’ more casual watch-party needs.

Pet merchandise has also become a newly crowned hit for this tournament. More and more young fans are willing to treat pets as family members, and orders for pet jerseys, collars, and leashes printed with national team logos have been coming in nonstop.

Tudou, a Yiwu trendy-toy merchandise selector, said that many textile merchants who used to make U-shaped neck pillows and standard plush items have pivoted quickly by leveraging existing production lines, launching pet product series and smoothly entering this new track. These products focus on emotional resonance, making them an attractive option for small and medium-sized merchants looking to tap into World Cup business.

Traditional basic categories haven’t left the stage either—they are still a “hard necessity” for large overseas buyers. Cross-border trader Guangzhi told Leopard Change that for the three host countries—the U.S., Canada, and Mexico—as well as Argentina and Portugal, which have top stars like Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, bulk orders for classic standard items such as jerseys, footballs, and flags had already been placed in large quantities in the summer of 2025.

Large overseas trading companies and global brand sponsors need to leave time for ocean shipping, customs clearance, and local distribution. Purchase volumes for a single SKU can reach tens of thousands of units, and full-container ocean freight is the common approach—procurement is highly planned and scheduled.

Now even traditional products are quietly being upgraded: ordinary cotton jerseys are being replaced with quick-dry fabrics, and flags are made with specialty materials that are water-resistant and sunproof. Adjustments are also made to match different countries’ consumer preferences—North American clients favor large outdoor flags, while South American clients prefer colorful fan-support accessories.

Faced with steep official IP licensing fees and strict review rules, some cross-border sellers choose to operate on the edge of compliance, creating “gray-area” creative products.

They steer clear of FIFA’s and clubs’ official trademarks and patents, instead leveraging national-flag color schemes and AI-assisted, second-creation abstract patterns to design everyday items such as apparel, tablecloths, and car decals. For example, they use the green-and-red palette of Mexico’s flag to make T-shirts, and design outdoor picnic mats with textures inspired by a football pitch—riding the World Cup buzz while minimizing infringement risk. These products are highly adaptable, launch quickly, and respond to market feedback with remarkable agility.

Differences in demand among buyer groups further segment the product landscape. Large overseas buyers and brand owners focus on officially licensed products and traditional standardized items, placing big orders with long lead times. Domestic tourist attractions and boutique shops, along with scattered overseas retailers, prefer trendy toys and creative small goods. Most of them only started placing orders gradually after the 2026 Spring Festival, when the tournament atmosphere began to heat up—typically buying mixed batches across multiple SKUs. Per-SKU volumes are usually only in the dozens to just over a hundred pieces, and their purchasing behavior shows a clear bandwagon effect.

Officially licensed products sit at the top of the supply chain, with both the barriers to entry and the profit margins far ahead of the rest.

Xiong Xiaofeng, a sports licensing distributor who has been deeply involved in the industry for nearly two decades, holds formal FIFA authorization and runs a large official flagship store in Nanjing. He summed up the sales pattern for sports-event merchandise: “Before the tournament, you sell mascots; after the tournament, you sell trophies.”

In his store, a 26 cm 1:1 replica of the FIFA World Cup Trophy is priced at nearly RMB 30,000 and sold in a limited global release; on the eve of kickoff, more than half of the pre-sale inventory had already been sold. Wuliangye’s co-branded World Cup baijiu combines social and commemorative value and has remained a strong seller in gift channels.

Xiong said official licensing is only available to leading compliant manufacturers. Most supply-chain profits are concentrated in the hands of the licensor and first-tier distributors, making it difficult for ordinary small and mid-sized merchants to participate—also making IP barriers the key criterion separating the high-end and low-end product tracks.

Customer Acquisition via Smartphones

The channel transformation behind Yiwu’s tournament-driven economy also traces back to the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Japan and South Korea.

That tournament not only ignited domestic enthusiasm for football, but also formally opened the curtain on Yiwu’s export of sports goods. Before then, Yiwu’s cultural and sporting products had not been clearly zoned, and most merchants only “happened to” sell a few footballs, rackets, and the like. If buyers at home or abroad wanted to source goods, they had to travel to Yiwu, squeeze into the booths, look at samples, and haggle in person.

Orders were highly concentrated in the hands of a small number of large wholesalers. Small and mid-sized merchants found it hard to connect directly with overseas clients; information asymmetry was severe and circulation efficiency was low. It was an era when “people searched for goods.”

It was also starting from that World Cup that Yiwu’s Huangyuan Road gradually formed into a dedicated sports-goods street. Hundreds of merchants put down roots there, officially embarking on the path of tournament-driven foreign trade.

Over the following decade-plus, the model of offline market stalls plus physical trade shows remained the dominant approach for a long time. During the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, foreign-trade orders accounted for as much as 80% of business for Yiwu merchants, and buyers still mainly purchased in person. Every year, overseas buyers would routinely travel to Yiwu and attend major cross-border trade fairs, while merchants stayed at their stalls waiting for foot traffic; the circulation model saw little real change for years. Under this model, order flows were straightforward, but geographic constraints were obvious: small overseas buyers in remote regions found it hard to access Yiwu’s supply, and the growth runway for small and mid-sized merchants was also limited.

Over the past four years, the rise of overseas short-video social platforms has completely reshaped Yiwu’s customer-acquisition logic.

Cross-border trader Guangzhi felt this particularly strongly: four years ago, doing foreign trade meant practitioners had to rely on search engines and overseas social accounts to proactively hunt for customers—time-consuming, labor-intensive, and with relatively low conversion rates. Now merchants simply film short videos of factory production and product showcases, and use platform algorithms to gain passive exposure; global buyers who come across the content then proactively DM to ask for quotes. “People looking for products” has been completely flipped into “products finding people.” Digital channels have broken down geographic barriers, allowing large numbers of mom-and-pop shops and small workshops to connect directly with overseas customers, no longer dependent on large wholesalers as intermediaries.

At present, the going-global track has formed three differentiated platform ecosystems, each suited to different types of merchants. As a long-established “shelf” e-commerce platform, Amazon leans on years of user accumulation and platform credibility to focus on mid-to-high-end products. Its commission take rate is relatively high, and merchants’ core operating approach is to iterate on products and keep tight control of quality—making it a fit for large factories and brand owners with complete supply chains.

TikTok is interest-based e-commerce. Orders are driven by trending content, with hit-product cycles typically lasting two to four weeks, and average order values largely concentrated under US$30. It is a perfect fit for short-lived hotspots like the World Cup, and has become the main battleground for small and mid-sized sellers to create breakout hits in stages.

There is also a category of fully managed cross-border platforms, where merchants only need to handle manufacturing and supply; operations, logistics, and after-sales are all taken over by the platform. With a low barrier to use, they are especially popular with small workshops and mom-and-pop shops that lack operational capabilities.

Channel transformation has also given rise to new intermediary roles—such as product curators and regionally authorized distributors—becoming key links that connect supply and demand. Tudou, a trendy-toy product curator from Yiwu, built a personal brand on Xiaohongshu and uses a professional eye to connect with small-B clients such as scenic-area stores and cultural-and-creative boutiques across the country.

These clients have fragmented needs, a wide variety of categories, and order quantities that are small and mixed; individual factories are often unwilling to take on small-batch, mixed-SKU orders. Tudou integrates multiple supply chains and pools scattered small orders into large ones—reducing costs for buyers while easing the burden on factories of handling fragmented orders. Meanwhile, authorized distributors like Xiong Xiaofeng rely on exclusive IP resources, go deep into offline flagship stores and corporate gifting channels, and focus on high value-added licensed products, serving collectors and brand customers.

Beyond online channels, Yiwu has also built a rapid logistics network. A diversified logistics mix, combined with brand-new online channels, has multiplied the circulation efficiency of Yiwu’s World Cup products severalfold.

World Cup, Yiwu’s Game 

Every World Cup is like a magnifying glass for observing Yiwu’s small-commodities industry. From leveraging the tournament buzz in 2002 to open the door to exports, to today’s push into global markets through creativity and IP, Yiwu’s industry has kept leveling up as tournaments come and go. Yet behind the flood of orders, long-standing weaknesses and challenges have also been laid bare.

First, the most notable shift: Yiwu has moved from “pure contract manufacturing and volume” to “creativity + patent-driven growth.”

In the early days, most World Cup-related goods were generic, standardized, unbranded products, and merchants competed only on capacity and low prices. Today, more and more merchants are prioritizing in-house design and intellectual property, turning online memes and fan culture into original products—several creative trendy toys have become global bestsellers.

The widespread adoption of AI tools has also empowered design and customization. Merchants use AI to quickly generate product mockups and print patterns; design work that used to take a week can now be finished in a day, dramatically improving response speed for custom orders.

That said, people in the industry are also well aware that AI is only an assisting tool. Core human capabilities—market instinct, creative inspiration, and business communication—still cannot be replaced by technology.

Riding the momentum of a top-tier global event like the World Cup, Yiwu’s ability to integrate its supply chain has also continued to strengthen. Many leading merchants have begun to lock in deeper ties with upstream and downstream partners—through long-term cooperation, taking equity stakes, and other arrangements—to stabilize supply and avoid being “stabbed in the back” halfway through. At the same time, they are consolidating multi-category production capacity to offer overseas clients one-stop procurement services, shifting from simply selling goods to providing comprehensive services.

Beyond these advances, two major pain points in the industry remain stubbornly hard to eliminate.

First is the race to the bottom on price.

Guangzhi said that whenever a new product becomes popular, a large number of knockoffs quickly flood the market. To fight for orders, some merchants deliberately simplify processes, use inferior raw materials, and keep pushing prices down. Requirements imposed by some platforms—such as “15% lower than the lowest price for the same category on other platforms”—have further intensified destructive price wars, which not only squeeze profits across the entire industry but, over time, also damage the overseas reputation of “Made in Yiwu.”

Second is the risk of IP infringement.

Official licensing comes with high barriers and high costs that many small and mid-sized merchants can’t afford. Some sellers fail to keep a proper line, crossing patent and copyright red lines in their patterns and logos, and ultimately face penalties such as store shutdowns and frozen funds. During every World Cup, such infringement cases are all too common.

As the short-term windfall from trending products fades and cutthroat competition in the industry intensifies, some Yiwu practitioners have begun to move beyond the “quick money” mindset and explore long-term growth paths. For example, some are taking a lean branding route by focusing on niche categories and building a personal IP, accumulating loyal customers through product reputation and steering clear of head-on price wars. Many cross-border sellers are also gradually shifting away from the more volatile consumer-facing (B2C) retail business toward the more stable business-facing (B2B) traditional foreign trade model.

Looking ahead, as intellectual property protection becomes increasingly stringent and global consumer demand grows ever more “picky,” Yiwu’s merchants will still need to keep evolving through one major test after another. Can they truly shake off the label of “low-price, race-to-the-bottom competition,”

and carve out their own path in branding? The answer may lie in the orders for the next World Cup.

(At the request of interviewees, “Guangzhi” and “Tudou” are pseudonyms.)