With a total attendance of over 10,000 at the recent August 2009 Off-Price Specialist Show, and over 450 exhibitors showing off their best merchandise, there was an atmosphere of high-energy activity that resulted in the formation of intense, exciting, and fresh new buzz over the steals-and-deals in the Closeout and Off-price Industry. While many of the doomsday-types predicted a rapid cooling period for the Retail and Wholesale business that would lead to catastrophic results for anyone who dared to get involved in such a volatile and dangerous market… the people who make up the Wholesale and Retail sector know that the show must go on, and it’s really up to us to determine whether that show is going to be a comedy, a tragedy, or a gut-wrenching drama…

If you need further evidence of a market that is promoting successful returns for the ones who are coming up with new answers to the old questions, there’s actually more answers out there than there were just a few months ago. Let’s think about the leading wholesale distributors that are offering big benefits to retailers during these tough economic times. Some national online wholesalers are offering free shipping to all new customers, and helping small businesses that are looking for new and improved ways to dial-in their efficiency and crank up their competitiveness in the market. You might even be surprised to find out that top-quality apparel, handbags, and fashion accessories are being put up against the goods carried by larger department stores, at considerable savings! This new angle on the perceived value of branded goods is creating a huge opportunity for those who want to break into the market.

I’m tired of bad news. It’s all over the headlines, and it’s all there ever seems to be when I pull up a text-based search about ‘China’ in any one of the major search engines these days. However, for all the bad news that is being generated, there is a lot of good stuff buried somewhere deep within, if you’re willing to dig for it.

One of the things I have noticed is a general streamlining of things in the foreign trade business; in the area of trade fairs, a sort of cost-cutting effort to trim some fat from trade shows that were usually hosted in multiple venues… multiple cities… and required a lot of legwork on the part of the visitors to get something accomplished. This year, the reality of the CPC missing its elusive 8% GDP goal — by a mile — is pretty clear, and it means that once-headstrong wholesaler juggernaut China is responding with a more intelligent approach to the way business is done, as global market contraction steadily continues.

News headlines are lighting up like Christmas trees, as the news of China’s Green Dam Youth Escort Project are filling PC manufacturers in the overseas trade markets with dread. In a recent report first issued by the Wall Street Journal, details of a new initiative fired off by the CPC (Communist Party of China) has put a full-scale mandate in effect that requires all PC manufacturers to ship every one of those brand-new PC’s slated for export into China with mysterious software from Henan-based Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co. — pre-installed on the hard drive — by July 01 this year.

Yes, that’s the beginning of next month. No, there wasn’t much advance notice.

Search Engine Marketing 1 > Search For Measurable Returns & Performance-based Ads

Plastic bags to take away purchases or trade show giveaways. Custom-printed advertising bags. Food and Furniture bags. Wholesale flat poly, reclosable and zippered, or expandable gusseted. Industry-grade liners. FDA-food-approved and leak-proof. Garment or Biohazard.

So much advice on Going Green … Choosing a Sustainable Lifestyle … Becoming Locavore (eating foods from regional producers and family farms) … all that good advice focuses on individual actions. But, when it comes to Children’s Toys for the approaching holiday season, or shopping green, individual customers have definite Safety, Sustainability and Product Recall issues on their minds. And that consumer demand converts up the supply chain to a greener shade of product quality and product safety vetting. Greening of the wholesale apparel supply chain goes right down to fabric fibers and cut of the clothes. (More on this in an article linked below.)Here are tips, tools and information sources that buyers and resellers from all points in the wholesale-to-retail chain can use to meet growing collective customer demands for greener and safer products.