China
Schylling Inc., Rowley, Mass., recalled the China-imported Police Press and Go Toy Vehicles, as the officer's hat can detach and pose a choking hazard.
Sales are up on 1688.com, Alibaba Group’s business-to-business e-commerce site for connecting China-based suppliers with retailers within China. One reason is that suppliers are offering their customers more flexible ways to place small and customized orders through Alibaba’s Tao Factory program.
The program, which is geared toward retailers who also sell through Alibaba’s Taobao.com and Tmall.com retail e-commerce sites, also lets retailers apply for loans to purchase merchandise. It also includes a system through which suppliers automatically replenish a retailer’s inventory of particular products when they fall below specified levels.
A China regulator has accused Alibaba Group Holding Ltd of failing to clean up what it called illegal business deals on the e-commerce titan's platforms, in an unusually strong government criticism of one of the country's biggest private companies.
The State Administration for Industry and Commerce, in a report published on its website last week, said many products sold on Alibaba's e-commerce websites and services infringed upon trademarks, were substandard or fake, were banned or endangered public security.
Alibaba declined to comment on the report.
According to a report by Bloomberg, cotton prices fell to the lowest price since 2009 as China lowers demand.
"Made in China" will be a less frequent sight in U.S. clothing stores if the United States has its way in a new trade pact negotiated among 12 Pacific Rim nations. Washington aims to engineer a deal where Vietnam, set to be one of the big winners among the members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), would win apparel market share from China and other non-members, rather than Mexico and Central America. Today, thanks to regional trade deals half of U.S. yarn and textile exports head south of the border.