The Pearl Market was one of the most interesting business I saw in China. It was a huge, five story building, jam-packed with vendor’s stalls yelling in English and Chinese and very forcefully trying to get you to buy their products.

The Pearl Market

The first floor was full of electronics, which were incredibly cheap, but would likely last about two weeks (just long enough for you to be unable to return them). They had everything from iPhones and speakers, to flash drives with huge amounts of memory. I quickly headed to the second floor, where I ended up spending about two hours.

The second floor was all name brand clothing knockoffs including True Religion jeans and Gucci handbags. I spent most of my time learning how to bargain with the ladies selling jeans. It was amazing how aggressive the people were in selling their product. Some went as far as actually grabbing your arm and pulling you toward their booth.

One time, while I was walking down one of the hallways between two booths, two women approached me and asked me to buy some shoes. After I had declined their offer multiple times, they linked arms with me on either side, and tried to pull me over to the booth again. I ended up having to dislodge my arms from theirs and retreat back in the direction I had come.

All of the salespeople repeated the same things about their products being “good quality”, and about how they would give you a “special price” because they liked you. The price they would initially offer was always obscenely overpriced. An example of this would be a pair of jeans I ended up buying for 110 Yuan ($15), that they initially had priced at 2000 Yuan ($285).

I quickly found that I was an excellent bargainer, primarily because I can be excessively cheap and stubborn. Before I bought an item, I would decide on the price that I was willing to pay (typically pretty low) and if they wouldn’t go that low, I would walk away. Usually they would pursue me and offer me slightly better prices until I walked away again. After about five iterations of this, they would give me my price. Within the first hour, I knew about how much they paid for their goods and what the lowest price they were willing to sell was.

Photo Credit: Ben Burkland/Carolyn Cook on Flickr