Zhu Qingling owns a 300-square-meter store at the Yiwu Small Commodities Market in Yiwu, a small county-level city in Zhejiang province that’s home to the world's largest wholesale market for small consumer goods. Though her store is not large, it displays more than 80,000 types of handmade accessories.

In 2005, Zhu began to produce accessories for overseas markets, especially Europe and the United States. After several years of effort, she found success. Her plant now supplies some of the best-selling accessories on Taobao, the consumer e-commerce platform under Alibaba Group Holding, and has an annual turnover of 20 million yuan ($3.18 million)