Phase 3: Textiles, Footwear, Bags, Food and Toys — What to Check Before You Order

What Phase 3 Actually Carries

The fair runs 13 product categories across 54 exhibition sections, split over three phases. Phase 3, themed around daily life, holds the sections where the buyer's compliance burden is heaviest: home textiles, textile raw materials and fabrics, carpets, garments and accessories, footwear, office supplies and cases, sports, travel and leisure goods, health products and medical devices, food, toys, and baby and maternity products.

The practical consequence is that Phase 3 buyers are not comparing prices in the same way as Phase 1 electronics buyers. Two quotations for the same towel are not comparable if one supplier has a test report for the destination market and the other has a price. The compliance layer is the product.

Textiles and Home Textiles

Four questions decide whether a textile order can enter your market, and all four can be answered at the booth.

• Fibre composition, by percentage. Required on the label in the US, the EU, the UK and most other markets. A supplier who quotes "cotton blend" is a supplier whose label will be wrong.
• Care and origin labelling. Format differs by market: the US wants country of origin and care instructions in a set order; the EU wants fibre percentages in descending order and language requirements per member state.
• Restricted substances. Azo dyes, formaldehyde, heavy metals, and in the EU the REACH restricted list. Ask for a test report against the destination's standard, not a generic certificate.
• Colour fastness and shrinkage. The two attributes buyers complain about after the second wash, and the two that are cheapest to specify as a test requirement in the order.

Footwear and Leather Goods

Footwear carries a labelling regime of its own in several markets, and the requirements are about materials rather than about styling. In the EU, Directive 94/11/EC requires the upper, lining and sock, and outer sole to be identified by material. Several member states add their own language and format rules.

Three technical points are worth raising while you are still at the booth. Adhesion between upper and sole, which is where cheap construction fails first. Azo dyes and, where relevant, chromium VI in leather. And sizing: a supplier quoting "EU 42" without a conversion table is a supplier whose first shipment will generate returns.

Ask for the size grading table with measured last length in millimetres, not just the size number. It is the only way to compare two factories honestly, and it costs the supplier nothing to send.

Bags, Luggage and Cases

Bags are a compliance-light category with one exception: materials. PU and PVC coated fabrics fall under chemical restrictions in the EU and, for children's items, under stricter rules again. Leather goods need a material declaration and, for some markets, a statement on the tanning process.

Functionally, three things separate a supplier worth a first order from one that is not: the hardware, which is where the cost was cut; the handle attachment, which is where failure happens under load; and the trolley system on luggage, which is where returns come from. Ask what load the handle is tested to, and whether there is a test report or only an assurance.

Toys and Children's Products

This is the category where a compliance mistake is not a commercial problem but a legal one. The two regimes that matter to most buyers are the EU Toy Safety Directive with EN 71, and the US Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act with its testing and certification requirements.

Four points to settle before any order is placed.

• Age grading. Determines which tests apply. A toy labelled 3+ avoids small-parts requirements; the same product labelled 0+ does not.
• Test reports in the buyer's name. A report issued to the factory is not a report issued to you, and some markets require the importer to hold the certification.
• Chemical limits. Phthalates, heavy metals in surface coatings, and in the EU the broader migration requirements. Test to the destination standard, always.
• Physical and mechanical safety. Small parts, sharp edges, cord length, flammability for soft toys. These are the failures that trigger recalls rather than returns.

Food, Supplements and Health Products

Food is the category where the fair is most misleading. A booth full of attractively packaged tea, sauces, snack foods and supplements makes importing look like a logistics exercise. It is a licensing exercise with logistics attached.

Before an order, four things have to exist in the destination country, not in China: an importer registered for food, a product registration or notification where the market requires one, a label compliant with that market's format and language rules, and a manufacturer able to supply the health certificate and, where required, the export certificate that the destination authority will ask for.

Medical devices and health products add a further layer, because classification decides everything. A product that is a wellness supplement in one market can be a regulated medical device in another, and the difference determines whether it can be sold at all. For a buyer new to the category, the honest advice is to spend the fair collecting documentation and to place no order until the destination pathway is confirmed in writing.

The Clock After November 4

Phase 3 closes on November 4, and the order placed that week enters the hardest production window of the Chinese year. Chinese New Year falls in February 2027, and the six weeks before it are when every factory in Guangdong and Zhejiang runs at capacity, when freight rates climb, and when space on the main lanes tightens.

The arithmetic that matters: a textile order with a 35-day production lead time, placed in the second week of November, finishes in mid-December, sails before the pre-holiday freight peak if the booking is made early, and arrives in most Western markets in January or February. The same order placed in December misses that window and arrives after the holiday season it was bought for.

So the decision to make at the booth is not only about price. It is about whether the supplier can hold a production slot in November, and that is a question with a yes or no answer that a good supplier will give you immediately.

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