What is the international clothing industry? It is the export of clothing to international customers, who usually place orders for customised items. What Chinese clothing suppliers call the international clothing industry basically refers to the items made for European and American customers in their style. These styles are popular among hundreds of millions of Chinese because they casual, fashionable, classy and durable.
 

So where are the foreign trade garment styles found in the domestic Chinese market originating from? There are a few different sources of the garments, and they generally fall into either the genuine goods category, production excess category or defective goods category. Some people will not believe that the goods could be genuine, as the goods have been made for the foreign market so why are they being sold domestically? The genuine goods do exist, but there are not very large quantities on the market at this point in time, especially since the financial crisis in 2008. So where do the genuine goods on the domestic market actually come from?

Lets look at the sources of the foreign trade garments:
 

Goods from an order that did not meet the delivery date. If a factory cannot meet the delivery date then some strict customers will not accept the order and this leaves the goods in the hands of the manufacturer. Of course they will try to sell domestically to try to recoup some of their losses.
 

Goods from an order that a customer cancelled. Sometimes it happens that a customer does not complete the order. This may be due to financial difficulties, or foreign trade issues, and as such they end up cancelling the order, leaving the manufacturer with product to offload.
 

Defective goods from an order. There may be issues with the quality, sizing, colour, fabric quality, or accessories that do not fall within the technical parameters of the contract and as such are not up to standard and cannot be included in the order that is shipped. The defects can be large or small. Small defects such as the density difference of a needle is 0.5cm. According to the contract, the customer has the right to determine the nonconforming goods and refuse to accept the goods.
 

Authentic originals. The factory purchases the same materials as the original style, and the goods are made according to the same technical indicators and are then sold domestically. The end item will be nearly the same as the original, but technically speaking it cannot be called an original. It is a copy.
 

Excess goods from bulk production.  These are quite rare to find in the domestic market because foreign customers usually have some form of copyright protection within their order, as well as an allowable excess margin. Sometimes bigger brands will require the manufacturer to destroy any excess products or materials, not allowing them to sell the goods domestically. However there are factories who do not obey these rules, or managers or personnel who manage to salvage the goods and sell them illegally.