Buying beads close to the source

Buying beads close to the source

At Silver Hills Gems we are continiously looking at ways to be unique. Gerdus went on a fact finding trip to establish his own small gemstone factory in Ketang, China.

I traveled to Guangzhou and took a taxi from the train station to the Eastbound bus to Ketang. This was quite a tricky business. I phoned my friend in Ketang who told me to give the phone to a Chinese national. This person wrote down the name of the town after some deliberation over the phone. I went to a second person and phoned my friend again. The second person told me that the address was incorrect. Imagine the doubts in my mind when it took over 30 minutes by taxi to reach the bus station.

At the bus station I was just in time to catch the 14h00 bus. They pulled out of the station immediately after I boarded the bus. All the Chinese sat close to the bus TV in front of the bus. I had the whole backside for myself. Halfway to Ketang we had a quick stop for refreshments. None of the goods in the freezers looked familiar. I ended buying a tub of strawberries and a chickenwing heated over a charcoal stove.

Just before we reached Haifeng my blackberry's battery died on me. Does this sound familiar? I reached the final stop and found nobody to welcome me. This caused me 5 minutes of stress until I noticed a red telephone in the convenience kiosk. I indicated with sign langauge that I need to use the phone. I gave the shopkeeper the number who dialed it for me. My friend was frantic with worry. He has been trying to reach me for the last 20 minutes and he was waiting at the wrong station. After around 10 minutes he arrived and we set of for Ketang.

Ketang and surrounding area has the largest concentration of gemstone bead factories in China. It is the heartland where most of the manufacturing in gemstones takes place. I slept in the only Hotel in the town. The cost was only about R125 per night for a bed. The bed was rock hard. All Chinese sleep on hard matresses and they expect us to do the same. The cushions are also very hard and round. The toilet is a hole in the ground and it shares the same space as the shower.

The lift had a spelling mistake.

I walked to my friends house after we booked in the suitcases and this was most interesting. There are no zoning and you can sleep in your own factory. So here is the typical scene. You pay around R500 for the streetfront space which measures 10x5 meters. You sleep in the back and manufacture your beads in the same space and you set aside the very front of this space as a small shop. Internet is aquired at R15 per month. Meals cost around R5 per meal. They work until 9 o'clock at night. Now you can work out why we will never be able to be price competitive when it comes to making the same things here in South Africa.



Every where we walked there were glass or stone on the pavement waiting to be made into beads. It amazes me that there is so much money just lying on the pavement. Theft does not exist here. You can just leave your goods outside and still find it there the next day.



There are small factories everywhere



I climbed on the back of my friends 125cc motorbike and we went down to the fresh produce market. Here they were selling fresh fish and vegetables. A large onion cost R1 and a bag of greens about R2. The calamari cost R8 and we had enough for a meal for 3 people. I made the calamari with the onions and some soyasauce and garlic. It turned out to be pretty good. This we consumed with rice. My friend had a rice cooker and a oneplate stove.

Here is the difference between us and them. Their little was a lot to them. My friend is such a happy person. In fact all the Chinese I met were contented. There is a lot to be learned from them. They are happy to be on the yourney to their dreams. Many of us think we will be happy when we have reached our goals. The yourney is usually an unhappy event. We never seem to arrive.

What struck me was how many people were involved in making beads. I was taken to small factories with 2 to 3 workers and larger ones with hundreds of workers. They become speciallist in one field and they can do this the rest of their lives. I visited a factory that works in rhodochrosite exclusively and another that only works in tourmaline and another that does schorl beads. Then we visited a small factory that only does lapis lazuli. I drank liters of bitter Chinese tea while doing deals. Here is how it works. The 'big boss' of the factory will take you through a quick tour through his factory and then whisk you to a meeting room that is usually overdone to impress you. They will then prepare tea. The status of the visitor determines the quality of the tea. The more expensive tea can be around R1000 per kg. All the teacups and containers are washed with the first batch of tea. You are then given a small cup of green tea without sugar or milk. You can down this in one go or sip it. The tea contains antioxidants and is rather refreshing when you get use to it. It is also very healthy and help with weight loss. Every factory will offer you tea.

See the garnets in the street. I bought us some.

I visted around 40 factories and had to drink tea at every one of them.

I learned that they are able to polish any stone. A stone that is too soft to take a polish is first stabilized. They stabilize the stone by boiling it in a plastic solution and then baking it in an oven. This is costly but any type of stone can thus be polished. The proces might be repeated 3 times. All stones with cracks are given this treatment.

I will look after your hemimorphite at night. Woof Woof!

Every factory has some dogs who guards the more expensive stone. This chap was still a puppy.

I also learned that there is a lot of outsourcing. I visisted a small second story factory with 10 machines that only make holes in beads. I noticed that there were few workers and was told that the economic crunch has caused a lot of problems with a lower demand.



These machines drill holes in the beads. They do not have work at the moment.

I was also told that workers are demanding salaries in excess of R2000 now. The margins are getting smaller and many factories refuse to work cheap stones because there is no profit in the stone. Stones like black lava are not being worked at the moment because the prices have dropped and profit margins dissapeared.

The more expensive stones are in high demand. It is a question of supply and demand. If any one of you have access to good tourmaline and kyanite and rose garnets. I am in the market to buy such rough

Families are still small. They usually only have one child per family. Children are raised in the small stone factory and play with the stones. They get used to gemstones and will also work with stone one day

After 3 days the little one accepted me.

There are so many small factories that needs stone and that needs a market. The feeling I got was that rumours will spread about the popularity of one or another stone and that everybody will start to chase that stone. This causes an oversupply and it will keep prices in tow.

I loved their transport vehicles

More stone in the background.

We plan to set up a small factory with less than 10 workers. I am now looking for high end rough that can be turned into beads.

So what are my final thoughts. Anybody can do this if you are willing to pay the school fees. It is not easy to get someone that will help you. Getting someone who can speak English is very difficult. In Ketang there are very few individuals who speaks English. Everybody wants to make money from you. Minimum order quantities can sometimes be high to get good prices. I had to buy 234 strings of one kind of garnet to get the best price. You need a big wallet. It is also difficult to ship goods from Ketang because you have to get the goods to a bigger centre to ship. The logistics can be a nightmare. The first two or three trips might be a total loss until you learn the ropes.