It's a grandiose plan (as with all those grand plans to put in place the Three Gorges Dam and others) to create a gigantic site to connect China with all the buyers (wholesale or retail).
I like the concept of it. But I have a few problems:
(1) Economy of scale. As the article rightly points out, would I wait for weeks (or even months) to make some custom order on, say, a shirt or some pants, so that some manufacturer in China would wait to see if they would get 5000 orders of my similar orders (like, custom collar size, custom sleeve length, shoulder width, and so on), in order to start work on it to make the economy of scale? AND THEN, to wait for it to sail across the ocean (air or sea) to come to me??? It is almost to the point of naivety to even think that this is a valid use case to justify for the usage of this proposed system. By the time I get my shirt in two years' time, my waist line would probably have expanded an inch, and I'll have to put in another custom order. It's quite ridiculous.
(2) Middlemen. The idea of this site is to CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMEN. This is under the assumption that the margin that middlemen packed onto the final products can directly and completely throw to the manufacturers, and perhaps some of the cost savings would become gains to the end users. What I would look at is, what have been the values added by the middlemen, and whether such a system can sustain without such added values. There is the marketing and branding, there is the inventory management, and there is the liability issue that the middlemen willingly absorb. It's true that Toyota has refined its skill in JIT (Just In Time) management to cut down on inventory. But Toyota has the brand name. And still, it relies on its vast distribution (dealer) network to reach consumers. Have we considered that, while online e-commerce has been growing steadily and strongly, consumers jump on to it only after they see or hear or touch the products around them before their purchase. How does this system alone overcome that hurdle?
(3) Liability. Who is going to absorb the liability, should the products from China fail? Sure, a custom made shirt is not likely to choke you. But what about the majority of the other products that could fail (even a toaster)?
(4) Branding and commoditization. If I were a middleman in America, with products made in China. Yes, my products would have a label telling consumers that it's made in that country. But if I know for sure that the consumers can go directly to China to place the orders and bypass my distribution network, am I going to tell the consumers that they can go to xyz in China to re-order? Most certainly not. So, in order to get the word out, the Chinese manufacturers would have to advertise that they're the manufacturer who's actually producing the products for me (the middleman). It would most likely be small/smaller manufacturers who would benefit from a site/portal like, but would they be able to do that sort of advertising for itself? (That's essentially to make a brand for itself.)
(5) Customer service. Would all these small fries of Chinese manufacturers be able to handle all these minutiae details of custom made orders? I very much doubt it. Not now, nor in the foreseeable future.
(6) I do like the concept of it. I suppose in a way, eBay is doing that for after-market (flea market) stuffs now. The only difference is, we (bidders and sellers alike) either know the exact product (say, an LV bag), or we compare solely on price. Given that there is no brand/face for the Chinese manufacturers, they would have to go down the price path, which is essentially commoditization. In a way, that's what is happening in the physical world already, when Chinese manufacturers are competing with each other and with those from other countries almost solely on the basis of price (ie. low cost).
(7) I would probably like to use a search/portal site like this, if I were a small merchant, and I want to save by ordering small stuffs, say gift wrappings directly from the manufacturers. But as an end users, I don't see myself contacting the factory to tell them what I want.
To give an example. In women's jewelry, there are pearls and there are pearls. On the one end, you have high-enders like Mikimoto. Name brand recognition. No explanation required. You can have a single strand of pearls, 5.5 mm high lust AAA quality, that can cost you thousands of dollars. On the other end of the spectrum, you have numerous Chinese pearl sellers on eBay (as numerous as ants) selling $0.01, plus shipping. Just out of curiosity, I had purchased a few from different Chinese eBay sellers. The quality varies sooooo widely, it's unbelievable. I have one strand which has very few blemish, lustful AAA quality 8mm with 14k filigree buckle, for less than $30, including shipping. And then I have another one, 3-stranded pearls, supposedly the same quality as the first one, but it looks so horribly awful that even my 4-year-old daughter does not want to play with it as toy. In short, how do we tell quality ones from shoddy ones? The short answer is, you can't.
And that's essentially what this grand plan is proposing. Instead of having all these small fries sellers/manufacturers going to foreign sites like eBay to sell their wares, they're gathering them in one single location, and wait for buyers to come. It could facilitate those who know China or the Chinese way of communicating. But I found it impossible to just try to explain to those eBay sellers of the pearls that I was ordering that I wanted to order solid 14k buckle - not gold-plated, not silver. There are times it took me 10 different ping-pongs in email to maybe get them to understand what I'm trying to understand the CUSTOMIZATION of my order, rather than the standard silver buckle that was listed in the auction. To think that this huge site is going to deal with things like custom orders. I would say, no it's not gonna fly - not for a very long time.
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The opening up of China will also endanger the traditional middlemen role that places like Hong Kong have been playing. It's already happening now, that a lot of foreign companies are bypassing traditional stopover in Hong Kong to go into China. These days, they fly direct to China. Countless companies in Hong Kong have to go straight to China and compete with local competition, vying for the attention of foreign investment.
Competition will only intensify, in the years to come, for Hong Kong. And for US companies and workers alike, now they realize what everyday-low-price means in Wal-Mart and what price they pay for having cheap goods, effectively killing manufacturing in US and ordering everything from China. But if China thinks they can eliminate middlemen like Wal-Mart completely, I don't think it's gonna happen.
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