He Heping is General Manager of Yiwu Zhongsheng Crafts Co Ltd and he's come to know Russia and Brazil better as Christmas approaches. He has been busy modifying the company's artificial Christmas trees made for Western markets in line with Russian and Brazilian customs, and replacing the original English-language packaging with new packaging printed in Russian or Brazilian.

Zhongsheng isn't the only company in Zhejiang making haste to change the style and packaging of Christmas goods in a bid to open up new markets.

With the impact of the global financial crisis, orders from the West that used to account for 70% of Zhejiang's total Christmas exports have shrunk substantially this year.

According to Hangzhou Customs statistics, Zhejiang registered just a 1.9% increase in Christmas exports to the EU, its biggest market, between January and September this year. Last year's corresponding figure was 54.9%.

By comparison, exports to the US were better than expected and saw a 21% increase year-on-year. While substantially below last year's figure of 32.2%, this is already quite a good performance considering the economic circumstances.

While trying their best to keep basically stable exports to the West, where people are expected to tighten their Christmas spending budget, Christmas goods manufacturers in Zhejiang have also accelerated their efforts to open up new markets in countries like Russia and Brazil in order to put their eggs in different baskets.

Zhongsheng has seen aggregate orders from the US dropping by half this year. Fortunately, orders from Russia have been steadily rising. Today, its biggest clients are Russians.

Hangzhou Customs statistics also show that Brazil is an emerging market for Zhejiang's export of Christmas goods, with Brazil-bound exports showing a year-on-year increase of 60.6% between January and September this year.

Some companies are turning to target the domestic market. Zhonglianfa Import and Export Co Ltd in Yiwu saw a substantial drop in orders from the US this year. Its General Manager, Ji Jingwen, said many companies had turned to the Christmas concept in their year-end sales promotion in recent years.

Sales of Christmas trees in the domestic market started warming up in October. Ji plans to attend more domestic exhibitions in order to "use domestic sales to make good losses sustained in exports".