(Yicai) Feb. 26 -- Chinese exporters are busy seeking new orders via cross-border e-commerce platforms and by visiting trade exhibitions abroad while most factory workers traveled home during the recent Chinese New Year holiday.

Ding Yandong, the chief of a foreign trade company in Ningbo, traveled to Europe to attend a smart roller blinds exhibition after the nationwide public holiday ended on Feb. 17. The exhibition had a large flow of visitors and Ding met up with twice as many clients as last time so the result has been better than expected.

Ding's company has production scheduled until mid-April. The latest exhibition should boost orders this year by around 20 percent. Everyone is quite confident that the market will improve this year, he added.

A fashion apparel company from Yiwu participated in the opening of Magic in Las Vegas, a trade show for men's and women's footwear and accessories. Fan Wenlei, the person in charge of the Chinese firm, said she signed intents of cooperation worth over USD1 million with four possible clients. After the four-day event, the group will visit new and existing clients in New York, Los Angeles, and Panama.

When China is mostly offline during the seven-day holiday, clients abroad are not. During the Spring Festival, Li Zhenhua, the operations manager of a building materials company in Guangzhou, received an order worth CNY1 million (USD139,000) from a developer in the Seychelles, East Africa, for prefabricated houses, as well as a non-binding order from a client in the United States on Alibaba Group Holding's platform.

Last month, several Chinese cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Alibaba.Com, AliExpress, and Temu said they would launch semi-managed business models to provide merchants with logistics and payment support to improve efficiency while ensuring continuous order processing and shipping during the public holiday.

Part of the progress is focusing on customer experience. Chinese foreign trade companies are making moves to form stable supply chains abroad as they are addressing issues such as slower logistics due to geopolitical conflicts, increased logistics costs, and difficulties in capital flows.

Ding said the roller blinds firm expanded production capacity last year, investing CNY10 million (USD1.4 million) in equipment and facilities alone. Now, he is considering importing equipment from the Netherlands to further increase capacity and to produce more premium products.

The global market has been volatile in recent years, according to a person in charge of a Dongyang-based firm that makes diamond paintings. However, the company that owns a factory remains confident and optimistic as it plans to double production capacity and increase personnel by one-third this year.

Editor: Emmi Laine