At Qipu Road Wholesale Clothing Market, wholesalers send shipments of sweaters, dresses and pants to retail stores all over the country. Stores pay only for what they sell, and send back what they don't.
Lately, vendors say, little sells. On a recent weekday afternoon, delivery men dragged trolleys stacked with bundles of returned clothing through the halls. Vendors tallied the piles.
Wang Jingjing, a womenswear wholesaler, estimated her 2025 revenue was about half what she made the prior year. Before the...