Jewellery from China:
the guide to the 2026 fairs

Few products have the resale arithmetic of gold-plated jewellery. The ticket per piece is low, turnover is fast, the margin is among the highest in retail, and the audience is enormous: from the shopping centre store to the reseller who sells over WhatsApp, from the kiosk to the Instagram-born brand. What almost nobody reselling jewellery in Brazil realises is how much the arithmetic changes when the piece comes straight from source, instead of passing through three wholesalers before reaching the window.

That source is China, and in September it opens its doors. Shenzhen and Hong Kong host Asia’s largest jewellery fairs, and that is where anyone who wants to stop reselling someone else’s range and build their own import operation looks. This guide explains what those fairs are, what matters in them to the reseller, and what to confirm on quality and compliance before the box ships.

China’s jewellery fairs in 2026

Three addresses matter for anyone working with plated and fine jewellery, each with its own profile:

Shenzhen is the factory, Hong Kong is the international shop window and the top of the range, and Yiwu is the volume. A reseller who goes deep usually combines Shenzhen, for gold plating and silver, with a stop in Yiwu, for steel costume jewellery and impulse pieces. Canton Fair Phase 3, in October, also has an accessories and costume jewellery section that complements them.

What you find, and what matters to anyone reselling

A jewellery fair covers everything from the investment-grade diamond to the two-pound earring. Not all of it matters to the reseller, so it pays to know where to look:

For most resellers, the gold in the pan sits in two columns: gold-plated jewellery and stainless steel costume jewellery. Both already appear in our Showcase: gold-plated jewellery and stainless steel costume jewellery, each with its own cost and resale logic.

Why September is the moment to buy

Importing is not an impulse purchase. Between deciding, negotiating, inspecting, shipping and clearing customs, the typical lead time from China to Brazil runs from 60 to 120 days. Anyone attending the September fairs is building stock for the end-of-year high season, Black Friday, Christmas and the following Mother’s Day, the dates when plated jewellery sells most as a gift. Buying at the end of the year means arriving after the party.

The profit logic is what sustains the sector: low cost at source, high margin on resale. Plated jewellery is one of the rare products where the perceived price does not come from the cost of the material, but from the design and the brand. That is why the same piece can be a generic wholesale earring or an own-brand item at shop-window prices, and the difference lies in who buys it and how they present it.

The trick with plated jewellery: the reseller buying from a Brazilian wholesaler is locked into someone else’s catalogue and someone else’s margin. Whoever imports directly chooses the model, the collection and the brand, and captures the whole margin. It is the difference between reselling everybody else’s jewellery and having your own.

The check that separates the good supplier from the bad one

Plated jewellery is a product that touches the skin all day, and that is where the risk lives. The difference between a piece that builds loyalty and one that generates returns lies in details the photo does not show:

• Nickel and allergy: low-quality plated and costume jewellery can carry excess nickel in the alloy, which causes contact allergy, the sector’s number one complaint. Insist on a hypoallergenic, low-nickel alloy, and treat that as a requirement, not as a bonus.
• Lead and cadmium: cheap alloys can contain traces of these metals. A good supplier has a test report; a doubtful one changes the subject. This is a matter of health and of your brand’s reputation.
• Plating thickness: with plated jewellery, durability is the gold layer. Thin plating flakes off within weeks and kills repeat purchase. Confirm the thickness (measured in microns) and the guarantee, because that is what separates genuine plated jewellery from costume jewellery in disguise.
• Import regime: plated and costume jewellery fall under one classification; precious metal and stone jewellery falls under another, with stricter customs valuation. Knowing which category your purchase belongs to avoids surprises at clearance.

Before importing: with plated jewellery, inspection before shipment is not optional. It checks the alloy, the plating thickness, the finish and the match with the sample, piece by piece on a sampling basis, before the box leaves China. A batch with thin plating or an allergenic alloy destroys a brand’s reputation in the first month. See how quality inspection in China before shipment works and how to check whether a Chinese supplier is reliable.

For the full arithmetic of taxes, freight and exchange rates, it is also worth reading how much it costs to import from China and the guide to Incoterms (FOB, CIF and EXW).

How BCVN organises your trip to the jewellery fairs

Buying jewellery in China without preparation is easy to get wrong: it is a sea of suppliers, and the quality gap between two neighbouring stands can be enormous and invisible in the display case. BCVN organises the trip end to end: we set the itinerary combining Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Yiwu according to your type of shop, separate manufacturers from middlemen, sit in on the meetings with an interpreter and, after the fair, handle negotiation, sample approval, inspection of the alloy and the plating, and importing.

The advantage of September is breathing room: the jewellery fairs happen before October’s congestion, which allows you to settle the plated jewellery sourcing calmly and still carry on to Yiwu for the costume pieces. Because dates change with every edition, we always reconfirm the official schedule before closing any trip.