I think that I have just seen the Next Big Thing.
I ordered a set of battery boxes from Amazon. The boxes are little plastic boxes that I use to store my AA and AAA rechargeable batteries in so that they won’t roll around in the desk drawer and get lost.
So I ordered some from Amazon. They only cost $3.50… with free shipping. After the order was placed, the estimated time of delivery was some outrageous date, like July 27 ( I ordered the boxes on June 14). Yikes!
When I researched it, I found that the shipper was Yanwen…. which is based in…. Beijing… China….. seriously. The entire order was for $3.50 for some plastic boxes… free shipping.. and they are shipping them directly from China!
Well today, way earlier than they had predicted, my battery boxes showed up. Here is a photo of the label on the package.
Yep. That certainly looks like it came from China. Here is the stamp.
Cool. These two characters from the stamp:
mean “Middle” and “Kingdom”, which is the ancient name for China. I can see where they get “Middle” out of the one on the left. The other one is a puzzle.
Anyway, here are the boxes.
They are exactly what I expected.
So I guess the Next Big Thing is that not only is everything Made in China… but it is shipped directly from China as well.
How did they do that for $3.50?