Rainwear Central Rainwear Forum

This topic was started here because it relates to a video that was posted here some time ago, I have tried to look the thread up but with no luck. Some of you may remember it, it was the one of Robson Green's extreme fishing in the South China sea with a whole load of the local fishermen all dressed in bright blue PVC suits and there were a few of us at the time who said we'd love to know where to get them, well I think I've found that out! While looking for something else, I came across a site called http://www.taobao.com, it's a sort of ebay, it's designed for manufacturers to sell directly to the public, now as Google's translate facility can only deal with the text on the page and not the buttons or text in graphics, I haven't been able to work out how to contact any sellers to see if they will ship to the UK, here's a few of the things I've logged in my favourites for now starting with those bright blue suits:

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a23 ... 2283125474

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a23 ... 8290944286

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a23 ... 5812497997

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a23 ... 0323119363

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a23 ... 5690870045

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a23 ... 5238575564

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a23 ... 4963412051

Even with the shipping over to the UK, the prices for the rainwear are fantastic, bare in mind 1 Yuan Rimnimbi = £0.10 GBP!!, oh, and if you're going to have a search on the site yourself it is a Chinese language site, typing english into the search bar won't work, you'll need to translate it first.

Rainy Dee, the Rainwear Detective

I admire the amount of work you must have put in to find these

I noticed if you hover over the graphic buttons you get the description in English, hope this helps

Nice find

Ray

have to say that is an excellent find, now if someone can crack how to actually buy some of these items, especially those fantastic blue rainsuits it would be just brilliant. If the exchange rate is as Ray says then it means they are incredibly cheap and they do look a reasonable quality. Wonder if it would be worth someone importing afew and selling them on at a small profit?

Yes at about 10 Yuan to the pound, you could fill your entire house with pvc and plastic. Shame the postage would probably be ten times the cost of the garment.

When translated the Blue Suit changes to $15 ea & standard delivery is $10 = $25 / £ £18 UK

It looks like I may have been a little premature with my excitement on this one, although it was relatively easy to get access to the site by registering my email address, from there on was problematic, the site's system isn't really set up for non Chinese use, the address and phone number fields can't cope with overseas formats making it impossible to complete any of the required fields, I even tried talking to someone on live chat (copying and pasting both sides of the conversation into Google translate from Chinese to English and vice versa!) and it seems that's just the way it is

@Hotwilly: When you translate the page and the price changes, it's just an error, it's still the Chinese currency price, but as none of the western character sets contain the symbol for the Yuan it gets replaced with the $ sign.

So, I'm sorry to get anyones hopes up, mine included, but it seems we've been thwarted again! I did read somewhere that there is an English language version of this site called F2buy, I might have to look into that I think.

Someone with some extra time at hand and some courage good make a good buck importing these selling them to fetish people (just, please don't get greedy lie so many others, which is the reason for the ridiculous prices we see on raingear these days)

Actually had success, so far, and ordered a rain suit off the Taobao website. As shown, the prices, including shipping calculate out and are attractive. Time will tell if this is successful. You must register both to the site as well as a credit card to place the order. I did not place a large one "just in case". I live in USA so UK may be more problematic

kulshan wrote:Actually had success, so far, and ordered a rain suit off the Taobao website. As shown, the prices, including shipping calculate out and are attractive. Time will tell if this is successful. You must register both to the site as well as a credit card to place the order. I did not place a large one "just in case". I live in USA so UK may be more problematic

I too am from USA. Be curious to see how this comes out and how you like the suit.

will be interesting to see how this works for you. Would so love to get my hands (well body) on one of those suits. I blame my school for offering French and German but not Chinese as part of the curriculum