My brother-in-law, who owns a couple of 2nd hand mobile phone shops in Wanchai, got hold of a small stock of face masks last week. He started selling them late in the afternoon that day, and made a healthy HK$2K of profit for the evening. He got hold of more stock, and apparently recorded a turnover of HK$10K the next day.
I went out and about on Sunday, and there were 4 different small stalls on the bridge in Tuen Mun Town Centre selling cheap face masks. There weren’t that many people around, so business wasn’t spectacular for those hawkers.
I suppose this is what the Hong Kong people excel at: find an opportunity or a niche in the market, and make a quick buck out of it, with minimal effort and value added in the process. Things like pancake stalls, sushi bars, fruit salad cafes, Taiwanese tea houses, real estate property, etc., the list goes on. As soon as someone manages to make a quick buck, a flood of people would go in to copy the same thing. It’s a bit like the game of music chairs: sooner or later the music stops market force kicks in and wipes out the late comers. The lack of real added value is the downfall of this strategy. It also reminds me of locusts: a swamp of bugs consuming everything in their way. They do not create a healthy eco-system. There is therefore no surprise that the so-called “domestic economy” as promoted by the SAR Govt. failed. A self-sustaining domestic economy must be creative and flexible, and value must be created and added into the system. Your average bottom-feeder hawker selling cheap plastic toys made in China at the Dragon Market in Wong Tai Sin, or selling cheap face masks on every street corner are not offering anything extra to the very cheap goods they sell. The next hawker could undercut them in price, and the local Mannings and Watsons could also undercut them in price and in every other way.