Vendors at Yabaolu see fewer customers as the trade dwindles. [Photo by Wang Jing/China Daily]

"If it's cheaper, more people will buy," 22-year-old mink coat vendor Wei Chunlei says.

She works in her family's 20-square-meter shop in the Ritan International Trade Center, which claims to be "the biggest international trade platform in northern China". While the center's self-identification is arguably puffery, it's still a major trade hub in the region.

"We sell a mink coat for about $200," Wei says.

"I don't know what they sell it for in Russia."

About 65 percent of Russia's fur comes from China - the world's biggest producer - for about $2 billion annually, the Russian Fur Union reported in January.

China's global fur exports plummeted by 28 percent year-on-year in 2012, but exports to Russia increased 12 percent during the period, the Moscow-based Greenwood International Trade Center reports.

Wei's family moved to Yabaolu from Xingtai, Hebei province, 14 years ago to sell fur in Yabaolu.

"We'd heard about this place," her father, 50-year-old Wei Changdong, says.

"It wasn't this big then. When we first came, there were just street booths."

The building her family works in is 16 stories high and one of several.

"The conditions are better," Wei Changdong says.

"But business is about the same."

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