The Garrulous Jay – Chinese Fans

This week we have once again witnessed the increasingly frequent summer news of record temperatures in the UK and Europe. As the Met Office reported yesterday evening, “The UK has provisionally set a new maximum temperature record for June for the second consecutive day, with 36.7°C reached at Merryfield, Somerset”…

This beats the previous maximum of 35.6°C recorded on the 28th June 1976 and 29th June 1957.

In Europe things have been even hotter with temperatures of 42.0°C being recorded in Bordeaux and 42.5°C in Bilbao, for example.

As the mercury was rising, I found myself spending the day in London on Tuesday, where I was struck by the number of people using handheld fans. This is perhaps unsurprising given the conditions on parts of the transport network were close to inhumane. (I wonder if Network Rail advised people “to only travel if absolutely necessary” out of embarrassment at their lack of preparedness for the heatwave.) 

Anyway, back to the handheld fans… This pricked my curiosity as to whether (or ‘weather’) there might be an investment opportunity to be capitalised upon from the searing heat.

A quick bit of background research told me that according to one report around 7.1 million portable fans were bought in the UK in 2024, compared to 350,000-400,000 a decade earlier. This left me warming to my task.

My next port of call was Amazon, where I searched for the “top 10 handheld fans”. There was no shortage of choice, from rather large but functional looking devices through to an elegant foldable design that could be popped in one’s pocket when not in use.

For the technically-minded there was the “Powerful Turbo Mini Fan, 19000 RPM High Speed Aero Ultra, 15H Max Cooling Time, 7 Speeds Aluminum Case, Pocket Rechargeable” offering. I still know less about the new car I bought a couple of months ago than this spec gives me.

So now all I needed to do was work out which fan manufacturer’s shares I should buy to turn the risks to my health into a boost to my wealth. It was at this point that my enthusiasm was cooled sharply as I researched the companies in question.

Here are the leading brands and their makers:
•    Gaiatop – made by Shenzhen Gaiatop Network Technology Co., Ltd (China) – private
•    Lepwings – made by Guangdong Aoyun Technology Co., Ltd (China) – private
•    Aecooly – made by Shenzhen Aikuli Technology Co., Ltd (China) – private
•    Diveblues – made by Shenzhen Street Cat Technology Co., Ltd (China) – private
•    Warmco – made by Dongguan Chenxun Electronics Co., Ltd (China) – private.

In truth I wasn’t totally surprised by this, but nevertheless a little disappointed.

It also left me thinking that the dominance of this relatively niche market by privately held Chinese companies perhaps reflects that country’s greater preparedness for the changing world in which we live.

As with so many other products, we won’t be fans of the Chinese if they stop supplying us with their handheld cooling devices. But perhaps they hold all the best cards, as well as small things we in the West want to buy.