In the live-streaming room of Yienyi, a familiar scene often unfolds: the host picks up an egg, raises it to waist height, and drops it onto a play mat below. The egg bounces once, lands steadily, and remains perfectly intact. What looks like a novel rebound test actually reflects a problem Ma Weizhe and his team have been solving for over a decade: how sturdy, how clean, and how safe does a play mat for infants to crawl, sit, and chew on truly need to be for parents to feel at ease?
Ma Weizhe is a native of Linyi, Shandong. In 2010, he resigned from a foreign enterprise in Shanghai and returned to his hometown, joining Yienyi, a company that makes play mats. Founded in 1999, Yienyi has gone through numerous iterations—from the earliest EVA materials to the repeatedly refined IXPE materials used today, and from factory-scheduled production in the past to e-commerce customized manufacturing driven by backend data on PDD. Now, Yienyi's annual output value reaches around 300 million yuan, and it has helped spur the formation of a surrounding industrial cluster.
Ma Weizhe's 16 years at this company are almost a microcosm of how Linyi's foam product industrial belt went from nothing to something, and from chaos to order. This is not just the story of one enterprise; it is a slice of Linyi's transformation from the "Logistics Capital of China" to a "Manufacturing Capital."
Chatting with moms to create a "biteable play mat"
What exactly is a "biteable play mat"? The name is certainly eye-catching. Among the many merchants selling play mats, Yienyi was the first to come up with this concept, which was later imitated by others. But this is not just a whimsical marketing idea from Yienyi's team; it was refined bit by bit from real usage scenarios.
Play mats are typically used starting when a child is about three months old, as parents use them to train their babies to lift their heads and crawl. But young children have little strength, get tired easily while crawling, and their faces often touch the mat, with their mouths following close behind. Another equally critical detail: children naturally love to chew on things, and if the mat has a complex texture that is hard to clean, parents face a headache during cleanup.
Much of this insight came from Ma Weizhe's early experience when he deliberately worked as a customer service representative for a period to get closer to consumers. "When I worked in customer service, I was essentially chatting with moms—asking how they found the store, why they didn't end up buying, and what the reasons for returns were." From comment sections, private messages, return communications, to user groups, the team has around four or five channels for continuous consumer contact. Ma Weizhe particularly values the value of negative reviews: "When consumers criticize, they tend to be more specific—like whether there's a smell, whether the child's mouth often touches the mat, and whether it's environmentally friendly."
It is precisely this feedback that turned "cleanliness" and "antibacterial" from two vague demands into concrete engineering problems. The team developed an antibacterial colored film and changed the printing process from traditional "transfer printing" to "inside printing." In the past, the ink for colorful patterns was printed on the surface of the film, and over time, repeated friction from skin would wear the ink away, exposing children to bare ink. By switching to inside printing, the ink is pressed beneath the film's surface. Consumers see the colorful patterns below the surface—visually identical—but children's skin and mouths never come into contact with the ink itself. Combined with heavy metal testing, formamide testing, and antibacterial functionality, the claim of a "biteable play mat" truly holds up.
The iteration of materials themselves has run through these past dozen or so years. The earliest batch of play mat manufacturers in Linyi used EVA materials, which had strong odors and were prone to formaldehyde exceeding standards; CCTV had even reported on the industry chaos. Although Yienyi's products passed inspections, it was also questioned by association, suffering from the fallout. Under this crisis, the team continuously sought more environmentally friendly alternative materials—first EPE, then XPE, which offered improved durability and eco-friendliness. Since the second half of last year, they have shifted to the more advanced IXPE—a material previously used mainly in high-end fields like automotive and aerospace. It is safe, environmentally friendly, and offers more precise elasticity and support: "Too soft and it fails to provide support and fall protection; too hard and a child's skin can't handle it. IXPE currently offers the best fineness, softness, and support."
Yienyi is also the first company in Linyi to proactively obtain 3C certification. At the time, the play mat industry had neither national nor industry standards—only companies' own claims. When Ma Weizhe returned to Linyi with his experience from a foreign enterprise in Shanghai, his first reaction was, "If there are no standards, then we should set our own." 3C certification requires factory inspections and full documentation of raw materials and processes, and any material change requires re-testing. This process is not only an official endorsement for consumers but also forces the company to standardize internal management, laying the earliest groundwork for future branding.
A materials revolution and flexible manufacturing
If materials innovation is Yienyi's internal strength, then what precisely connects that strength to market demand is the rules and data of e-commerce platforms. In the past, Yienyi was a typical factory operating on scheduled production—what and how much to produce was mainly based on experience. Today, whether a new product has blockbuster potential can often be gauged within a week through backend data on PDD, such as click-through rates and exposure: products with good data get immediate additional orders, while mediocre performers are quickly phased out. Ma Weizhe calls this "e-commerce customized production." Since joining PDD, the company's overall output value has increased by about 30%.
This data feedback is also concretely improving products. When consumers report that mat textures easily trap dust and are hard to clean, or mention insufficient slip resistance, the team responds to negative reviews by "rushing to modify the molds" and then applying for design patents. Ma Weizhe believes it is PDD's high demands on consumer experience that create a collaborative relationship between merchants and the platform: "We are a black-label store. If quality or experience declines, our score drops, we can't participate in promotions, and traffic decreases. Merchants must stay in sync with the platform."
This synchronization is also reflected in the pace of product iteration. Yienyi has an unwritten rule: patterns are updated roughly monthly, while deeper innovations in material structure and functionality are maintained at three to four times per year. At an exhibition in Shanghai this July, Yienyi's new splicing-style product received a positive response; and the IXPE material, which gained traction starting at the end of last year, has been increasing its share month over month. Ma Weizhe puts it directly: "Products must be continuously innovated and iterated. If you don't innovate, you easily fall into homogeneous competition."
Data-driven operations have also quietly changed how the factory works internally. In terms of staffing, the edge-sewing process used to rely on a large number of seamstresses; now automation has significantly improved. In production, even custom orders can be arranged immediately upon receipt, without the need to wait for pre-sale periods of over a dozen days. In inventory, the past often saw "some goods out of stock, some overstocked"; now, with synchronized data between the e-commerce side and the factory, there is data support for how much can be sold in each season, allowing the company to "prepare in advance without overstocking."
Ma Weizhe considers PDD's "thousand-person, thousand-face" recommendation mechanism the "smartest and most hassle-free" among several e-commerce platforms. "Many people in e-commerce tend to focus on studying platform tricks or exploiting loopholes, but with PDD, you tell it your needs, and it matches the audience." This allows Yienyi to shift its energy from studying platform mechanics to product R&D and consumer research—an important lesson Ma Weizhe has summarized as a top merchant in PDD's category.
A company and a city's leap
When Ma Weizhe first entered this industry in 2010, there were seven or eight EVA mat manufacturers in Linyi, but only Yienyi had true brand awareness—it was the first to secure IP licenses for Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, Boonie Bears, and Disney, with partnerships lasting eight years for the first two, and it was also the first company in Linyi to obtain 3C certification. This combination of "quality + official endorsement + IP collaboration" helped Yienyi quickly build a reputation during the early era of price wars and made it a leader in every subsequent material iteration. Meanwhile, those EVA manufacturers that competed purely on price and failed to keep up with material iterations have mostly exited the baby products track or been entirely eliminated by the market.
Ma Weizhe's judgment is simple: "Many companies fear revolutionizing themselves, but the market won't wait for you." Today, what spreads this quality threshold across the entire industrial belt is PDD's near-stringent requirements for merchant experience scores through its black-label program and the "Billion Subsidy" initiative—once scores drop, traffic and promotional eligibility are affected. This means it's not just Yienyi; dozens of similar factories in Linyi must continuously keep up with material upgrades and testing standards.
Ma Weizhe admits that many people misunderstand PDD, seeing it merely as a "white-label gathering place," but the thresholds for black-label status and the Billion Subsidy program are not low. For merchants genuinely seeking to build brands, it is actually a boost. Industry data also confirms this collective leap: the national play mat industry output is over 1 billion yuan, with Linyi alone accounting for nearly half. Yienyi itself generates an annual output of 200 to 300 million yuan, roughly one-third of Linyi's industrial belt. Based on his long-term deep involvement in the industry, Ma Weizhe notes that Linyi's related processing capacity accounts for 35% to 42% of domestic circulating production volume.
Behind this, besides materials innovation and e-commerce mechanisms, Linyi's inherent advantage as the "Logistics Capital" plays a crucial role. Play mats are a typical "bulky cargo"—large in volume but light in weight—which perfectly complements heavy goods like steel and ceramic tiles for co-loading, significantly reducing transportation costs. This allows Linyi's products to be sold cheaply to Tibet, Guangdong, and Fujian, and also exported to Japan, Russia, Central Asia, Europe, India, and the Middle East. Ma Weizhe mentions that shipping costs from Shanghai to Linyi were once cheaper than from Shanghai to Nanjing—because Linyi has formed a stable cargo distribution center where the mechanism of matching light goods with heavy goods ensures trucks rarely run empty.
Zooming out further, the city of Linyi itself has undergone visible changes over the years. Ma Weizhe shares a profound observation: Linyi is becoming increasingly crowded—more trade naturally brings more people. Locals have a saying: "South has Yiwu, North has Linyi." In his view, Linyi does more than just small commodities—from building materials and stainless steel to toys, almost everything encountered in daily life has a professional wholesale market in Linyi. Logistics and production reinforce each other, and with the recent addition of e-commerce platforms like PDD, the "front store, back factory" model has further developed.
As Shandong's most populous and largest city by area, Linyi's GDP now ranks fifth in the province. It has grown from the former Yimeng revolutionary base area into a city with a strong business atmosphere. When Ma Weizhe returned from Shanghai to start a business in Linyi, it was precisely this opportunity he valued: "If you're just working for someone, first-tier cities offer better treatment. But from an entrepreneurial perspective, a smaller city like Linyi has lower costs and more opportunities—many people become small bosses within just a few years." This city's character, to some extent, explains how Linyi grew an entire industrial belt from a mere "corridor" over more than two decades.
In 2024, Yienyi officially joined PDD. At the time, the team's expectations were modest—"In production, we're top-tier in the industry, and our goal when entering any platform is to rank among the top few." Looking back over the years, Ma Weizhe describes the results as "beyond expectations." But when asked if he ever imagined he would drive Linyi's industrial belt to where it is today, he answers bluntly: "No, back then I didn't think that far ahead." In his view, it was more about riding the wave of the times—as economic levels rise, maternal and infant demand also upgrades, platform mechanisms continuously raise quality standards, and combined with the company's innovative spirit of "willing to lead in every iteration," these forces together have enabled Yienyi to grow stronger. In this virtuous cycle, Linyi's fine product category of play mats has gathered dozens of downstream factories, spontaneously forming a complete industry chain.
Now, Ma Weizhe and his team are thinking about the next step: moving from being a top merchant in the play mat category to building a larger maternal and infant brand. He breaks down branding into three elements—first, product quality is the cornerstone; without it, the brand building cannot stand. Second is visibility, which requires sustained seeding through collaborations with short-video influencers. Third is the increasingly important emotional value, especially for the post-2000s consumer group whose aesthetics and needs are changing: "We not only need consumers to buy with confidence but also to buy something good-looking and with joy."
This is also why Yienyi's pricing can remain in the 100 to 200 yuan range—significantly above the industry average—while still maintaining nearly a thousand daily orders. Ma Weizhe explains: "Consumers' price sensitivity hasn't changed, but they are willing to spend a little more for safety and quality." From 3C certification to thousand-person, thousand-face recommendations, from black-label entry to the Billion Subsidy program, PDD has used a combination of "quality screening + data feedback + traffic support" to reshape what was once a wildly growing industrial belt into a force driving the leap toward a manufacturing economy.
Yienyi's "biteable play mat" is not just the evolution of a single mat; it is a microcosm of how PDD, through the power of its platform, is helping "Made in Linyi" move from a supporting role by the roadside to the center stage of industrial upgrading. And this logistics capital itself is, in the midst of this leap, gradually forging its own manufacturing backbone.
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