Abstract This study examines the cultural logic of uncertainty in China’s children’s fashion industry, and shows why familiar coordination devices, such as Order Fairs, remain peripheral to this market. I identify a “backloaded institution,” a system where post-production exchange provides the footing for production itself. Producers operate under high uncertainty regarding both meaning and relation, making goods without orders or guarantees. Their risk-taking holds because a secondary clearance market emerges to provide massive, culturally grounded liquidity. This study thus identifies an institution that does not function to predict the future, but to create a liquid present in which multiple futures can be tested.
Linzhuo Li (Thu,) studied this question.