Brooms and the straw that unbroke a camel's back

Then, in 2017, he received a visit from a woman named Ge Xiaomei.

"The thing is that Gao was really good at what he did – making brooms that are very durable and delicate," she said. "The problem was that because he had no sales channels he couldn't make any money."

Showing her own flash of commercial inventiveness, Ge proposed that she could help Gao move his product.

"I didn't exactly know the broom markets, but I wanted to give it a go," she said.