The Top Lot that became a badge of quality

“To me, a Top Lot represents an expert level of refinement and expertise,” says He Jing, at his shop in one Beijing’s oldest neighbourhoods. “To make something with it, is comparably using the absolute best material available. It’s just like cooking, if you use the best ingredients you make the best food.”

A fourth-generation fur retailer, He Jing’s company Sensation Fur is a hidden gem located in an average residential street a stone’s throw from Tian An Men square. Like all traditional Chinese courtyard homes, its outside walls, ornate lacquer windows, and clay shingled roof obscures a completely different world within.

We met He Jing busy measuring a customer for garment, working on a table refashioned from an old wooden door with iron rivets. Having made many trips to Kopenhagen Fur, he is a return buyer of Chinchilla Top Lots, and a fixture at auctions in Denmark.

“The demand from my customers for chinchilla is really high,” he says. “I let my customers compare to see how the quality of the Top Lots and the best skins is even higher than others.”

His whole shop is a tribute to different types of fur craftsmanship, with items also made of other fur types, like mink and fox, ranging from garments to area rugs.

But chinchilla has a special focus, he says, explaining a trophy wall of Top Lot wins and a Top Lot bundle hanging from the ceiling.

“I mean, for the first thing it just looks really nice, but its also like an exhibition to let our customers see,” He Jing says.

For him, showing his customers that he buys Top Lots is emblematic of the fact that he supports the best type of fur craftsmanship in all the skins he purchases.

“Quality is very important to me. When you buy skins from Denmark, the hair, the colour, the other areas of quality are all very high.”