Umbrellas are now a consumer product with a large global market.
As of 2008, most umbrellas worldwide are made in China, mostly in the Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang provinces. The city of Shangyu alone had more than a thousand umbrella factories. In the US alone, about 33 million umbrellas, worth $348 million, are sold each year. Original public domain image from Flickr