SHANGHAI: Billionaire Warren Buffett turned Dalian Dayang Trands Co. into China's best-performing clothing stock after saying he wears the company's suits and praising it as "wonderful."

Dayang, based in the northeastern city of Dalian, surged by the 10 percent daily limit for a fourth day in Shanghai after Dayang posted a video on its Web site of Buffett congratulating the company and Chairman Li Guilian on its 30th anniversary. The stock closed at 14.67 yuan, its highest since January 2008.

"I have to tell you that I now have nine suits all made in China. I threw away the rest of my suits," Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s chairman and CEO Buffett, 79, says in the video, adding that his business partner Charlie Munger and Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates also wear Dayang's outfits.

Dayang is up 261 percent this year, the most of 25 apparel companies traded in Shanghai and Shenzhen. The company, with 2008 sales of 894.6 million yuan ($131 million), and a market value of less than $350 million, doesn't have any "disclosable business relationship" with Buffett, it said yesterday.

"Buffett has a lot of influence on the stock market and so when Dalian Dayang shows him wearing their suits, that has an impact," said Kong Jun, a Shanghai-based analyst at China Jianyin Investment Securities Co. Kong recommends investors buy Dalian Dayang's shares.

Buffett assistant Carrie Kizer confirmed that Buffett recorded the video at Li's request. "It was something they asked him to do and he agreed," Kizer said in an e-mail. Dayang's spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Gates Venture
"It's been a long time since I got compliments on how I look but since I'm wearing Madam Li's suits, I get compliments all the time," he says.

Buffett, the world's second-richest man with an estimated fortune of $37 billion according to Forbes magazine, jokes in the video that "maybe Bill and I could start a clothing store" and sell the company's suits, adding that "some day we might even be rich, who knows?"

Gates is the world's richest man with wealth of $40 billion, according to Forbes.

Li founded Dayang in September 1979 with 85 employees, according to its Web site. She now has around 6,800 workers and about 40 percent of sales are derived from the U.S. and Europe.

'Inspire People'
"Imagine starting 30 years ago with a sewing machine and now turning out maybe 5 million suits or something like that a year," Buffett says in the video. "It's a story that should inspire people in China and inspire people around the world."
The company has 20 stores in 11 cities in China, according to its Web site. At its 250-square meter store in Beijing's Finance Street Shopping Center, tailored suits range from 6,800 yuan ($1,000) at the cheapest to 21,000 yuan when made with Loro Piana cloth, said a saleswoman in the shop. Off-the-peg outfits cost about 8,000 yuan.

Visitors to the shop, which features plush armchairs, can order an entire wardrobe from suits to shirts, belts, leather accessories, shoes, ties and cufflinks. Customers buying suits at the top end of the price range may be looked after by Ivano Cattarin, who left Giorgio Armani SpA to become Dayang's chief designer, the saleswoman said, declining to give her name.

Chinese President Hu Jintao wore a Dayang suit when he met former U.S. President George W. Bush at the Asia-Pacific Economic Forum in 2007, according to a bound volume in the store's waiting area. Buffett, the book notes, is a satisfied customer.