too many subdomains and sub directories will hurt ranking?

sub domains, sub directires, keywords ranking

[johnlim9988]

Is it ok to have many sub directories (over 200) and sub domains (30) together?

My friend's site sell a thing and this thing has many categories.

At first, he list all the things according to locations, so have domainname.com/usa/ca/san-diego/allthings.html;
domainname.com/usa/fl/miami/allthings.html;
domainname.com/china/shanghai/allthings.html etc etc

Then he also list all things by categories first (use sub-domain) then list by location,

so also have following file structure,
category1.domainname.com/usa/ca/san-diego/things1.html;
category2.domainname.com/usa/ca/san-diego/things2.html;
category3.domainname.com/usa/ca/san-diego/things3.html;
.............
category28.domainname.com/usa/ca/san-diego/things28.html;

category1.domainname.com/usa/fl/miami/things1.html;
category2.domainname.com/usa/fl/miami/things2.html;
category3.domainname.com/usa/fl/miami/things3.html;
.............
category28.domainname.com/usa/fl/miami/things28.html;

category1.domainname.com/china/shanghai/things1.html;
category2.domainname.com/china/shanghai/things2.html;
category3.domainname.com/china/shanghai/things3.html;
........
category28.domainname.com/china/shanghai/things28.html;
etc etc

Now the probelm is that we create many unique contents at files like,
domainname.com/usa/ca/san-diego/allthings.html;
domainname.com/usa/fl/miami/allthings.html;
domainname.com/china/shanghai/allthings.html etc etc

We don't have many unique contents at files like,
category1.domainname.com/usa/ca/san-diego/things1.html;
category2.domainname.com/usa/ca/san-diego/things2.html;
category3.domainname.com/usa/ca/san-diego/things3.html;
.............

Now the problem is that the site don't have good rankings.

What should we do? Need change the file structure?

Thanks.

John