Achieve Good Results from Sourcing Exhibitions

By Diana in "The China Sourcing Blog"

Achieve Good Results from Sourcing Exhibitions

Exhibitions are normally considered as a one-stop approach for buyers to meet suppliers.

However, many people experience limited outcomes from attending an exhibition in China because of insufficient communications with suppliers (if the exhibition is too crowded, for example); absence of senior management at the booths; language barriers; limited product displays, etc. Yet to achieve good results from an exhibition is not difficult as long as you:

1) Choose the right exhibition;

2) Do sufficient preparation; and

3) Follow up well afterwards.

In the next several postings, we will discuss this in more details, according to my experience in assisting clients with exhibitions in China.

Choose the right exhibition

after you have done your needs analysis and figured out the product list that you would like to source from China, you may find that attending exhibitions is one way to meet a group of Chinese suppliers within 3-4 days. Then you can start to collect the exhibition information and list them together for comparison later.

Here are some indications for you to tell if the exhibition is worth your while:

• Location:

  Location is not absolute indication of quality but most of the time exhibitions held in China's first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are generally better in terms of size and attendance. There are also several exhibition centers in Beijing, yet the New China International Exhibition Center and China International Exhibition Center are some of the bigger ones. The Beijing International Convention Center is usually used for forum-type exhibitions.

• Size:

  Many exhibitions will put detailed information on their websites, including the information of previous exhibitions if this exhibition is held annually. By studying the number of exhibitors and attendees of the previous exhibition, you can judge if the exhibition is good or bad. If the related industry is also substantial, exhibitions with more than 500 exhibitors and more than 30,000 persons attending are normally worthwhile to attend. As a reference, Canton Fair 2008 (autumn) had 21,917exhibitors for exports and 424 exhibitors for imports while 174, 562 persons registered to attend from overseas.

• Exhibitors:

  If the exhibition has an official website, you may be able to examine a list of exhibitors who will attend the exhibition or who attended the exhibition in previous years. From this you will be able to judge whether the exhibition is suitable for you to find proper Chinese suppliers, and you can especially look out for the following:

  1. Well-known international suppliers attending the exhibition: Nowadays, good Chinese exhibitions attract international exhibitors. Normally these exhibitions are in industries where China is relatively more advanced.

  2. Chinese suppliers' names: You may need to count how many Chinese suppliers are on the list. If you are familiar with China's province or city names, you may be able to get a rough idea if the suppliers are local or from different provinces. As China is geographically large, it will cost suppliers from other provinces a lot of time and money to attend exhibitions in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangdong. So if one exhibition in Beijing attracted many good suppliers from southern China, it is likely to be a good one as the suppliers consider it worthwhile to attend.

  3. Key Chinese suppliers: If you already know several big Chinese suppliers in the related industry, you can judge if the exhibition is worthwhile or not by checking whether these suppliers are attending.

• Organizers:

  Just as qualified products are manufactured by qualified suppliers, good exhibitions are organized by good organizers. You can judge whether the exhibition is a sizable one by investigating if the organizer is reliable and experienced. Many international exhibition organizers such as Reed and Koelnmesse are actively organizing big international exhibitions in China. Local players are also growing very fast, and most of the good ones have English websites, where you can get references.

• Product range:

  This is not always true but in the past I found that I could not find enough suppliers of certain commodities from exhibitions which apparently had a general scope. For example, if you visit an exhibition with a name like 'industrial goods exhibition' to look for casting suppliers, you may only be able to find 5-10 suppliers, even though the exhibition organizer listed casting in the product scope of the exhibition description. In this case, what you may want to do is either attend an exhibition specifically named as a 'casting exhibition', or attend a specific industry show as long as you know what industry the castings are used for.

Do sufficient preparation

After you identify the right exhibition you are willing to attend in China, you will start with a lot of preparation work. As far as I know, most of the companies will only prepare for logistics issue, such as visa and accommodation. However, as long as these companies do a little bit more work on analyzing the targets of the trip, you will find it far more productive.

• Team set-up

  Ideally, the team visiting the exhibition needs to include both product expert and decision maker on commercial aspect, which means it should involve at least technical department and purchasing department. Team should be given a target to meet for the trip, such as Chinese market study, supplier approach, or collect proper samples.

• Material preparation

  Because of the inconvenience caused by the long travel, many persons only bring a few marketing materials on their company introduction and sometimes even don't prepare any hardcopy. I suggest that although it could be troublesome, you need to bring as many brochures as possible. Considering the noisy and crowded environment of the big exhibition and the possibility that the Chinese suppliers are not very good at English or your translators are not good at terminology, to leave a proper brochure to introduce your company and your product or your service would be the best way for the exhibitor to remember you and pay more attention to you afterwards.

  By the way, please prepare enough business cards, at least 200 pieces, and small gifts if necessary.

• Market Research

  When you have decided to attend particular exhibition in China, you will need to conduct a market research on the related industries in China. By proper research you may be able to figure out the following:

• What's the supply and export volume?

• How is the technology developed?

• Who are the main players?

• Is China a major supply country in the world?

• Is the price competitive?

• What's the potential problem with using Chinese products in your country?

  I personally think the last question, which requires you to combine the research on China with your local situation, is practically the most important one except the price issue because your discussion with the exhibitors will be more efficient if you know where the problem could be at the very beginning.

  Next posting we are going to discuss more issues to prepare before exhibition.

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  The China Sourcing Blog is THE BEIJING AXIS online media platform to track the latest trends on sourcing and the Chinese economy. Taking on a multi-faceted, dynamic subject and carefully scanning everything from the mainstream media to the distant corners of the Internet, CSB strives to get to the bottom of all the best bits and pieces on China sourcing.
  
  

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