April is a very busy trade show period here in the Fair East. And thanks to the nature of the BizGift industry most of these trade shows are important for us. This mini series of posts will introduce those most significant ones.

By far the biggest show that takes part in this region is the China Import and Export Fair, better known as Canton Fair. It is held twice a year (in April and in October) and the next one will be its 103rd edition. With the shift of the manufacturing from developed countries to China this fair is perhaps one of the most important fairs these days. That however by no means means it is also one of the best. Far from that …

The fair is currently held in 2 phases (different products) with 5 days gap between them. Each phase is split into 2 venues - the old one and the new one. These two venues are located at the opposite ends the of the huge, traffic jammed and incredibly polluted city of Guangzhou.

The fair itself, despite some efforts from the organizers, is quite a mess. It is rare to actually find a booth where the name on the booth is the same as the companies inside the booth. The booths themselves are commodity. Many companies do not exhibit, they simply get the booth, carve into three (one wall for one exhibitor) and sell it on for 5-10 times the original cost. This brings 2-3 total strangers into one booth, each of them with different product line that often does not even belong to that particular hall or even that particular fair.

The other popular feature of Canton Fair is hundreds of exhibitors displaying exactly the same thing, in exactly the same packaging, with same item number on the package. Hundreds of exporters trying to sell the same product from the same factory. One consequence is that you walk and walk until you drop dead but you always see the same stuff. The same stuff however does not have the same price. I had an experience that in 5 booths next to each other people were offering me exactly the same thing from 0.50 to 1.60

The biggest problem with the Canton Fair is the number of exhibitors whose only purpose is to cheat and take advantage. They are not a majority, but there are many of them. One has to exercise great caution. Often the information given by the exhibitors is not accurate, often it is not backed up by anything, often it is an outright lie. Many people who visit the fair for the first time get carried away by the sheer size of the fair, the variety of products and the prices (if compared with prices they pay to their local suppliers, importers). Simple advice here - when something looks to good to be true, it usually is not true.

My recommendation for new visitors would be - go around, get the information, contacts, ideas, but do not waste too much time discussing things. Get back to the suppliers after the fair, get things from them black and white in writing and move on from there.

The food in the venues is mostly crap, the coffee is bad and overpriced and the beer is often either warm or rock solid frozen . But to be fair to the organizers there are obvious efforts to improve the show. I was quite surprised when I received a questionnaire with a survey on planned changes to fair from next year mostly to do with planned expansion of the fair.

What would I change about this fair:

• I would absolutely prohibit reselling of the booth space and enforce that regulation

• I would screen the exhibitors before accepting them to make sure the con artists do not make it there (this would mean much less exhibitors but much better quality, saving space, saving time)

• I would take the fact that 95% percent of visitors are overseas people into consideration when it comes to food and drinks at the fair.

Perhaps one day that may happen. For the near future however the plans are to expand this fair and split it into 3 parts instead of 2 and that does not sound like a good idea at all …

Popularity: 51% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you Subscribe to BizGiftGuru by Email

Read More

These are not the easiest times to do business. The world economy is slowing down, some markets are even slipping into the recession. So the last thing one wants to do is to increase to prices to make life for customers even harder than it already is. Unfortunately Murphy’s Laws rule the business and so when we are in a global economic slowdown times we also face cost increases higher then ever. What to do ?

One factor is the relationship with the customer and nature of his business. If you have a very open relationship with your client based on mutual trust than you can talk openly with your customer and find the solution together and everybody is fine.

It gets more difficult if there is even a slight mistrust or caution between supplier and customer. Client may not believe all you say, even if you are completely honest. Or you may not be willing to disclose all the information to customer worrying client may take an advantage from the extra knowledge.

So how to handle it ?

There are surely many in-between solutions to these market conditions but to generalize there are 2 approaches:

1. To absorb all or as much as possible of the cost increase and keep prices unchanged for clients until the moment clients have chance to revise their price lists.
2. To always copy the cost increases and pass them all on to clients as they occur

What is the better way? Hard to tell. Perhaps considering the cons of these 2 approaches is the way to go.

• If you keep absorbing the cost increases or squeeze your suppliers down to absorb part of it, you are being nice to your client. You are however reducing your margins to unhealthy levels and client often does not even know about that and therefore can’t appreciate it. Then a point comes where the prices have to be brought to reality. When customer sees the new price list, he freaks out and you get all the yelling and shouting for being crazy. That is often the reward for being nice to your client for as long as you can afford it …

• The other option is not much better. You may be asking for less increase (but more often) but you are still bringing bad news. So all you can expect are bad reactions. However this time you bring the bad news more than once so you get that yelling and shouting more often. There is a light at the end of the tunnel here however. One day you get used to that yelling and shouting and one day your client gets used to the regular price increases. None of you gets to like it, but both will get used to it.

Make your pick, I made mine already.

Popularity: 49% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you Subscribe to BizGiftGuru by Email

Read More

Merchandising is a serious money maker for popular sport teams (and not only for them). The merchandise itself is not always perfect and almost always overpriced. But it is nice to see when the overpriced stuff is actually designed well and truly represents the feel of the brand and the team. Here is one example - The Vodafone McLaren Mercedes coffee tumbler.

I am not a favourite of the bright reflex colours but as their sponsors pay for that it is part of the image of the car as is the mirror silver metal finish:

The cup has been branded by 3D PVC badge. This is the same technology used for all those cartoon keychains or zipper pullers on garments or bags. Once the PVC sleeve is molded it is simply fixed on the common stainless steel tumbler and the product is almost ready. Well almost. At this stage it only represents the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 racing team. They clearly wanted to incorporate the McLaren group logo into the design too.

Here is the logo:

And here is how the logo appears on the product without disturbing the overall design:

I love the thinking behind this simple design, the attention to details. At the same time I hate the thinking behind pricing this product .

Popularity: 45% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you Subscribe to BizGiftGuru by Email

Read More

Offering people something for free in return for buying your products - that is probably the most common use of promotional products. There are many criteria for selecting the right free gift, here is the list of those I consider most important:

• practical and useful

• relevant to product you are selling

• high perceived value

• tasteful design and good quality look

• and all the above within the limits of your budget

There is usually not much you can do about the budget. If you are selling your product for 20 dollars you probably will not be looking at free gift for your customers that costs you 30 dollars . Once you have your budget set you can go on searching for the perfect gift.

Few days ago I found in a department store a booth running promo on Huggies diapers. The gift they have chosen - mini size terry bathrobe - is a good example of careful free gift selection:

• It is practical, bathrobe always comes handy, even for a kid. At the same time it is not exactly a product many people would think of buying. But once you see it is coming free with a product you need anyway you happily take it even if it means switching to a different brand .

• It is relevant. The size of the bathrobe suggests it is intended for the same size of people as the diapers it comes with .

• It has a decent perceived value, definitely much higher than its cost especially if produced in serious quantity.

• It looks fine, fabric is very OK, there are no obvious quality defects and the branding is such that mums and dads probably would not mind their kids running around the beach with it.

To get this free bathrobe people had to purchase 3 packs of Huggies and from what I could see they definitely made Pampers sales suffer on that day in that store .

Popularity: 27% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you Subscribe to BizGiftGuru by Email

Read More

Being on the road and travelling around for a while makes it quite difficult to keep up posting regularly. On the other hand one can see things.

When some company sponsors an event, their name, brand and colours are usually all over the place.

So the same could be expected from ING, when they became the title sponsor of Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix race in Melbourne. And of course the branding was all over the track,

as well as on the event merchandise:

No event would be an event without the girls in the sponsor colours. And when it gets way too hot, the custom made umbrellas in the colors of the sponsor are on hand to protect the girls from sunstroke. Well, that probably was the plan. Unfortunately not all the corporate umbrellas are made perfect …

Kind of embarassing situation in front of huge crowd that at that moment had nowhere else to look but in the direction of the girls .

It all ended up well, the umbrella man proved to be more skilled than the workers in the factory that assembled that umbrella for ING.

The more serious topics will return once I return from this trip.

Popularity: 32% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you Subscribe to BizGiftGuru by Email

Read More