Falling attendances, hotel bookings down, unhappy exhibitors, that is how the October trade shows in the Far East can be described. Many blame the current economic climate for this but the root of the problem is somewhere else.

Yes, there sure were people who canceled their travel plans in the last moment. But most trade show visitor plan and book their trips, flights and hotels way in advance. The major reason for the falling attendances were the stupid greed motivated decisions of Canton Fair organizers to stretch the bi-annual Chinese Export Import Fair to three sessions spanning from October 15 to November 6. It may be fine for the regular buyers but pretty much killed it for the people from the promotional products industry. Electronics products in Phase 1, Gifts in Phase 2, Stationery and Writing instruments in Phase 3. What session should BizGift people select ? Who can spare 3 weeks to stay in China ?

Then there is Kenfair, the organizer of October Mega Show in Hong Kong, another regular trade show for people from promotional products industry. In the normal days this show was placed in between the phase 1 and phase 2 of the Canton fair, allowing us to visit 3 trade shows within a period of about 10 days. Now the new arrangements resulted in many people not staying after phase 2 in Canton. Bad news for exhibitors – Kenfair was much worse attended than it used to be, the Phase 3 in Canton, especially in the stationery areas was almost empty. As one of the exhibitors told me, they could just sit down and play cards for 5 days …

This all however had some positives for the visitors. The exhibitors had much more time and patience and desire to talk .

Let’s see how long it will take for the Canton Fair organizers to admit that they were wrong with this new format …

The hectic few weeks of visiting trade shows all around the region is finally over. I went to several, not always the good ones, in search of something new that might revolutionize our BizGift industry. Did I find something special ? Well, not really. But that is nothing new. New trends like transparent (or frosty transparent) materials or brand new items like lanyards few years ago do not by come every year.

I believe that this year most of the effort of people in our industry is to manage the crazy market conditions. The relatively stable or decreasing material and product costs we have grown accustomed to in recent years are going up now almost every day. That is the main challenge these and not too much time is left for innovation. Unfortunately, because clients would sure complain less about about higher prices if they can get new products in return. But paying 20-30% more than 12 months ago for pretty much the same stuff is not what we like, do we .

One trend, not exactly new, but very much the latest, are the “green” items. And as the US promotional market is going “green” crazy, there are more and more “eco” products available. How “green” and “eco” friendly they actually are, that I am not sure. But the fact is, the “green” products are hot these days.

The only other thing that caught my attention in past few weeks were sublimation ready products especially all sorts of ceramics ready to be sublimated .

Otherwise all the same old stuff we have known for years, only more expensive then ever these days (especially in US dollar terms). We may see more in October when the fall trade show season kicks in.

Few weeks ago I wrote a post on the Mega Macau Fair, based on my experience from October 2007. While my experience was far from good I decided to give it another shot and see how much better or worse the fair will be the second time around.

The problems with logistics I experienced last time were gone. First I played it safe and purchased the ferry tickets few days in advance. Also upon the arrival in Macau the staff from organizer were visible already at the Macau immigration. Thanks to having the trade show badges we could use the express lane. So all and all getting to Macau was smooth this time.

After passing the immigration more trade fair crew were on hand with information on shuttle bus. Unfortunately we were told to wait for 25 minutes for the bus and that was all the info we got. No word on the alternative – the Venetian Resort hotel shuttles that go around almost non stop. But knowing Macau a bit we walked out, jumped on the hotel shuttle and 10 minutes later we arrived at the fair venue.

So, how about the trade fair ? Takes about 1 hour to walk it all. Very few exhibitors and what I found even more surprising were many booths that were left empty even though they looked like someone paid for them … Not much to see, meaning nothing that I can’t see at other fairs held during this period around here. The whole trip was again, waste of time for me. And I wonder how the exhibitors must feel with so little traffic …

I simply do not see any reason why this trade show should last … I myself do not plan to visit again and I would have to loose my mind if I were to decide to exhibit at this show…

At least in the streets of Macau I could see these CocaCola branded rickshaws .

The Hong Kong Gift and Premium Fair is not as big fair as Canton Fair, but for a fair that specializes at something and not at everything it is rather huge. There are about 5000 booths and the organizer says “50,000 quality buyers from 141 countries”. Well, I would argue with that “quality buyers” claim (more on that in the article). But it is hard to argue about the size of the fair. The first time I visited was in 1995 and that time I already felt the fair was big. It was crammed in several halls and rooms of the original exhibition centre. That time the fair was still for both gift and household goods. In 1998 the exhibition expanded into the new extension of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC – on the photo) providing room for many exhibitors previously only able to get on the hopeless waiting list.

Few years later the original show split into two – Household Fair and Gift and Premium Fair (with a week gap between them). This split provided for more room for exhibitors, but clearly not enough. Barely 10 years after the new exhibition centre opened the new extension works are under way.

Unlike the Canton Fair and the new Mega Macau, the Hong Kong Gift and Premium Fair is very well organized. It is easy to navigate for buyers, the services for exhibitors are on pretty good level, food and beverage services are available all around the venue at reasonable prices.

What I see as the main problem of this fair is the growing mismatch between the expectations of buyers and the exhibitors. Most of the exhibitors naturally come from Hong Kong. Many Hong Kong companies have been for years moving away from cheap stuff towards innovative designs, higher end products, developing brands. Many visitors who come to the Hong Kong Gift Fair simply look around for new ideas but are not willing to pay for them. Their only plan is to take the idea and look for cheap copycat version in Canton Fair in China. Many of them will even shamelessly admit that. The result is that many exhibitors are reluctant to display new products as they are afraid of getting copied. They do have the new stuff in their booths. But they will only show it to their old or regular customers they believe are loyal. The consequence is many buyers complain, there is nothing new to see…

The other draw back for exhibitors are way too many trade fairs held at the same time in Hong Kong (competing trade fairs at the HKCEC and at the Asia World Expo at the airport), Macau, Guangzhou. These fairs are not attracting new audience, only splitting the existing one. Less visitors walking each fair, visitors walking more fairs… From what I hear visitors are also not too happy about this… But, as long as there is market, there will be supply… We will see what future brings. For now, I am getting ready for this year spring trade fair season.

P.S. – Name cards are a necessity for a trade show visitor or an exhibitor. Check some cool ones this blogger has found.

Unlike Canton Fair , the Mega Macau is a brand new trade show held in brand new venue and in a place where trade shows haven’t been that common. Macau clearly wants to follow Las Vegas example not only as a gambling paradise but also as a convention and exhibition destination.

The first Mega Macau trade fair was held last October (2007) during the autumn trade fair season on in the Far East. I went there to have a look and I had mixed impressions.

The venue itself – The Venetian Macau – is great. The convention centre is a part of the newly open Venetian casino and resort and that sure creates a different experience than the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre or the Asia World Expo some 60 km to the east in Hong Kong. Shopping malls, kitsch decoration, decent selection of restaurants. But there weren’t too many other positives about the Mega Macau show.

Getting there logistics – This was a nightmare. Getting from Hong Kong to Macau is usually very simple. You get to the Macau ferry terminal, jump on the next available ferry (there is obe every 10-15 minutes) and you are set. One hour later you disembark in Macau, clear immigration, hop on taxi and go. Was not the case during Mega Macau.

I spent about 3 hours waiting for the ferry in Hong Kong. My stupidity, I should have guessed and buy ticket in advance. But it did not end there. In Macau, there was a special immigration channel for the trade show visitors. But only for those with badge. The organizer messed up and did not deliver the badge to me on time, I had only invitation to get the badge on site. Bad luck, no speedy line for me, I had to queue up for about 45 minutes in the regular line.

Organizer (Kenfair) promised a shuttle bus to Venetian right outside the ferry terminal. Well, the organizer staff were hiding and I had to look for them. When I found them, they told me there is no shuttle only a hotel shuttle. Then they pointed to an 1 hour long queue. I had 3 options – wait an hout there, or wait an hour for taxi or walk for half a day. At the end it took me 6 hours to get to the fair, a jjourney that should not take more than 2.

Why actually I went to the fair ? Well it is a new kid on the block so I wanted to check it out. Moreover they advertised some sort of Asia Pacific Advertising Product show as a part of the fair and I was curious to see how that is going to look. At the end the travel was total waste of time. There were only few desperate exhibitors waiting for some visitors. Most of the visitors were people from Hong Kong on a quick curious trip just like me. Not much to be seen there that I can’t see in Hong Kong gift fairs without all that traveling headache.

Attracting exhibitors and buyers to a brand new fair is never an easy task, especially when it involves a new venue and new location. But Kenfair, the organizer of Mega Macau, has a very strange strategy. We have been exhibiting in a fair in Hong Kong organized by Kenfair for perhaps almost 10 years. It took us 4 years to finally get a booth at a good location. We kept the booth ever since. Then last year a very strange request came from Kenfair – To keep your booth in October in Hong Kong you have to exhibit in April in Macau too. I am not even sure whether this is legal but I do not care. I sent them to hell and decided to withdraw from October fair in Hong Kong …

The other negative I found was the ever present cigarette smoke. There is no smoking in the exhibition hall itself but people are (or were) allowed to smoke just outside the hall, in the fair check-in area and that I found weird. This does not happen any more in trade fairs even in such smoking obsessed country as Mainland China …

Do I recommend to visit Mega Macau ? If you plan to fly half way across the globe to see this fair, then better stay at home. If you are in Hong Kong or Guangzhou already for other fairs then go, but only if you have a day to spare …

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 …

The end and the beginning of the year is always a bit messy for me. End of the year most of the world is in the holiday mood and not much is happening. Then the new year kicks off with industry trade shows taking me to PSI in Europe and this year also to PPAI in the United States. The shows and the meetings at them result in lots of follow up work, unfortunately that has to wait. Why ? Because another holiday season starts right after – Chinese New Year … This year all got a bit more complicated by the severe weather in China but now it is time for the things to get back to normal again.

So what a person like me has to do once the festive season is over ?

• Recalculation of prices of all the products our clients buy regularly, a real headache of a job

• Finalizing development and sampling and testing of new products

• Follow up of all the stuff that came up during the January trade shows and meetings

• Visits to suppliers to facilitate the above

• Getting ready for the April trade shows in Asia – travel and hotel arrangements for customers, booth and showcase arrangements for us

• And in between getting rid of the mountains of correspondence that piled up during the weeks I was more away from than in the office

I love the holidays, but I hate what comes after them

I believe it was in January 2001 when I went to Dallas to visit the PPAI Show. Those were the old days before the show moved to Las Vegas. The things on display were the usual mix of pens, wearables, trophies, drinkware, basically the classic promotional product selection we were all used to.

Among all of the above we found some sort of laces. They were all over the place and there were quite a few companies displaying the laces and nothing else. We wondering what the hell is this for and how can a company make living by selling only this weird stuff .

So few days and few drinks later we decided that if such a funny thing like lanyard (by now we knew the proper name) can sell big in the USA, we should be able to sell it in Europe too.

It took a while but we found some manufacturers. The problem was not that they did not exist. The problem was that outside USA those days no one seemed to know what is lanyard, so it was not easy to explain what we are looking for .

After finding the supplier, we prepared some basic collection of different widths, different attachments and worked out costing for different quantities and branding technologies. Lanyards received nice full page in the new catalog, and …

… nothing happened. In the whole first year we made one order, 500 pcs . Such an instant hit these things became . But a year later, the hell broke loose. All of a sudden the lanyards became a must have for everybody. Not as a promotional product, bus as trendy fashion accessory. Massive 2.5 cm (1 inch) wide lanyards were the hottest ones to have … We were glad we were prepared, prepared way too in advance .

These days the lanyards are back where they belong. No longer a hot fashion accessory, but a useful product with prominent logo placement. In the old days all the trade show badges or employee cards and IDs were hanging on simple strings. Now the string is gone and lanyards are in (still). Here are few examples of use:

• Corporate Identity – It is much cheaper to hang company branded lanyard on the neck of each employee than buy uniforms for everybody.

• Events – Entrance tickets, conference passes, trade show badges – All these are often required to be visible on person all the time and that means on the neck these days. The branded lanyards replaced the older strings and even better, the safety pins from the days when it was common to pin the badge on one’s shirt.

• Sponsorship messages – Especially during the events, the lanyards often bear logos not only of the event itself but also of the sponsors. The lanyard is long enough to repeat one logo several times, or to alternate several logos over the length of the lanyard.

• Merchandising – The licensed merchandise is not cheap. Many people would love to have some souvenir after visiting a theme park or a sports match or a museum. Most of the shops these days carry lanyards and people do buy them. Maybe not because they are that great, but because the price makes them relatively affordable when compared to a piece of garment for example.

• Products Accessories – Branded with main product brand and used as camera holders, mobile phone straps (shorter versions also, as wrist straps), binoculars, flashligths …

The lanyards come in different materials (nylon, polyester, satin, cotton…), with different brand applications (print, jacquard, sublimation), with different accessories (clips, phone holders, safety breakaways). The most common widths are 1.5 – 2 cm (5/8 – 3/4″).

Did you know that some of the largest lanyard factories producing millions per year used to make shoe laces just few years back ?

The garment suppliers, especially the bigger brands, are quite popular at the trade shows because of their giveaways. It is usually just a T-shirt but from time to time they change a strategy. This year at the PSI show Stedman (by Hanes) went for a watch.

This Stedman giveaway package is a good example of how a low budget premium can be produced without looking cheap.

This relatively low cost but decent plastic watch is packed in a nicely made gift box together with a small tool. If you wonder what is the tool for – well, it makes it easier for people to adjust the size of the wristband . The box also comes with CD containing the product catalog.

This style of watch is not my cup of tea but there are definitely enough people who would not mind getting one. And quite a few people lined up in Stedman’s booth to get it . I believe that if a gift manages to draw the attention at the PSI Show, where all the visitors are people who make living selling gimmicks like this, it is probably a good one …

It also serves as a good alternative to a printed catalog. Does not cost much more than a thick catalog but especially if given away at the trade show it is likely to have greater impact. A standalone CD catalog is quite easily lost or misplaced. A CD catalog packed in gift set like this will probably make it back with the potential buyers .

I have one gift box with the watch to give away to BizGiftGuru readers. Simply leave a comment below this article with your opinion on this mini gift pack. I will pick one lucky commentator next Monday and send him/her the watch. Even if you may not like it yourself, there will sure be someone around you happy to wear it .

About a year ago we had a booth at a large trade show. The weeks before the show were quite busy for us and the exhibition preparations did suffer a bit. At the end we did manage to arrange nice booth set up but we overlooked one thing. Yes, you can guess, we overlooked our own give away goodies for the visitors . We still had left few hundred lanyards we used to give out in the past, but I was not too keen to use them again. We have used them for several shows already and I was becoming bored with them. But as there was nothing else, we had to do with them yet again.

Although we overlooked our tiny little gifts for the visitors, we did prepare quite nice and expensive catalog with our new product line. While the catalogs are printed to be distributed, I do hate when people who will never even look inside them collect them from the booth, just for the sake of collecting them. Waste of paper and money down the drain. Moreover, the catalogs run out pretty fast that way and by the end of the show there are none for the people who are genuinely interested. This happens no matter how many catalogs you bring to the show.

So, on one side we had lanyards as a giveaway we did not really find exciting any more, on the other side a pile of catalogs we wanted to distribute without wasting them. And then the idea came…

We took one of the photos from the catalog (not showing the products themselves, but a colorful and attractive photo) and the theme from the catalog cover. We designed a sort of a name card with the photo and our contact info and the website on one side, the catalog cover theme on the other. We had few hundred of these printed in a 12 hour print shop with a hole punched through at the top of the card.

In the booth we attached the cards to our old lanyards and placed them on a display where they were kind of screaming “Take Me !”. And people were taking them like crazy … The colorful design of the card proved to be very attractive and was actually drawing people into our booth. I could not believe it . Moreover, we could afford to display only one or two of our catalogs as a browsing copies. To our old customers or very serious visitors we gave the catalogs, most of the walk in buyers were happy just to take the contact info on the lanyard with card. Those who were serious enough and contacted us after the show received the catalogs by mail.

This is how a small colourful card turned a leftover giveaway into accidental hero