Canton Fair China— Expert How To’s for a Profitable Visit
“Spending money is much more difficult than making money.” — Jack Ma, Founder & Executive Chairman of Alibaba
Guangzhou, China’s capital of the south is 14.5 million inhabitants with an estimated 60,000 factories in the area surrounding it. This makes this Guangzhou the ideal location for Asia’s largest trade show, Canton Fair. The show hosted 25,171 exhibitors and had 203,346 buyers in April 2018.
The event is so large it is split up into 3 phases, each focusing on different categories of goods. Each phase takes a full week.
The Pazhou Complex, the venue which hosts the Canton Fair, is truly MASSIVE. There is about 160,000 sqm of exhibition space or roughly 26.7 American Football Fields and an additional 22,000 meters of outdoor exhibition space.
Effectively planning your visit is critical to getting face time with potential manufacturers and trade agents. There are also many other resources available to help you successfully operate in China from abroad, like inspection services, freight forwarding, packaging companies, and many more. I’ve attended every phase of Canton Fair and have been going for years. I want to share with you some entry level and expert tactics I’ve learned over the years to make the most of your trip.
The biggest mistakes people make are not effectively planning and preparing for the trip. A few simple thoughts on this that sound silly, but people make regularly.
A) The Canton Fair is in Guangzhou, China, not Shanghai, Ho Chi Minh, or Hong Kong — As crazy as it sounds, people make this mistake all the time. This past April I had someone ask me how to get to the even from Pudong airport. Pudong, is in Shanghai about 1,450kms away.
Don’t mess up this up!
B) Know what you are looking to buy in advance — The three phases are quite different. Showing up for the wrong week could mean the trip is completely moot without any of the manufacturing partners you need to operate your business. The screen shot below shows each phase and the category of products. You can also go to this link.
These next strategies are how pros operate!
C) Define your ideal manufacturing partner by identifying the characteristics that factory or trade agent must have — There is rarely only 1 source that produces the product you are looking for. This gives you the power to find several different options to make your product. You should know if you have regional obligations, ie factory needs to be located in a certain area, or maybe they need FDA certification for the product you make. Your time is too important to waste it speaking to manufacturers that can’t or wont work for you. (Rarely do people do this. This differentiates the amateurs from the pro’s)
D) Have a system to catalog all the business cards and look books you will receive — I spent years gathering information from factories, exchanging business cards, and contact information, only to forget key meetings after the trip. If you do this right you will meet HUNDREDS of great manufacturers. It’s a shame to forget them and what they do as you most likely need them.
E) Quality of meetings over quantity is key — Take advantage of the factory owners, engineers, and sales reps at the show to dig down into your objectives. Hopefully you prepared and brought samples for them to inspect, review, and quote. Each meeting should be insightful and full of information getting you closer to a buy.
Again, I can’t stress enough the importance of spending less time with unqualified suppliers and more time with qualified and skilled factories.
F) Be transparent and honest regarding your quantity and your timeline — Let them know how many pieces you want to actually buy. Don’t lead them on with an order of 100,000 or 25,000 pieces if you only want to buy 5,000. It’s bad form and a bait and switch. You also want to let them know your timeline. Their intent is to schedule you for production ASAP. In order to maintain a good relationship it’s important you tell them when you want to receive your goods and work backwards planning the milestones needed to get there. This is important as some manufacturers have long lead times and it’s critical you understand the timeline for your product(s).
G) Visit the factory — This isn’t always an option, but if they are in the Guangzhou area, which many are, you may be able to visit them a couple of days after the Canton Fair ends. Some factories will even invite you to visit the factory. On our trip in April we met a facility in Dongguan, the city in between Guangzhou and Shenzhen. We went to visit the next day, ordered samples, and are about to begin mass production.
I highly recommend taking the time to audit the production lines and taking a more in depth look at the factories capabilities. You can read about factory visit etiquette here: Factory Visit Etiquette
Canton Fair is one of many tools in your sourcing tool belt. It can be an excellent opportunity to find highly profitable products and excellent manufacturers or a complete waste of time. Be smart and plan your visit.
If you would like to go to Canton Fair on a do it yourself trip check out this link on the Cantonfair.org website. For guided group tours or executive discovery trips to the Canton Fair please reach out the the Prouduct team on their website or via direct messages. CEO Richie Norton CMO @Jasebennett and COO Thiefaine Magre
