World Expo Giant Eyes on Chinese Market

The Domotechnica International Trade Fair for Household Appliances is one of the world''s most influential of its kind. At its next show February 2006, about a tenth of the exhibitors lined up will be from China. There''s no reason for the organizers to ignore China, a growing consumer in the international exhibition industry. Our Shanghai correspondent Xiaoyu has more.

Domotechnica has had a history of more than 3 decades and is held in Cologne, Germany every two years. It is the only international trade fair to provide a complete overview of the latest developments of large and small home appliances and components.

In the last 5 to 6 years, according to the organizer from Koelnmesse International, China has become one of its key partners, with an average annual exhibition area of 15 thousand square meters in trade fairs held by the company. Next year, they expectation China''s exhibitions to rise to 50 thousand square meters. If that''s the case, Chinese traders will be the number one spaceholder at next year''s "domotechnica" fair.

For this reason, top executives of the company made a special tour to Shanghai to attract more Chinese exhibitors and professional audiences to the show.

Wolfgang Kranz, vice chief executive of the group, said that they must grasp the Chinese market.

"If we don''t come, others will come to China for the big potential here. We expect to see rapid increase of the number of our clients here and also want to see if we can succeed in this new environment. We are also considering holding more exhibitions here in China and bring our professional understanding of exhibiting into China."

With abundant experience in hosting top-class professional exhibitions, Wolfgang said he''s confident that the domotechnica fair in Cologne will ease exhibitors worries and help them benefit from their participation. For instance, they will hire lawyers to the exhibition site to offer free legal consultation for traders in case of any emergency. And next year, they plan to set a special contest of different kinds of coffee makers and coffee machines.

Though saying China is one of their alternatives to hold international trade fairs in the future, general manager of Koelnmesse China Feng Xiangjun also admitted that China’s exhibition industry still has a long way to go.

"We have to admit that time makes difference. Many international exhibition companies have with them a history of almost 100 years, but China''s exhibition industry has only a history of 20 or 30 years. Therefore a complete system that''s suitable for the Chinese market hasn''t been established yet."

Feng Xiang added that many world famous exhibition companies have their designated sites, for example, the German city Cologne for the Koelnmesse company. They''ve accumulated a comparatively long-term client group, strong loyalty and high reputation.

Moreover, Chinese companies also lack worldwide networks of promoting and selling. For an international exhibition firm like Koelnmesse, it usually has offices or representatives in a hundred or so countries.

The manager said that as Shanghai will be hosting the 2010 World Expo, his company will work more closely with local Chinese authorities and companies in search for more opportunities to introduce their way of exhibiting and business running into China.