General

According to Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation, during the recently passed May Day holiday, there were not only popular tourist attractions, but also various events. On this Friday, the 133rd Canton Fair, which lasted for 15 days, came to an end. The Canton Fair was held offline, with a record high scale. The exhibition area increased from 1.18 million square meters to 1.5 million square meters, the number of booths increased from 60000 to 70000, and the number of offline exhibition enterprises increased from 25000 to nearly 35000. As a weather vane and barometer of China's foreign trade, what new trends can we see in the Canton Fair? Identify which new directions?

New and old friends gather at the Canton Fair

The cutting-edge fashion and innovative styles of various clothing showcased on the runway. This week, in the third phase of the 133rd Canton Fair, textile and clothing enterprises were the main force, with as many as 4800 exhibitors. During the first exhibition of new products at the Canton Fair, the clothing products that successively appeared also caught the attention of buyers. Among them, an environmentally friendly clothing brought by a clothing foreign trade enterprise in Guangzhou attracted the attention of buyers due to its biodegradable new fabrics.

Fang Wujun, Deputy General Manager of Guangzhou Textile Import and Export Group Co., Ltd.: This time, we have brought a full range of green and environmentally friendly clothing products, using natural and biodegradable fiber fabrics. At present, overseas merchants have increasingly attached importance to the concept of environmental protection, and most of them ask this question because different countries and regions have begun to pay attention to the certification of recycling standards.

Clothing, along with furniture and household appliances, is known as the "old three" of China's foreign trade. However, in recent years, many clothing enterprises have faced fierce competition from international peers. After three years of online exhibitions, this year's Canton Fair has resumed offline exhibitions. This clothing company has also made great efforts to develop new products in advance and hopes to win more orders.

Fang Wujun, Deputy General Manager of Guangzhou Textile Import and Export Group Co., Ltd.: The labor-intensive textile and clothing industry has always been shifting to Southeast Asia. For traditional clothing foreign trade enterprises like ours, this is indeed a challenge. Entering R&D innovation and moving towards brand management is an inevitable choice.

The recovery of offline exhibitions provides enterprises with the opportunity to promote products face-to-face, where they can see and touch the fabric, which is crucial for negotiating clothing orders. In a few days, the reception volume of overseas buyers and the signing volume of sample orders at the six exhibition booths of this company exceeded expectations.

At a booth mainly focused on displaying and selling supermarket shelves, Chinese representative Zhai Hui welcomed a long lost foreign friend. Zhai Hui's company is a full-time student of the 133rd Canton Fair, and they have many overseas old customers who have never been absent from the Fair. The other company is from Panama, a Central American country, and has participated in the Fair for over 30 years. This time when they returned to Guangzhou, they dispatched a team of up to 16 people to sweep the goods.

Panama purchaser: Because we are a department store, we purchase a lot of things. This is the first time in 4 years that we have returned here to participate in the Canton Fair. We have looked at the furniture and even the shelves. The Canton Fair is really amazing, we are glad to be here.

Zhai Hui, Deputy General Manager of Guangzhou Qingchu Group Co., Ltd.: Because he is preparing to open a new supermarket, he customized some high-end promotional shelves with us, which are quite large in quantity, with hundreds of sets.

In addition to the cooperation intention already reached by both parties, Zhai Hui also took the opportunity to introduce a new product, the wrapped column shelf, which is not commonly seen in foreign supermarkets and is also a product that Zhai Hui hopes to promote this year. The young foreign businessman facing him is already the second generation operator in the family business, and he is more interested in new products and styles compared to the previous generation of foreign businessmen.

Due to visa, flight, and other reasons, some of Zhai Hui's old customers were unable to attend the conference. However, in recent days, he has also met many new overseas customers, which means it is possible to open up some new overseas markets.

Zhai Hui, Deputy General Manager of Guangzhou Qingchu Group Co., Ltd.: All old customers have expressed that the Spring Fair will not come, at least the Autumn Fair will come. This time, we can also feel that the flow of customers has basically recovered to the level before the epidemic, and dozens of new customer business cards can be received every day. The number of businessmen in Europe and the United States is slightly less, but Russia, as well as the "the Belt and Road" countries, these are more than ever before.

According to Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation, the on-site export transaction at this year's Canton Fair was 21.69 billion US dollars, which was better than expected. During the 15 day exhibition period, more than 129000 overseas buyers participated offline. Participating companies generally believe that although overseas buyers are still recovering from their attendance, they have a strong willingness to place orders and are faster. In addition to on-site transactions, many buyers also make appointments to visit factories, which is expected to achieve more cooperation in the future.

The Canton Fair Witness China's Industrial Transformation

This week, the 133rd Canton Fair came to an end. As a large-scale exhibition focused on export trade, behind every booth at the Fair, the level of China's manufacturing industry in this field is reflected. In recent years, electric passenger cars, lithium batteries, and solar cells have become the "new three types" of China's foreign trade exports. A key foreign trade enterprise in the battery industry also gained a lot at the Canton Fair.

Zhou Songyi, General Manager of Guangzhou Hutou Battery Group Co., Ltd.: We have achieved good results in this Canton Fair, and our orders are approximately over 6 million US dollars. The orders signed at this Canton Fair only account for a portion of our total orders for the year, but we are pleased to see that we have brought in many new customers.

At this year's Canton Fair, over 90% of the company's intended orders were signed with new customers. Therefore, as soon as they left the booth of the first phase of the Fair, the company leader went to a factory more than 200 kilometers away from Guangzhou to promptly feedback customer needs to the production process of the factory.

This dry battery production line is already at the advanced level in China, with an average of 600 batteries being taken off the production line per minute. As a battery enterprise that started with foreign trade, its annual export volume, export value, and other data are among the top in the industry. But for enterprises, having orders and marketable products means there is a possibility of profitability. In the face of constantly changing markets, the idea of using only a few dry batteries for export to earn foreign exchange also faces adjustments.

The Canton Fair, founded in 1957 and held twice a year in spring and autumn for a total of over a month, has become an important platform for promoting China's foreign trade. Its key exhibition products have also undergone iterations over time. It can be said that the Canton Fair is not only a microcosm of China's opening up to the outside world, but also a testament to the process of China's industrial transformation. Since its debut on the Canton Fair in 1984, Tiger Head Battery has participated 78 times, and the star products on the booth have gradually transformed from dry batteries to energy storage products.

After the upgrade iteration, the industrial chain and product added value have significantly improved. For this enterprise, which relies on export sales for 80% of its products, the demand of the international market has become the driving force for the enterprise's research and development upgrade. Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.

Zhou Songyi, General Manager of Guangzhou Hutou Battery Group Co., Ltd.: All our technological and equipment innovations are based on explicit or potential market demands. Therefore, we will immediately reflect the relevant information to our R&D and technical departments.

After the Canton Fair, brainstorming often occurs within enterprises. In order to meet the personalized needs of African Congolese customers for energy storage products, R&D personnel also need to customize specialized product solutions and provide feedback to customers at any time. This not only tests the R&D strength of the enterprise, but also differs from the past dry battery foreign trade.

The enterprise found that most of the current customers interested in energy storage products come from different countries along the "the Belt and Road", and the customer composition tends to be diversified, which requires that the products can be tailored to local conditions, and the degree of customization needs to be improved. Next week, the enterprise will go to Africa for field investigation, visit again interested customers at the Canton Fair, and further pave the way for the enterprise's export transformation.

The Canton Fair radiates into the field of art

Dafencun was once the best location for European and American oil painting orders to find cheap labor, gradually becoming a OEM factory for mass production of oil paintings. Copying and copying was once its way of survival, and around 2005, it reached its peak in output value. At that time, 70% of the oil paintings in the European and American markets came from China, of which 80% came from here, known as the first village of Chinese oil paintings.

Zhou Feng, a cultural group limited company in Dafencun, Shenzhen: I started doing cross-border e-commerce from the internet and have accumulated relatively small customers. I have received some larger customers at the Canton Fair. As long as you are willing to do it, as long as you are willing to work hard, it is equivalent to making money and producing every day, especially busy and fulfilling.

It was in 2005 that Zhou Feng and his brother Zhou Qi walked out of Dafen Village and founded the company. However, with the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008, overseas orders plummeted, and the Dafencun oil painting assembly line suffered a heavy blow. Zhou Feng once went to Vietnam for inspection and found that although purchasing power in Europe and America has decreased, there is still a certain market here. The problem is that the labor costs in Dafen Village are dozens of times higher than in Vietnam, and the comparative advantage is gone. In his words, "I suddenly feel a sense of crisis.

Zhou Feng recalled that at that time, the era of large-scale infrastructure construction in China had arrived, and Dafencun had embarked on a difficult transformation. It was quietly entering a new stage from the era of replication, and real estate, clubs, hotels, and other areas urgently needed new, unique, and unique decorative paintings, popular with new Chinese style, light luxury style, and Japanese and Korean style. Not yet established, young Zhou Feng and others have become internet trendsetters, as reported by Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation.

From abroad to deep cultivation in China, Dafencun in the new stage uses the internet to monitor domestic aesthetic and consumer demand. According to rough statistics, entrepreneurs like Zhou Feng account for 60% of practitioners in Dafencun. Artists who have noticed the self consciousness elimination caused by duplicate replication have also started to establish IPs and switch to original works. They even put forward higher demands on themselves, as reported by Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation.

Simply put, the first step is to analyze and restore the most direct needs through big data analysis, incorporating sound, optoelectronics, and intelligent interaction. On this basis, further progress is made to ensure that this step does not introduce too many personalized expressions from art designers, making the product appear abstract and difficult to understand. Careful and slow aesthetic guidance is taken, just like platforms such as the Canton Fair, which have a tolerant, open, diverse, and imaginative mind.