SHENZHEN (CHINA) – In order to make up for the lost face-to-face trading in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, China’s oldest and biggest trade expo opened online for the first time this week. Meanwhile, some buyers and sellers complained of teething problems.
With curbs on travel making the twice-yearly Canton Fair in Guangzhou impossible, organisers opted for the online platform, touting more than 25,000 exhibitors showing products across ten 24-hour live broadcast rooms.
The last fair, in October, raked in a turnover of 207.1 billion yuan (£23.1 billion), according to organisers, with 186,015 buyers from 214 countries and regions. The spring session, which was originally scheduled to be held in April, opened on Monday.
Chinese tech giant Tencent is providing cloud support for the 10-day event. This enables buyers and sellers to message each other in real time. The company declined to comment.
Several sellers reported glitches and low first-day customer turnout.
“We can only see buyers come in, but we can’t actively communicate with them,” Elaine Gu, a marketer for hand sanitiser maker AoGrand, said.
Despite expecting a spate of customers, she said just four people entered the company’s chatroom on the first day.
Some buyers expressed frustration as well.
“We deal with around 50 factories in China, and to be honest, no one has really known what is going on,” said Chris Sillitoe, owner of a UK-based tools and hardware sourcing company and a regular Canton Fair attendee.
“It’s been tough finding out beforehand how it’s going to work,” he said by WeChat on Monday, adding that livestreams had not worked for many of the manufacturers he wanted to see.
On the other hand, others expected business to pick up.
“This is the first day, so maybe customers don’t know us,” Lucky Ren, a salesman for another sanitiser company, said by WeChat.
He said he would be livestreaming until 11 pm (1500 GMT) every night to cross all time zones.
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field