Members of our sales team, Fredrik and Suzanne, travelled to Asia and together we became a big delegation covering last month’s trade shows. The shows provided excellent opportunities to see and feel new products and they provided valuable updates related to the environmental and social aspects of production.

This year the best show for new and cool products was the Mega Show (in particular Part 1) taking place in Hong Kong. The Mega Show had the most items that any company in merchandising can ask for and in comparison with the Canton Fair in China there is a greater focus on quality and uniqueness. Another comparison between the shows is that many products at the Canton Fair are a little outdated (cassette tape player anyone?) and the products are often of a poorer quality.

When it comes to specialist shows, some were really poor, while others were really good. Our favorite of the specialist shows this autumn was The Electronic Asia show, which was held in Hong Kong in early October. This show was really good and presented a lot of interesting electrical items. The most disappointing show was the Sport Source Asia show (also in in Hong Kong). This was a really big disappointment since it had shrunk in size a lot in comparison to previous years – who knows if it will even return next year?

The best seminars during trade shows are never at big shows like the Canton fair or Mega show, but instead this year were found at the Electronics fair (“Product markings”), Eco Expo (“Recycling”) and Christmas and Seasonal Products (with their “How to Source from China” educational series). Why the big shows fail to deliver good seminars is strange, is it just because they know they will have enough visitors anyway?

The trend this year was a focus on environmentally friendly products, which, in the words of Gert Fylking (a famous Swede) “Äntligen!” (“Finally!”), have arrived. When it comes to product design, it seems like most products aim to look as if they were designed by Apple (not the fruit…), with inspired products appearing in almost every product category ranging from toaster ovens to tea cups.

A good thing at the shows is that now less and less well-known brands are on display in places they should not be. Whether this is a shift in producers’ attitudes, better abidance to intellectual property laws or just more hardline directives from the trade show management we’re unsure. Anyway it seems to be working and that is good, but we can still see a lot of Swedish company logos on display at the shows. Perhaps they are not well known enough to be removed, more strict control directly at the shows could be the solution in the future. So far we have never seen any of our products on display, since we sign strict contracts with our suppliers and they know we attend most shows, so they couldn’t easily hide it!

Overall, we were satisfied with what we saw this autumn at the shows, and we know that our extensive walking will benefit you all when placing your next orders.