First time at the Canton Fair: days, checklist, what to skip

How many days you need

The halls are open five days per phase, 9:30 to 18:00. Almost nobody needs all five in one phase, and almost everybody underestimates the walking.

Arrive the day before your first hall day: badge collection, a metro rehearsal, sleep. Leave the morning after your last, not the same evening; the last afternoon is when the samples are sold and the second conversations happen. The dates page has the phase calendar and what to do on the break days.

Before you go: the checklist

1. Register and get the badge approved (how). Ten minutes, free, and it is where you ask for the invitation letter if your passport needs a visa.
2. Sort the visa (who needs one). Six to eight weeks out if you need the M visa.
3. Book the hotel (where). Refundable, on a Line 8 or Line 11 station.
4. Build the booth list. Use the official app and exhibitor search once the list is published (usually three to four weeks before), and our catalogue any time. Twenty to forty booths per category with hall and booth numbers, sorted by hall. The supplier guide covers how to choose them.
5. Write a one-page spec for each product you want quoted: material, size, colour, packaging, target quantity, target market, required certifications. Print twenty copies. Handing over a spec gets you a real quote; describing it gets you a catalogue.
6. Set up your phone (how): an eSIM bought before departure, a VPN installed before departure, Alipay or WeChat Pay with your card linked, WeChat with your name and company on the profile, DiDi, a translation app that works offline. Test all of it at home.
7. Business cards, 200 of them, with a WeChat QR code printed on the back. Exhibitors scan it on the spot. Cards run out on day two for people who bring fifty.
8. A sample budget and a way to pay it. Display samples are sold for cash or app payment; sample orders are paid by transfer or card. Decide what you are willing to spend before someone offers you the perfect item for RMB 300.
9. Luggage space. A half-empty suitcase, or the address of a courier. Catalogues alone can weigh ten kilos by the third day; ask for e-catalogues by QR instead.

How to work a hall

• Start at the far end. Everyone enters from the metro end and the first aisles are crowded until 11:00. Walk to the back of the hall and work towards the entrance.
• Do the list first, then the aisles. Your pre-selected booths in hall order, then a slower pass along the aisles between them for the ones you missed. The second pass is where the unexpected suppliers turn up.
• Keep one note per booth in the same format every time: booth number, company, contact and WeChat, product, FOB price and port, MOQ, lead time, certifications claimed, factory or trader, a score out of five, one line of impression. Phone notes are fine; a printed sheet with these headings is faster.
• Photograph the booth sign, the business card and the product together. One frame. A week later you will have 600 photos and this is the only way to know which supplier made which lamp.
• Eat at 11:30 or 14:00, and sit down for twenty minutes at 15:30 whether you need it or not. The judgement you make at 17:00 on a day you skipped both is not judgement.

At the booth

A factory booth in the fair is staffed by the export sales team, sometimes with the owner or the factory manager in the back for the first two days. They will have quoted the same product two hundred times by Wednesday. What works:

• Say what you are (retailer, importer, Amazon seller, distributor), where you sell and roughly how much you buy of this type of product a year. That sentence decides how the next ten minutes go. Vague buyers get vague prices.
• Hand over a business card with both hands and take theirs the same way. Read it before you put it away. This is not theatre; it is how the person across the table knows you are serious.
• Hand over the spec sheet and ask for a quote to be sent by WeChat or email within the week, FOB with the port named, with carton dimensions and units per carton. Ask for the price at two quantities, your realistic one and three times that.
• Ask who makes it. “Is this your own factory? Where is it? Can I visit on the 21st?” The answers, and the pauses before them, tell you most of what you need. The supplier guide lists the rest of the questions.
• Do not negotiate price at the booth on day one. Get the numbers, get the competing numbers, then negotiate on day four or from home with three quotes in front of you. A price agreed in the excitement of the hall is rarely the best one.
• Do not pay a deposit at the fair. Not in cash, not by app. An order is placed after the quotation, the sample, the verification and a written contract, from your office.

Samples

There are two kinds. Display samples are the products on the booth; on the last afternoon of each phase many exhibitors sell them rather than ship them home, for cash or WeChat Pay, and for small items it is the cheapest way to get a reference sample into your suitcase. Sample orders are made for you after the fair, at a sample price (typically two to three times the unit price, often refunded against the first order) plus courier, and arrive two to four weeks later.

Getting samples home: anything with a lithium battery goes by courier with the right paperwork, not in checked luggage. Bulky samples go by courier from the hotel (SF Express, DHL and FedEx all collect from Pazhou hotels; reception will arrange it). Declare the real value; a low declaration to save duty is the kind of thing that gets a parcel opened and held.

The mistakes that cost first-timers the most

1. No list, and following the crowd. The busiest booths are busy because they are near the entrance.
2. Assuming the booth is the factory. The catalogue that spans a rice cooker and a garden light belongs to a trader. Not always a problem; always a question.
3. Quoting nothing and asking for everything. A rep who hears “what’s your best price” with no quantity gives the list price.
4. Forgetting the carton. A unit price without carton dimensions is not a price; freight on housewares can be a third of the landed cost. See how landed cost works.
5. Relying on email. Chinese export sales teams live in WeChat. A buyer who is not on it gets answered last.
6. Paying at the booth. See above.
7. Flying home the evening the phase ends, when the factories an hour away are open and expecting you.

The week after

Within 48 hours of leaving the halls, message the five to eight suppliers that scored highest, on WeChat, with a photo of their product and the spec sheet attached, and ask for the quote you agreed. The ones who reply within two days with a proper quotation are your shortlist; the ones who go quiet have told you something useful. Verify the shortlist before any deposit: the business licence, whether the factory is theirs, whether the certificate on the wall matches the product. That is a day’s work in Chinese, which is what our desk charges a flat fee per supplier to do, and it is the step that turns a good trip into a good order.