What are the New Options for Wholesales in 2020, While Trade Shows’ Ceased

• Some major trade shows
• What’s happening of trade shows nowadays
• Wider options for small business distributors and wholesale runners
• For the buyers, how to find reliable suppliers in 2020
• Conclusion

To boom the trade marketing of modern industries, a trade show is organized to exhibit the latest and the hottest products and services of industrial participants’.

And so that customers who also take part in the show could get met up with these products and services.

Thousands of potential suppliers and potential buyers could be met in the duration of a trade show.

Generally, to help with the business experiences and activities, a trade show provides:

Exhibit space

In a trade show, there will be central trade show room with booths where industrial participants exhibit their products and services.

All the attendees seek their targets. There will be business receptions, business inquiries, and featured business activities that are taking place in booths.

Workshops or presentations

Industrial participants will rent a booth for showing their products, and for more, the booth maybe like a workshop.

To attract more eyes, industrial participants may make the little room in a more featured and branding customized style to show the production process.

Thus, presentations become easier to be understood.

Opportunities to interact with the media

In the same way, to attract more eyes, with the help of modern media technology, most booths show themselves in a more vivid way.

Like the use of VR glasses, every detail of an industrial product becomes more impressive.
What’ more?

Potential buyers who walk into the booths with the latest media equipment come up with an idea that the booth runner could be recognized as a competent supplier with creativeness and cash.

Evening networking events

In addition to the regular showtime, most hosts of a trade show will hold evening networking events for all attendees.

Setting up, refreshing, and extending business networks intensely.

Awards presentations

In a trade show, there is always an awards competition being held at the same time.

Voted by the hosts and attendees for the best awards of products, production process, designed elements, package details, or service scores.

Within the awards information, buyers could select the best suppliers faster.

Some major trade shows

According to Wikipedia, trade shows with a published attendance of more than 50,000 people are defined as major trade shows.

Let’s check these major trade shows shortly.

The greatest numbers of visitors are in the industry of books, reported that there were 3 books trade shows attracting approximately or over 2,000,000 visitors, and they were the Cairo International Book Fair held in 2007 in the city of Cairo, Egypt, the Tehran International Book Fair held in 2010 in the city of Tehran, Iran and the Kolkata International Book Fair held in 2012 in the city of Kolkata, India.

There were 11 major trade shows in the United States, and 4 of these were held in the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The industries included: construction, video games, furniture, consumer electronics, broadcasting, cars, music, automobile aftermarket, firearms, agriculture, and dairy industry.

THE International CES show held in Vegas attracted the most visitors more than 170,000.

In the areas of consumer products, retailing, and general goods, the major trade shows were held in Asian and European cities.

Two Asian shows: Canton Fair of China’s and Jakarta Fair of Indonesia’s.

Two European shows: EuroShop of Germany’s and Thessaloniki International Fair of Greece’s.

In these trade shows, items varied from all basic goods, like jewelry, clothes, shoes, etc. Traditional buyers buy wholesale goods in these shows.

What’s happening of trade shows nowadays

Cited from Center for Exhibition Research, there were approximately 9,400 B2B trade shows and exhibitions held in the U.S. in 2019, contributing $101 billion to the nation’s GDP.

That’s to say, before the year 2020, trade shows play vital roles in the trade business and marketing strategies.

However, with the outbreak and widespread of Covid-19, most trade shows had to be canceled and postponed.

According to the news report of News3LasVegas, at the Las Vegas Convention Center, 29 meetings and conventions have been canceled since the center shut down in March. 16 are scheduled from October to December. Among these, one of the major trade shows CES, is going all online, keeping COVID-19 away.

Cancellations and postponements were not only just in Las Vegas, but also in other cities.

Searching the jewelry trade shows on the Internet, according to the InstoreMag, 12 jewelry trade shows have canceled and 11 shows have postponed, 8 of them were scheduled to held in New York.

7 reasons why cancels or postpones a trade show in 2020

In 2020, face-face conferences and shows are extremely harsh.

Businessmen never want to cease a business show, while in 2020, they are being forced to make this decision.

The reasons people cancel or postpone a trade show include:

• Uncertainty on whether large gatherings or group meetings would be allowed due to state lockdown order.
• Corporate no travel policies impacting attendee and exhibitor participation.
• Participants have to fly into the event in the duration of COVID-19.
• Potential participant fears that might depress attendance.
• Concern over exhibitor ROI.
• Likely to be a major financial loss if events took place.
• Lack of clear, consistent guidelines to implement safe physical distancing.

Wider options for small business distributors and wholesale runners

According to the survey of CEIR’s, June survey posed to organizers that have postponed an event is whether they have added a hybrid or virtual component to these events.

The survey shows that 63% have digital options, with 44% giving attendees the option to attend in-person or virtually and 44% having a virtual event backup plan.

Among organizers forced to cancel 2020 events, the shift to digital has grown to 81%, compared to 69% in the April survey.

What is most notable is the increase in full virtual trade shows, 41% compared to 15% in the April survey.

To those who run distribution business and wholesale business, attending a physical trade show WAS kinda the most efficient way to:

• Looking for suppliers.
• Comparing products among different booths.
• Placing orders.
• Setting up reliable and stable purchaser-supplier connections.
• Acquiring the latest trends in industries.
• Building up new business networking with partners from different countries.
• Learning new business strategies from competitors.
• Even, being longing to feeling the intense show fulfilled with the goods and people.

Whiles in 2020, those who get used to depending on trade shows, apparently, get blocked for the COVID-19 pandemic and the lost chances of physical events.

However, right now, it may be the time to speed up your business’ digital transformation.

Why?

Cause with more chances, more options, more possibilities, and maybe more profits are on the Internet.

3 Ways to replace physical trade shows:

• Attending online business events. Reported by Vegan.com, their Alt Protein Conference 2020 Transforming the Future of Food will be a ticket virtual conference that all participants have access to all other participants, experts, and speakers through live chat. To the participants, it is a way of setting up business networking and getting the latest trends.
• Joining virtual shows. As cited before, the well-known CES will be all-digital. Google the words ”virtual trade fairs”, it comes up with about 2,260,000 results. Virtual shows become common, however, 1 to 1 consults will be less possible. Find the customer service staff and go on a chat. Anyway, small business runners could switch to another booth from one booth easily. A virtual show does not need many physical moves.
• Sales live shows. This type could be interesting. More and more suppliers and retailers become members of online-sales live shows. Like Facebook live, retailers use this function to showcase their products and sell them directly. And on Facebook, the more fans you get the more sales orders you will get. Nowadays, sales live shows are combined with social streaming media.

Small business distributors and retailers should be shifting into these streaming media ways in time.

Within the dynamic technology updates, we, human beings, are the main beneficial ones and will use them for a better life.

Customers become enjoy shop online instead of offline shopping.

According to Adobe Analytics, online sales increased 55% to $66.3 billion in July 2020 compared with July 2019.

And since the pandemic of COVID-19, product views and new email sign-ups have increased year over year for online retailers.

Therefore, the traditional runner shall focus on changing the original sales methods. The digital transformation is call up for the new tide in 2020.

The benefits of your digital transformation include:

• Save tons of time on business trips.
• Save thousands of costs for joining a trade show.
• Save you from the bad jet-lag from a foreign trade show.
• Reduce the touches with millions of people to stay away from the potential infections by virus.
• Look for suppliers faster than offline seeks, text your keywords and start to google, then enjoy the lists of your new industrial suppliers. And the Internet allows you to connect with your potential suppliers more flexible, emails, and various digital messaging apps.
• Comparing products among different booths, now may booths could be called as websites or pages. Entering a supplier’s website, usually, the products are classified by much clearer tags that make you search quickly. To read a page of details’ description with fewer words and more pictures is to accelerate the process.
• Placing orders with conveniences. Selecting the good you like, add them to the cart, noting down your address, choosing a delivery carrier, writing down your additional words, and paying with your Paypal account or credit cards.
• Setting up reliable and stable purchaser-supplier connections become practical, your suppliers would show out their history, policies for privacy and returns and exchanges, and basic FAQs.
• Acquiring the latest trends of industries is also simpler. Many websites operate their own blogs with articles of products, business tips, and trends. Like nihaojewelry.com, it has blog sites that provide this information to users.
• Building up new business networking with partners from different countries is not going to charge you thousands of dollars. Emails and various messaging and social apps allow a totally brand new connection at lower costs.
• Learning new business strategies from competitors, for this one, to search the marketing strategies of the leading companies in your industry thoroughly as possible as you can.
• And for those who are longing to feel the intense show fulfilled with the goods and people, they could check customers’ buying shows and evaluations instead.

For the buyers, how to find reliable suppliers in 2020

Among the various digital, recognize reliable suppliers could be a concerning issue.

Simply, I would like to share with 3 tips, they are:

Use well your old networking

Subscribe the news websites you used to get information for your business and trade shows.

You still need your old links to your business. Your old suppliers may remain in this industry and still manufacturing products.

Use well your old business networking, reliable suppliers you co-operated with may remain reliable.

Google the new suppliers, even Facebook or Youtube them

It is not hard to know a new supplier, once you type the keywords, Google ads will recommend you a number of suppliers.

Choose one supplier, view his website, to see if the website is qualified. Then you could use google to search for more about the supplier’s information and news.

Even companies these days focus on posting their products and services and news on social webs, like Reddit, Quora, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and even youtube.

Check his social accounts, you will see lots of information including the customers’ evaluations.

Wholesale details

Qualities and details of goods are the essential requirements you care about the most. Inquiry the suppliers. Let him show every aspect of the goods you care about.

Besides, others you may care include:

• prices
• payment options
• Shipping/delivery services
• Time of production
• Marketing strategies

Conclusion

In 2020 or even in 2021, face-to-face business chances would be less.

The rapid shift from offline to all-digital strategy should be noticed by all.

According to CommonThreadCollective, with the coronavirus, eCommerce sales increased by 52.20% than last year.

The outbreak of coronavirus make the business type changed, the adapters are shifting to the new business type and make their markets, rebuild the networking, and restart to create new marketing.