Fabian Desan, founder of GITC, a French company, has already completed the registration of online buyers, making final preparations and tests for the upcoming Canton Fair. Fabian Desan said it is possible to do business with Chinese companies without leaving home, and the digital Canton Fair has injected new momentum into international trade.
Made the first bucket of gold in the Canton Fair
In 2007, 24-year-old French youth Fabian Desan first came to pazhou Canton Fair exhibition hall. The commodities exhibited at the Canton Fair gave him a lot of surprise and inspiration. Behind the cost-effective orders, there are numerous business opportunities waiting for him. “For me, the Canton Fair is an important event for international trade participants. It is a carefully designed place for communication between manufacturers and buyers. Bringing so many manufacturers and products together is a boon for buyers around the world.” Fabian Descant exclaimed.
After earning his first fortune from the Canton Fair, he was deeply impressed by its charm and decided to come to Guangzhou every year to attend the fair. So, every year spring, autumn two sessions of Canton Fair can see the Figure of the French merchant, his business has gradually expanded to more areas, wine, furniture, lamps and lanterns, speakers…
Fabian Desan remembers that the 101st Canton Fair he attended had not only a traditional export exhibition area, but also an import exhibition for the first time, which was open to foreign enterprises. After more than ten years of development, The Canton Fair Import Exhibition has become a high-quality platform for overseas enterprises to expand the Chinese and global markets, attracting more than 15,000 secondary high-quality enterprises from more than 100 countries and regions around the world.
Time flies, and by the time he arrived at the 125th Canton Fair in 2019, he had become both an importer and an exporter. That means he has to find both good imports and the right customers at the Canton Fair to export his products to China.
Fabian Desan is also a vlogger on an overseas social media platform. He is keen on sharing what he has seen and heard at the Canton Fair with netizens from all over the world. “It’s very comfortable to trade at the Canton Fair, and just being there shows that these companies are very good companies.” When walking around the show, he liked to mingle with the Chinese traders at the booths. He praised the exhibits he liked, imagined their application in various scenarios, and shared his joy of discovering new designs with the audience of the “cloud” side facing the camera.
“Cloud” on the exhibition to witness the development of new marketing model
“In the past, I used to fly to Guangzhou to participate in the Canton Fair, but now due to the impact of the epidemic, I cannot go to China to purchase goods, which has a great impact on our business.” Thanks to the Canton Fair’s move to the “cloud,” Fabian Desan said, “I can talk to Chinese companies without leaving home.” Despite the impact of the global pandemic on international trade, he signed multiple orders with Chinese companies through the online Canton Fair and completed the transaction of about seven containers of goods.
Fabian is bullish: “The positive thing about the Canton Fair for the future is that we are witnessing with manufacturers the development of new marketing models. Many manufacturers have created virtual showrooms and broadcast them live on video, with great success. I think in the future, apart from offline Canton Fair, online virtual Canton Fair will continue to develop.”
Fabian Desan’s prediction was accurate. The 130th Canton Fair will be held online and offline. 7,500 companies participated in the offline exhibition, which is still the largest offline exhibition in the world in terms of scale. The online exhibition will maintain the original 60,000 booths and continue to provide an online trade cooperation and exchange platform for 26,000 enterprises and global buyers.
Although the Canton Fair on the “cloud” has greatly facilitated the communication between customers and manufacturers, Fabian Desan is still looking forward to coming back to China after the epidemic is over to meet with partners and manufacturers here and experience the unique human touch and cultural atmosphere of the offline Canton Fair.