Regina Lai, regional director at Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), talks about the importance of trade fairs and the use of online and hybrid fairs in the Toy Book’s annual State of the Industry Q&A.
The Toy Book: With continued uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic, how has HKTDC worked to connect buyers and manufacturers globally in 2021?
Regina Lai: The prime objective of organizing trade fairs is to connect buyers and suppliers to facilitate their business growth and partnerships. Affected by the pandemic, many organizers have to achieve this objective through digital means. At the early stage of the outbreak of the pandemic, we already saw the importance of overcoming the geographical boundaries to keep our exhibitors and buyers connected. Since the first online exhibition held in July 2020, we started developing an artificially-intelligent-powered online business-matching platform, Click2Match, which allows buyers and suppliers to enjoy functions such as meeting planner, video meetings, a live chat, and e-business card exchange. We also leveraged our strong business network of 50 global offices and the support of our Hong Kong team to offer real-time assistance to buyers and exhibitors.
Since then, we organized a number of online shows to help companies capture business opportunities during the pandemic. From April 2020-March 2021, our online fairs attracted more than 7,400 exhibitors, including 662 toy manufacturers and suppliers, more than 390,000 buyers, and arranged more than 21,000 virtual meetings. We are happy that global suppliers and buyers shared positive feedback on this Click2Match platform. What’s more, they were able to identify new suppliers and closed their deals.
Earlier in 2021, with the release of COVID-19 vaccines and the commencement of mass vaccination programs, we all started to get more optimistic that trade activities could begin to return to normal. But, we believe that even when the pandemic subsides, global sourcing has already become digitalized and future trade fairs will be more likely to offer a hybrid model of online and offline sourcing to reap the benefits of both formats.
Therefore, for the first time, we organized some trade fairs in a hybrid format with both a physical exhibition and an online business-matching service. In October 2021, we brought seven fall trade fairs together onto a single “physical and online” platform, showcasing cutting-edge tech products, solutions, services, and intelligence.
Together, these “physical and online” fairs featured more than 2,500 exhibitors, including 201 toy manufacturers, and attracted more than 37,000 onsite buyers to visit in person and more than 49,000 online visitors.
This article was originally published in the February 2022 edition of the Toy Book. Click here to read the full issue!
