Just over a week after the National Day holiday, Yiwu is set to welcome another surge of global professional buyers. The 140th China Import and Export Fair (Canton Fair) runs October 15 to November 4 in Guangzhou, and large numbers of international buyers will extend their trips to Yiwu afterward, shifting from 'spotting trends at the fair' to 'placing orders at the market.'
To convert that traffic into lasting business, the Chinagoods platform will run a 'Ten Thousand Merchants Gather in Yiwu, Quality Goods Reach the Globe' campaign from October 15 to November 8, spanning International Trade City zones one to five and the Global Digital Trade Center, with procurement matchmaking, multilingual services and market tours for fair-specific visitors.
Technology is smoothing the experience. During the National Day holiday, Chinagoods set up AI-navigation experience points in International Trade City Zone 5 and the Global Digital Trade Center: visitors scan a code - no app download needed - to navigate across zones and floors by booth number, shop name or product category, use an AI image-recognition feature to photograph a product and match it to its source store, and find nearby restrooms, elevators, parking and dining.
At the spring Canton Fair, Chinagoods digital campaigns plus offline market activities drew more than 2,800 traceable buyers into the market, with foreign buyers accounting for about 80% - a benchmark the platform aims to build on this autumn.
Image: Overview of Yiwu International Trading Town. Source: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
