Canton Fair – April 2006

I am really fucked up from last night. But that’s a whole other story. This is my first time here at the Canton fair here in Guang Zhou. And as I have said over and over again, it was HUGE. It was only the first phase as well. Now there is a 5 day break and the second phase will start with all new exhibitors. And the fair takes place simultaneously on 2 grounds. The larger one is Pa Zhou, pictured below.





The organization was really quite good. All buyers can show up with passport in hand and get the neck hanging ID thingy that is essential to enter the fair. Me being the ganch master that I am, managed to get in and out everyday with no ID at all. But now I actually have a 5 year pass through the HK office. It’s a commodity out here I tell you. Local people outside the fair would pay $100 for that shit.

But the organization is awesome. Even though there are thousands of people registering, it moves quite swiftly and there are even people on location to take your passport sized pictures. You can also have name cards printed within 2 hours.

This guard was positioned beside one of the entrances. For the life of me, I could not make his crack a smile. Most people who come to this fair are al about business and don’t have time or interest to dick around. But fuck that, I spent a good 5 minutes picking my nose and making faces to throw this chap off. No luck. The communist regime rocks dude.

There were so many people from all over the world at the fair. It was seriously overwhelming. Apart from the sheer size of the fair itself, I was taken aback by the amount of people that visit. Old people, young people, women and men. It was interesting watching them. I could spot a couple of female friends looking for a new venture and the old father grooming his son into the family business. It is so interesting to just watch people. It was like a show on discovery or something.

There were numerous products on display of course and I could spend an entire year or more blogging about them. They make everything here, and loads of it. I can’t even explain how vast the variety of items available. And these people are out to do business. In Indo factories or service providers take days or week to revert back with prices or information. Here they do it in minutes. I get calls up to midnight from suppliers. Time and food are not an issue at all. I love machinery though so here is this embroidery thingy. Pretty cool. There was loads of machinery for sale at the fair. Wanna get into manufacturing? Call me.

There was a shit load of electronic gizmo’s and gizmit’s as well. Like this store had these little MP3 players. If you book quantity they cost less than $20!! Companies like Creative and Apple have been RAPING us for so long making 1000% profits. I really enjoyed seeing all the new stuff like this and there are a few items that I saw which are not available in Indo as yet. Could be worth a shot, who knows.

Last night was rough but that’s no excuse to stay home tonight. Lets see what else GZ has to offer. I will soon get around to blogging about that stuff. Excuse the spelling today. I am out of it.