Advantageous platform with dual engines for a fast recovery of the industry

SHANGHAI, Nov. 7, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The 24^th edition of Pet Fair Asia closed successfully in Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center on November 6^th. Although the epidemic is still recurring in some part of the country, after one year of absence, Pet Fair Asia was back in full swing, with its strong influence, unchanged charm but for the first time in more than 20 years, in a new location outside of Shanghai.

During the four-days of the show, the urgent demand for business trade opportunities and the desire for face-to-face communication among people in the pet industry were remarkable. The visitors' enthusiasm in discovering industry trends and exploring new market opportunities has not diminished.

The 2022 edition of Pet Fair Asia expanded to 9 exhibition halls, covering more than 225,000 square meters of exhibiting space, attracting more than 1,850 exhibitors (both domestic and from abroad) showcasing more than 10,000 brands covering all categories of the pet industry chain.

Several professional forums and thematic events, enriched the four days of the fair with high-value content, providing new perspectives and ideas on the opportunities for trade exchanges and offering interesting insights about the overseas development of China's pet industry.

With the joint support of the major pet platforms, Pet Fair Asia created U+DEMO SHOW and the first ASIA PET CARNIVAL which together with many other wonderful, themed activities, brought to all participants a special immersive experience and gathered popularity among the visitors. Especially on the last two consumer days, pet fans and pet consumers were incredibly enthusiastic, showing the infinite vitality of the Chinese pet industry.

In addition to the popularity of the offline Pet Fair Asia, the online platform of the sub–Pet Fair Asia's ecosystem also attracted a lot of attention. This offline/online dual engine is the real power that can enable and drive the recovery of the industry.

"Pet Link Asia @North America", a tailor-made online match-making program for North American buyers and Asian suppliers, was successfully held before the fair opening together with ECRM (Efficient Collaborative Retail Marketing), the Pet Fair Asia's North American industry partner. The program gathered nearly 100 Top global buyers including Costco, Walmart, PetSmart, Pet Valu and Amazon. It was the first time that these high-level industry professionals appeared in the Asian pet market as a group and had accurate "face-to-face" communication with domestic qualified and powerful manufacturers. This activity attracted great attention and had enthusiastic response from many domestic high-quality pet enterprises such as Wenzhou Yuanfei Pet Toy Products Ltd., Hangzhou Tianyuan Pet products, Gambol Pet Group and others who all benefited from these digital encounters.

"As a manufacturing enterprise, we have been seeking more efficient ways to promote ourselves in the overseas market to shorten the communication distance with customers and enhance our business efficiency." Mr. Xie Dongshen, Overseas Marketing Director of Wenzhou Yuanfei Pet Toy Products Ltd., said after participating in the program. "This online activity has been a successful experience. This kind of interaction not only saved us manpower time and costs for developing new overseas customers, but also effectively helped us to reach many potential cooperation opportunities under this epidemic time."

Throughout this program, Chinese manufacturers were generally favored by North American buyers, with an average of more than 30 match-making invited. With the gradual relaxation of the global epidemic policies, the international trade market is fully reopening. The online match-making program provided by Pet Fair Asia will help pet companies to quickly open up international procurement links under the always changing foreign trade circumstances.

In addition, the pet industry online B2B2C platform exclusively cooperating with Asia Pet Fair - the WeChat mini-program "ASIA PET ONLINE (ChongMengZhaoHuo)", through the digitalization of brands and products information and the convenient instant messaging function, breaks the time and region barriers of offline exhibitions and provides retailers with "24 hours x 365 days" uninterrupted online goods selection and business negotiation services.

Since the relevant activities of its launch, in cooperation with the Pet Fair Asia Show, on August 29, the mini-application has accumulated over 20 million visits and gathered a total of 350,000 users. On November 4, the second day of the exhibition, the number of visitors per hour has exceeded 430,000.

In face of the strong domestic pet consumption market, the empowerment of this mini-application not only makes up for some of the users who cannot visit the show in person, but also takes advantage of the online efficiency to successfully reach a large number of new online users and broaden the domestic trade sales channels for the brands.

In the last quarter of 2022, as the second largest Pet exhibition in the world and the first in Asia, the 24^th edition of Pet Fair Asia, rich in themes and resources, has presented professional and efficient business channels, both online and offline. This not only plays a positive role in promoting the recovery of the entire exhibition industry, but it also has strategic importance in supporting the development of new business channels and expanding the demand of domestic and foreign trade markets within the pet industry.

"Although the epidemic has had a great impact on offline large-scale events (including trade shows), through the successful re-opened of the 24th edition of Pet Fair Asia, we realized that the epidemic has also accelerated the rapid transformation of the industry and put forward higher requirements for the exhibition organizers." David Zhong, Founder & President of VNU Exhibitions Asia, Global Vice President of UFI, Chairman of UFI Asia-Pacific Chapter, said: "As organizers, on the one hand, efforts should be made to explore a new mode of offline trade shows under the normalization of the epidemic situation. On the other hand, we need to vigorously develop the online business, break through the time and space constraints through the extension of services, make it complementary, harmonious and symbiotic with offline exhibitions, dual engine driven, and accelerate the exchange and development of global commerce and trade, so as to practice the important mission of 'Exhibition is the key to economic reconstruction'."