Last updated on March 19th, 2024 at 07:09 pm

Guide to Buying Wholesale in China’s Canton Fair

So you want to start an E-commerce business, eh? Maybe you’re making some decent bank from the drop shipping biz. And now you want a direct link to a Chinese factory for maximum profits. Even if your goal is to open a physical store selling products, you must come to the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, China.

China’s Canton Fair Buyer’s Guide

Finding the latest fad products and jumping in before the craze hits the fan starts with a visit to Canton Fair in Guangzhou. Before you begin your new business venture, I’ll share tips on what to expect when dealing with Chinese suppliers and vendors inside one of China’s largest business expos.

Today practically everything you’ve interacted with, especially wearing was manufactured, or at least a part of it was made in the People’s Republic of China. From medical, health, and beauty products, agricultural, clothes, and especially those crazy little fidget spinners that made America’s kids go insane over a few years ago.

If you had a steady supply of fidget spinners at that time you would’ve made some cash. And that’s what most entrepreneurs today want to replicate. Finding that one viral product consumers will eat up and pay ridiculous amounts of money for.

Yes, so that’s the idea. Meeting and rubbing shoulders with factories that produce products for cheap so you can line your pockets with big profits.

But… it’s not that simple. Well, it is and it isn’t. Luck plays into this in my experience. Which I’ll get into later below.

1. Where to Stay in Guangzhou for Canton Fair
2. How to Get to Canton Fair
3. Tips on Finding and Meeting the Right Sellers
4. Price Negotiating Like a Pro and MOQ

But first here are some reasons why you should go to Canton Fair to find factories for your desired niche products.

Canton Fair Is Where You Should Go

Whether you’re planning to start an E-Commerce business or sell from a physical store, Canton Fair is a great place to start sourcing products to stock your warehouse or store shelves.

It doesn’t matter what country you are in. The fact is any market selling shoes, stuffed animals, and local souvenirs was made in Chinese factories. Even 90% of the products sold in Bangkok’s Sampeng Wholesale Market came from China. Because many Chinese Thais have retained ties with family members in China.

Canton Fair, also known as China Import and Export Fair was founded in 1957 by the Chinese government. Twice a year in Spring (mid-April to early May) and Autumn (mid-October to early November) approximately 200,000 buyers from 210 nations converge on the grounds of Canton Fair to find out what’s new, hip, and chic to sell and make hefty profits on the market.

There are 150,000 exhibits spanning 16 industries during the Canton Fair to meet, greet, and gather information on trending items with the potential to go viral, like fidget spinners.

With so many buyers and sellers converging on one space, Canton Fair is broken up into three phases, with each phase lasting four days:

Phase 1

Electronics, lighting equipment, vehicles & spare parts, machinery, hardware & tools, construction materials, chemical products, and energy resources.

Phase 2

Consumer goods, gifts, and home decorations.

Phase 3

Textiles and garments, shoes, office supplies, cases and bags, recreation products, food, health products, and medical devices.

You’re probably super psyched about visiting Canton Fair to make some deals. But first, you’ll need a China Visa on your passport.

Traveling to Guangzhou, China for Canton Fair (A China Visa Might Be Required)

Depending on your passport you may need a China travel visa. Because I’m an American citizen with a US passport I needed one. I detailed my experience in applying for a China Visa in Bangkok, Thailand where I live most of the year.

Good news if you have a US passport you can apply for a multiple-entry visa with a 10-year expiration. This is great because I will be planning to visit the Canton Fair once a year. If I had to apply individually for each visit I’d have to pay 5060 Thai Baht each time I want to travel to China.

It is important to remember, that when you register as a buyer to attend the Canton Fair, you should receive an electronic invitation letter which is a good idea to take with you when applying. Bringing a copy of this invitation letter when handing in your visa application could make your China visa process smoother.

Because you will see on your China Visa application there are questions asking where you will be going or what you will be doing in China during your entire stay.

The Language

The only real obstacle however will be language. English is not widely spoken even in most service industry providers in Guangzhou. Most restaurants do not have menus in English.

Guangzhou’s metro subway train station is entirely in English including announced stops.

If you need to get somewhere by taxi make sure you have the address written down in Chinese.

While at Canton Fair rest assured everyone inside the exhibit booths can converse and write English.

In any case, have your Google Translate app ready for action. Better yet download the WeChat App. Every single vendor inside uses this app. There is even a nifty built-in translate-to-Chinese function.

Here’s a video of my 4 day stay in Guangzhou while attending the Canton Fair in late October through early November 2018:

 

1. Best Area to Stay in Guangzhou for Canton Fair

Yuexiu District

From my experience, if you want to stay in an area that is easy to travel to Canton Fairgrounds it is best to stay in Yuexiu District.

Personally, I stayed at Nomo Beijing Road A Jiedang MIX International Apartments and yeah, it’s got a long name. But the location is perfect. We were right inside a shopping center full of restaurants plus this subway station Gongyuanqian 公园前 in the lower levels. It can’t get any better than that.

You can check out more Yuexiu Hotels in Guangzhou on Agoda.com which is the same hotel website I used to search for discounts.

I’m looking at this from a business and a tourist viewpoint. Might as well go sightseeing in Guangzhou while making deals at Canton Fair, right?

And, the hotel is just north of the Yuexiu district and easy to reach by taxi which is what we used because we arrived in the city late and left for the airport early in the morning.

I could’ve used the subway trains to get to Baiyun International Airport but the Guangzhou Metro Stations open from 6 am until about 11:30 pm.

My wife and I enjoyed our sightseeing side trip. We went walking around and visited tourist attractions. And, the food in Guangzhou is awesome. It’s the kind of food I grew up eating like dim sum in New York City’s Chinatown or Hong Kong.

Even Western food is surprisingly yummy.

Might as well fill up on good food from restaurants around the Yuexiu district. Because even though there’s a cafeteria-type area inside Canton Fair my wife and I really didn’t find what was offered there too appetizing. But that’s just us.

Now that you know where to stay to enjoy the city of Guangzhou let’s jump into what you’re here for, which is doing business inside Canton Fair.

Wheeling and Dealing at Canton Fair

Before heading to Canton Fair you register online to get a buyer’s badge. It’s free and simple to navigate through the online application forms. You will need to send a front-facing profile photo and business card.

You can register on the premises of Canton Fair if you wish but I believe there is a small fee. And possibly a waiting line. Besides, I highly recommend registering online because you can get an invitation letter to make it easier on your China visa process.

2. How to Get to Canton Fair (map)

Address of Canton Fair: No. 380, Yuejiang Zhong Road, Guangzhou, China
Address in Chinese: 中国广州市海珠区阅江中路380号

Canton Fair Is Near These Two  Subway Guangzhou Metro Stations:

1. Pazhou Station
2. Xingangdong Station

The first day I went to Canton Fair I took a public taxi. My wife and I just did a little bit of sightseeing so we were not near a train station. Since there were so many public taxis driving around we decided to try it out.

I just showed the driver my buyer’s badge which had Canton Fair written in Chinese so he knew where I wanted to go. Guangzhou taxi drivers should not have any problems at all finding Canton Fair. It’s a big deal event that happens twice a year in Guangzhou so there’s no reason at all they wouldn’t know where it is. The metered fare came out to about 70RMB ($10USD) for 8 kilometers. Which is a reasonable price.

We took a subway train back to our hotel because I wanted to try it out. I mentioned there was a station right beneath our hotel too. It is insanely cheap, just 5RMB which is .70 cents US. Just bear in mind Guangzhou Metro train fares are priced on distance.

3. Tips on Finding and Meeting the Right Sellers for Your Products

Currently, I am selling different products manufactured in China. One of the items is ladies’ shoes. 60% of the shoes are made in China, whether it is fake or genuine. I’ll be using ladies’ shoes as a product example.

When you get to Canton Fair you will be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of sellers occupying exhibit booths. We certainly were. Many are elaborately decorated booths and some are modestly designed. All have wall-to-wall displays of shoe samples they have produced.

All the salespeople can speak English, some more fluently than others. Since we were selling ladies’ shoes to the Thai market we had to find a style that suited the style choices of Thai women.

You will be speaking with lots and lots of salespeople because in the shoe section alone at Canton Fair there were hundreds of exhibit booths lining up and down the massive convention hall.

So have a notebook in hand to take down information. But most importantly staple the business cards of companies you’ve spoken with to said notebook. Even better download the WeChat app, which is China’s very own messaging app, and take down their contact information. On top of that, take photos of salespeople including the exhibit booth so you and they can remember who you spoke with.

4. Price Negotiating Like a Pro and Understanding MOQ

Remember this little three-letter acronym MOQ. It means Minimum Order Quantity. It means exactly what it sounds. Every seller you consequently speak with has a MOQ. And every seller you will encounter has a varying MOQ number. The prices they quote are in US dollars.

For example, this would’ve been our first time attempt at ordering shoes so we didn’t want to order too many ladies’ shoes to handle.

We were only looking to purchase an initial order of 1000 pairs of high-heeled ladies’ shoes. Which is a very, very small order in the world of shoe industry in China. Obviously, sellers want buyers to order as much as they can.

We did find many sellers with too high of an MOQ. But don’t sweat it, there are so many sellers you are bound to find one that fits your MOQ as long as it’s reasonable.

But the fact is, most people attending the Canton Fair are folks like you and I. My wife and I didn’t want to commit ourselves to a huge order. We just wanted a thousand pairs of ladies’ shoes to test the market back in Thailand. The women’s shoe business in Thailand is very competitive.

Chances are, whatever you are planning to manufacture in China and sell in your home country you don’t want to order a massive amount too. It will take some digging to find a seller willing to deal with small orders.

Three Tips to Remember Inside Canton Fair

1. The first thing you should never do is lock down a deal with the first exhibit booth. No matter how nice or friendly the salespeople are. Even if they’re giving out unlimited donuts. Just kidding.
2. Make it clear you are walking around and checking prices. If a salesperson knows you’re browsing for prices they may try and offer the best price they can give. But even then, try and talk it down as much as you can. You’d be surprised.
3. Chances are you will not be dealing directly with a manufacturer, but instead some sort of manufacturing broker. A middle company.

Okay, that third tip deserves some explanation. Believe me, it was a real revelation for me also.

This was something I suspected while speaking with the sellers on the side. And was confirmed with a family member who does business in Guangzhou and is sorta of kinda business broker herself in China.

I’ll explain from the start. You see, Guangzhou is a modern metropolis as I mentioned. It’s not exactly littered with factories spitting out gadgets, clothes, and, picture frames. Where Chinese workers toil long hours in sweaty factories.

That happens inside factories located in cities on the edge of Guangzhou. Like Shenzen, Foshan, Huizhou, Zhuhai, and so on.

Guangzhou is also a convenient place for foreigners to connect with Chinese manufacturers, or at least with Chinese companies with connections to Chinese factories. Because there’s an airport in the city, Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport. Guangzhou has a suitable and adequate hospitality infrastructure to handle foreign visitors comfortably.

And Guangzhou has a lot of office structures where middle companies have showrooms where buyers can go visit. We visited the company we used to put in our shoe orders. They picked us up from our hotel. And when we were finished finalizing our shoe order the owner was nice enough to drive us to a mall where we could do some shopping.

Don’t Be Shocked to Find Out You’re Dealing With Middle Companies – There Are Advantages

In essence, you’ll be dealing with middlemen companies that take orders from foreign buyers to factories surrounding Guangzhou. These middlemen companies deal with multiple factories. So they’ll take your order and shop around for factories fitting your price criteria as well as theirs.

I’m not saying this is true for every single industry represented at Canton Fair.

For my instance, it wouldn’t make sense for shoe factories to spend money on renting a space, spend money on decorating and designing a booth. Hiring people to sell. Break everything down at the end of the convention and ship everything back to their headquarters. That’s a lot of unnecessary work. Factory owners rather sit back and have middlemen bring orders to them.

I didn’t mind dealing with a middle company. Sure, they cut into your profits. But again, in my instance, there’s a big chance a shoe factory would not accept my small order. A broker could take my order, bundle it with all the other orders, and thus be able to present it to a factory for preferred pricing.

In the end, it’s a win-win situation where I’m satisfied with the price and quality of my shoe order.

Wrapping It All Up

Guangzhou is an amazing modern city and one of the largest three in China. I could’ve squeezed in the old cliche about the old and the new. But really, Guangzhou is a city intertwined with the old and the new! What can I say that no one else has said already?

There are modern buildings, modern subway trains with English signs and announcement stops, with modern buses. Above all this is how you know when a city has reached a level of peak sophistication. And that is the amount of Starbucks. There are so many Starbucks Café in Guangzhou that if you threw a rock you’d hit two Starbucks.

It’s an ideal location for hosting the Canton Fair. Remember to pre-register. Pick a hotel in the Yuexiu district. Don’t worry too much if you’re not dealing with a factory directly. Figure out the price you are willing to pay and the amount of products you can handle. Don’t remember to factor in the price for shipping freight. And grab some dim sum at a restaurant in Guangzhou and enjoy your trip.