Trade fairs: how to prepare so nothing is wasted

A food trade fair is worth the money only when four things are ready before the doors open: goals written on one page, a lean sample kit, meetings booked in advance, and emails that go out within days of getting home. Miss one of the four and the best looking stand becomes an expensive trip. Color of Vietnam is preparing for export and has not announced a market, so for us a fair is a place to hear what buyers say, not a place to sign contracts. Here is how we prepare, for partners who want to know how we work and for colleagues who will stand at the booth.

Goals on one page

Before we book a stand we write one page: which questions this fair is meant to answer. Being present is not a goal. Photos are not a goal. Our questions usually look like these:

• Which certificate do buyers in this region ask about first: Halal, ISO 22000 or the FDA registration?
• Which pack format gets picked up most: a single bar, a multipack box, or a snack jar?
• Does the Ô ăn quan game on the Let's PLAY jar explain itself to buyers who have never seen the game?

Each question needs a way of recording the answer. For the second one, whoever is on the stand ticks a sheet every time a visitor picks up a format. No software is needed. A habit is.

The sample kit: fewer products, the right ones

We have twenty products and we do not bring all twenty. The kit follows the questions. If the question is about formats, each brand brings one representative product in all its formats. If the question is about flavours, we bring many flavours of one brand.

On the stand the kit contains:

• Product to taste, cut small, replaced constantly, labelled by flavour.
• Product in its full pack, to hold, read and photograph.
• One jar of Cheese Ball or Maize Ball with the lid off, for a game of Ô ăn quan at the table.
• A one page information sheet per product: ingredients, pack configuration, shelf life, storage, and the certificates held by our partner facilities.
• A few sealed sample sets for serious buyers to take away, each with a card for their name and contact details.

The information sheet matters more than a glossy brochure. A professional buyer reads ingredients and pack configuration first and the story second.

Meetings booked in advance

A visitor who wanders in is luck. A visitor with an appointment is a plan. A few weeks before the fair we go through the registered buyer list, pick the ones whose range fits ours, and send a short note: who we are, what we bring, what we would like to ask, and a request for fifteen minutes at a given time. Not everyone replies. But a handful of confirmed meetings is usually worth more than a day of waiting at the stand.

Every meeting gets a sheet: name, company, sales channel, what they asked, what we promised, next step. The sheet is filled in straight after the conversation, not in the evening. By the evening of a fair day everyone is tired and the meetings blur into one.

Emails within days

The biggest waste at a fair happens not at the stand but in the week after. Business cards sit in a bag, the promised price list never leaves. Our rule: on the first day back, every sheet is typed into one tracking table. Over the next few days each buyer receives a short email that recalls the conversation, attaches exactly what was promised, and ends with one question to keep things moving.

Exactly what was promised means that if we promised a product sheet we send the product sheet, not ten other things as well. Buyers remember who kept their word.

An example: preparing the Ô ăn quan corner

While preparing a stand we once debated leaving the game out, in case foreign buyers did not understand it. In the end we kept it and changed the presentation: a small board drawn on the table, a Cheese Ball jar with the lid off, the snacks as playing pieces, and a card explaining the rules in a few lines. The question on the sheet was simple: does the visitor try a game, and do they ask about buying the jars as a set? If the answer turns out to be no, that is information too. We would rather learn it at the stand than after printing labels for a new market.

A few weeks after the fair we sit down with the original page of goals and answer each question. Answered questions go into the product plan and the sales material. Unanswered ones are noted for the next fair. This way every trip brings something home, even when no order is signed.

If you are an importer or distributor who would like to meet us at an upcoming fair, use the Contact page. If you would like to be the person standing at that stand, the Marketing Leader role in Hanoi is open.