Nuremberg International Toy Fair 2014

2014/1/29–2/3
https://www.spielwarenmesse.de
Venue: Nuremberg Exhibition Center, Messezentrum 1 90471 Nuremberg, Germany

This is the most important toy fair in the world for the toy industry, this year 2748 exhibitors from 61 countries and 75888 visitors. My company spends lots of money on the booth just hope to get the most attention. Plus, the location is in Germany, the booth fee is very pricey.

There are many toy company, even they are small in their country, but they are willing to pay lots of money on the booth and hope to look professional in front of the buyer. We are around 20 people from the company to set up the booth, we also prepare the coffee, tea, dishes, cookies, everyone visit us, we will treat them like in our office respectfully.

Accommodation is another problem in exhibition time, my company has a partner they use every time, the breakfast although isn’t the buffet, it does have German standard and the bread is different from Czech.

This period is Chinese New Year, it was my first time feeling can’t home but working, I have homesick, luckily, our suppliers are almost Chinese, they invited us to their hotel and have Chinese New Year party, they went to Asia market and cook professionally like the Chinese restaurant.

Other than helping the booth sales, I have other mission is to meet our current supplier to understand their new product and negotiate the payment term and the annual price, that is the most exciting parts. On the other hand, within our product line, I would need to check other suppliers if they are able to deliver the same product quality to us with a better price.

On the last date of the exhibition, the interesting part is if the supplier isn’t keeping the sample for their prospect buyer, they will sell the sample cheaply, in the worse situation, they will just give you for free, if you have a good relationship with your supplier, because for them shipping all sample back to China make no sense at all, as the cost is high.

There were few of the supplier, they just leave their sample somewhere in German of their friend’s warehouse, if the cost makes sense, because sometimes, the exhibition item didn’t change so much, there were some exhibitors just put on the same item and decoration as last year, normally visitor won’t find it out.