Trade shows
A fair gets you samples. A factory gets you the truth.
Sourcing platforms and fair organisers will happily tell you what a trade show is and when it runs — they do it better than we could, and there is no point competing with them. What nobody sells you is the part that follows: walking into the actual factory behind the booth, before you commit.
The fairs we plan around
We only list fairs we can actually combine with factory visits inside the same trip. Dates are set by each organiser and do move — confirm on the official site before booking anything.
- Yiwu Fair · October · YiwuThe China Yiwu International Commodities Fair runs every October at the Yiwu International Expo Centre — the 32nd edition is 21–24 October 2026. Around 3,000 exhibitors over 110,000 m². This is the strongest pairing we offer: the market, the fair and the factories are all inside one city, so you can shortlist on the floor and be on a production line the next morning.
- East China Fair · March · ShanghaiThe East China Fair (Huajiaohui) is held at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre — the 35th edition runs 1–4 March 2027. Jointly hosted by nine East China provinces and cities including Zhejiang and Ningbo, weighted towards light industry, garments and textiles. Pairs naturally with the textile and household-goods clusters in Zhejiang and Jiangsu, a short train ride away.
- Canton Fair · spring and autumn · GuangzhouThe largest and the most crowded, running in spring and autumn sessions. Strong for private label and OEM conversations, and it pairs with Guangzhou, Foshan and Dongguan factories. Worth knowing: the autumn session overlaps the Yiwu Fair, and a lot of Yiwu suppliers are in Guangzhou that week rather than at home.
- Ningbo export consumer goods fair · May · NingboThe export hall of the China–CEEC Expo & International Consumer Goods Fair, hosted by the Zhejiang provincial government with the Ministry of Commerce. Plan around one thing first: it is not annual. The last edition ran 22–25 May 2025 and the organisers list the next for May 2027. That edition filled 60,000 m² of the Ningbo International Conference and Exhibition Center with around 1,028 exhibitors, and drew overseas buyers from 72 countries. Categories are household goods, gifts and crafts, appliances, home textiles and garments, stationery, outdoor and kitchen-and-bath — close to a map of what this cluster actually makes, which is why the factory days afterwards tend to be productive.
Edition numbers, halls and exact dates belong to the organisers — confirm the current one oncceecexpo.org before you book flights. Thensee what a Ningbo factory week looks like.
Every fair on this list sits inside a cluster we already work in:Yiwu for commodities and small goods,Guangzhou and Dongguan for the private-label and OEM conversations the Canton Fair is full of, andZhejiang for the textile and household-goods mills that stand behind the East China Fair.
How the week runs
Shortlist on the floor, verify the next day.
The mistake is treating the fair as the trip. It is the filter; the factory days are the decision.
- Before you flyWe turn your categories into a target list with hall and district, so the floor is a route rather than a wander. Hotels and drivers in a fair city are booked solid weeks ahead — this is the step people leave too late.
- On the floorCollecting prices, MOQs and booth numbers into one structured list, with the same five checks applied to whoever is behind the table. Plenty of booths are trading companies; that is normal, and it only matters if you do not know.
- The day afterThe shortlist goes into factories — usually 30–60 minutes out of the fair city. Two visits in a day is the useful number, because the second quote arrives informed by the first.
- After you fly homeEvery quote normalised to one specification, so comparison is real rather than remembered.
The five checks we run on the floor are the same ones we run on any visit —how we vet factories sets them out, and thefactory visit scorecard is where they get written down before you forget them. If you would rather have the factory days sequenced around the fair for you, that isvisit planning.
Boundaries
What we are not.
Stated plainly, because a fair week attracts a lot of people selling things they should not.
- Not an exhibitor serviceWe do not sell booth space, build stands or register you as an exhibitor.
- Not a commission agentWe are not paid a percentage of your order, and we do not take a cut from the factory. That is what lets us tell you a supplier is wrong.
- Not a date authorityFair dates, halls and visitor registration belong to the organisers. We plan around them; we do not speak for them.