Two exhibitors stand by their small smart home appliance booth at the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. The ongoing fair attracts 25,000 enterprises from home and abroad. (Photo/China Daily)
A unit of the expo sensitizes China's manufacturers to shapes, sizes and branding
At the Canton Fair, or the biannual China Import and Export Fair in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, chubby robots move around and invite passers-by to check the oxygen level in their blood. They offer help to those needing an oxygen boost.
Nearby, screens cover a booth with 2,500 green acrylic tubes. Visitors throw curious glances, wondering what's inside. Behind the curtains is a 3-D printer that produces ... chocolates.
At other stalls, more gadgets abound: portable air purifiers, music-playing and scent-spraying lamps ... all promising to make life fun and convenient.
Local and overseas design firms' booths are clearly a key attraction at the fair, which will end on Thursday.
Around 25,000 exhibitors, mostly small and medium-sized Chinese manufacturers, are taking part in the fair. The Canton Fair Product Design and Trade Promotion Center or PDC was set up in 2011 to reach out to them.
According to Xu Bing, deputy director of the China Foreign Trade Center, the PDC aims to "upgrade made-in-China products with innovative design and thus improve the competitiveness of China's exports".
Tin Huang, director of industrial design at MITO-design, a firm from Taiwan province, has been attending the PDC Design Show since 2012. His team designed a series of children's headphones in 2014 for Vcom International Ltd, a manufacturer of electric cables based in Guangzhou.
About 300,000 units were sold during the October-November session of the fair as consumers liked the playful design and replaceable covers featuring popular animation themes.
Huang is now working on developing the second generation of the headphones. "Within months of the launch, buyers were asking us to upgrade the product and add new features by the spring (April-May) session," said Steven Hu, sales director of Vcom.
"The economic climate now is tougher than the global financial crisis in 2008. Chinese manufacturers are facing fiercer competition not only in terms of price but product design," Hu said. "To survive, we must provide something new to fill a niche."
Huang from MITO-design said Chinese manufacturers are realizing the importance of design after the financial crisis.
While the business volume of the Canton Fair kept dropping from 2011 to 2015, the MITO-design's booth at the trade fair has been receiving about 20 new clients each session. Talks with about 300 clients marked the latest session.
