Since March, Zhejiang province has been creating the first export online trade fair in China and building an efficient online trading platform to stabilize foreign trade. Online fairs are gradually becoming the new norm.

As a comprehensive international trade event with the largest scale and the best transaction effect in China, the launch of the Canton Fair is a landmark event in the whole foreign trade industry. Prior to this, Zhejiang, as a large foreign trade province, also tried actively to hold exhibitions online in the two lines of government and market.

"We have started experimenting with online exhibitions since early March," said Hu Xingyuan, deputy director of the Division of Foreign Trade Development, Department of Commerce of Zhejiang Province. He said they have organized 112 online exhibitions in the first half of the year, and will hold more than 100 in the third quarter. All these resources are free to Zhejiang's foreign trade enterprises.

The popularity of domestic online exhibitions also affects the trend in the international exhibition industry. Hu Xingyuan remembered that the Department of Commerce of Zhejiang Province had communicated with a number of internationally renowned exhibition agencies in the early stage of organizing online exhibitions, but the responses they received were relatively conservative, with many organizations holding a wait-and-see attitude.

"But since June they have come to us on their own initiative. Organizers of fairs such as TexWorld in the US then hope to cooperate with Zhejiang to hold online fairs," Hu said.

In the opinion of Guo Mu, honorary president of Zhejiang International Convention & Exhibition Industry Association, "online exhibition" is not only a reform of the convention and exhibition industry, but also a change of the digital marketing concept of hundreds of thousands of foreign trade enterprises. After transforming from offline mode to online mode, the driving force and core competitiveness of the industry are undergoing profound changes.

Accurate docking of supply and demand is the key to achieve the purchase intention online, which requires exhibition enterprises to get more deeply involved in their specific business, cooperate with third-party resources, and help foreign trade enterprises to conduct online packaging and live streaming.

Enterprises are constantly growing when facing the change from offline mode to online mode. "I participated in live shows in these exhibitions by myself to connect with our customers," said Ye Lan, the head of Shaoxing Jiangfan International Trading Company. She led her team to learn photography and video-cutting, and practiced English expressions in front of the mirror repeatedly.

It is certain that there will be some new problems brought by the new changes. Some enterprises are worried about the intellectual property rights of online exhibitions, and the latest products are only targeted on old customers with large export volume; Some believe that online exhibitions should better achieve the balance between accurate docking and open communication; Some are limited to industry attributes, which means their products need to be "visible and tangible", but many sensory experiences, including volume, taste and touch, have not yet achieved great breakthroughs in technology.

In the short term, the change from offline mode to online mode is the stress response brought by the pandemic. However, behind the short-term bailout, people have already seen the future development potential of online exhibitions and started to plan a long game.

One obvious trend is that Internet giants are gathering to plan online exhibitions.

In addition to accurately matching supply and demand with reference to big data, online exhibitions also need a more mature digital trade chain if they want to be applied by a wider public.

"The integration of online and offline modes will be the inevitable trend of the exhibition form," Guo said. "The online Canton Fair attracted more than 500,000 people within 24 hours, which is unimaginable if it was held offline. However, new technologies and application scenarios are gradually progressing, and enterprises should also diligently accumulate their own buyer database."

It is worth mentioning that Zhejiang's digital experience in holding online exhibitions is also going international. Many overseas partners have taken a shine to the functions of Zhejiang Goods Cloud Exhibition Platform. It makes enterprises see more possibilities that online exhibition platforms of Zhejiang enterprises go abroad.

(Compiled by Xu Yuhong, translated by Zou Guan'er)