What we brought back from the spring Canton Fair
Twice a year, in April and October, Guangzhou becomes the center of the world's consumer-goods trade. At this year's spring Canton Fair, the joint Konstantin Asia and Konstantin Trade team spent two weeks on the ground: six people, three halls and, by our internal count, just over two hundred meetings with manufacturers.
Two trends stood out clearly. The first is small home appliances with energy efficiency front and center — manufacturers now print consumption, not wattage, on the price tag. The second is natural materials in homeware: bamboo, rattan and recycled glass are steadily displacing plastic, even in the mid-price segment.
For Aurelia Home we contracted samples for the autumn collection: a line of cast-aluminium cookware, cotton dining textiles and a series of bamboo lighting. Samples arrive in Belgrade over July, and the products that pass testing will go on sale toward the end of the year.
The fair is also a chance to see our existing suppliers in person. Part of the team visited four factories in the Pearl River Delta, including the Foshan plant that produces most of our small-appliance range. Pre-shipment inspection remains a rule without exceptions: every shipment is checked before it leaves for Europe.
“At the fair, everyone shows the best they have. Our job is to judge which of it will look the same in the third container, not just in the display case,” says Chan Wai-Man, managing director of Konstantin Asia.