Meeeting place for the Asian market

Businesses selling grooming products, beauty salons and photographic studios, hospitals and placement agencies – all devoted to man’s best friend. There’s a growing love of pets in China, with an increasing number of families offering homes to dogs and cats. The market prospects continue to look rosy, a trend that is reflected in the success of the China International Pet Show (CIPS). Exhibitor and visitor figures for the speciality pet product show have risen steadily in the last few years. And in 2006 too, on the tenth anniversary of the international fair’s inception, the organisers – China Great Wall Exhibition Co. and Nürnberg Global Fairs – are anticipating a new visitor and exhibitor record.The market statistics speak for themselves: the internal market for pet food and accessories in China is achieving double-digit annual growth, according to current estimates by Euromonitor International. However, China is interesting to international companies not just as a sales market, but also for the broad range of pro-ducts and contacts it offers buyers in particular over the country’s borders. CIPS, which opens its doors for the tenth time from 11 to 14 October, offers access to these markets. This year it’s the turn of the capital Beijing to host the show, following last year’s staging of CIPS in the southern Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou.CIPS has established itself as the key international meeting point in the sector for the Chinese and also the Asian market in general. “Companies seeking cooperation partners in the Asian region can initiate valuable business contacts there, as can trade buyers from all over the world. The latter will encounter an extremely interesting exhibitor spectrum,” explains Cheng Yang, the vice-president of China Great Wall Exhibition and co-founder of CIPS. Last year visitors from more than 50 countries worldwide registered for the show. For them, China offers an extensive assortment of new products for pets, ranging from classic-conservative pet clothing for dogs and cats via fancy pet houses, toys, training aids and care products. The aquatics segment is traditionally an important element of CIPS, and a wide variety of aquarium types and shapes are on show along with food, medicine, aquatic plants and pump or filter units.The success of CIPS has been hard-won: “We set up the exhibition at a time when there was virtually no market for pet products and it was even prohibited to keep dogs in the cities,” Cheng Yang comments…