Imagine being on your feet all day, marching at double pace being roughed up and finishing up nursing blisters and aching legs.
Must be one of those brutal 20 mile military bootcamp marches, right?
Actually it’s probably worse.
It’s the world famous Canton Fair, which is held in Guangzhou in China several times each year. It’s the mecca of small time importers because you can get just about anything here and do incredible deals.
But it’s not for the faint-hearted.
So you don’t think I’m exaggerating let me give you some basic facts about this astonishing 3 day extravaganza.
– The exhibition space is 1,125,000 square metres.
– Each hall is the size of 4 football fields, crammed full of exhibitors and people.
– And it’s not just one hall … there are a 23 of them in total!
– There are 55,800 booths, and they’re all occupied
– They’re visited by over 160,000 people
– And an estimated quarter of a billion dollars of business is done at each fair
So if you think your local Sunday market is big then you ain’t seen nothing yet.
You can’t just turn up and expect to find what you’re looking for. You need to know what’s there and where it is, otherwise you risk spending a day just finding who you’re looking for.
You need to plan obsessively so you know exactly what you’re looking for, where it is and how to get there. Then get in and hit it hard.
Except … don’t go on the first day. It’s way too busy. And don’t go after lunch on the last day and expect to do business. All the exhibitors are tired and frankly, they just want to go home.
Done wrong and it’ll leave you exhausted, depressed and poorer for the experience.
Done right though and you’ll be like a kid at a lolly shop, grabbing bargain after bargain.