Canton Fair and CMEF

Canton fair is the biggest Comprehensive foreign trade exhibition in China. It starts in 1957, which has 68 years history now.

In 2025 the Canton fair in Spring has attracted over 280,000 professional international buyer. Which generated 25.4 billion USD intented order.

It attracted professionl buyer from Walmart, Carrefour etc, it also attracted influencer from Youtube/Tiktoc etc showing people what Chinese manufacturers could provide.

In contrast, CMEF 2025 has attracted over 200,000 Professional buyer (domestic and internationally) and unfortunately no intented order amount mentioned in anywhere.

Why Medical fair doesn’t able to provide a quick and effective route for trading as normal trading fair?

I believe the major issue is the regulation in different countries leveled up the barrier for quick decision.

Normal business: “Is this thing interesting/good/useful?” – “Is the product profitable for me?” – “Let’s buy some sample units and test the market”

Medical product buiness: “Is this thing able to bring clinical benefit to patient/docto?” – “Is this thing CE/FDA/local MOH regulated?”-“Is the product profitable for me?” – “Due to regulation issue I can’t buy demo unit, let’s take some brochure back and talk to our KOL if this thing is really something good”

However when buyer get back home with handful product brochures, trying to figure out which one is the thing most interested for them within 1 week/ 2 weeks, 90% of the potential business was already blocked out before have any chance to test the market.

While buyers visit local KOL with brochures only, doctors(endusers) usually polite enough to say “ok this is interesting”, however they will have to face maybe 10 different distributor providing 30 different potential products for them, most of them are without any sample unit.

The long term decision chain brings a lot of uncertainty into the medical product business. Anything we could do to shortcut the decision chain and build trust in parties in between?