Our First Canton Fair — All We Brought Was Two Display Boards

October 2015, the 118th Canton Fair — our first show.

A nine-square-meter booth at the edge of the Pazhou hall, second row from the back of the aisle. Booth fee plus fitting-out: 32,000 yuan.

A bad location has one virtue: it's cheap. The same space on a main aisle costs double. Booths have to be applied for half a year ahead; we got ours by paying an agency extra.

The budget was what it was. Some peers hauled in real machines — freight alone in the six figures. Some built lightboxes — eight thousand apiece. We had two display boards and one laptop.

Setup afternoon, the neighboring booth was driving a sample machine in with a crane. I spent forty minutes zip-tying our two boards to the aluminum frame.

Opening day, we arrived at 8:30, plugged in the laptop, and set the business cards at the corner of the table. Doors opened at nine. The first visitor who actually stopped came at ten.

What the two boards said

The boards came from a print shop — 360 yuan for both. One listed our main products and warehouse address; the other laid out our inspection process.

On the inspection board I listed all twenty-one items of Lao Li's routine, in type as small as a little fingernail.

A colleague said nobody reads type that small. I said: the man who leans in to read small type is the man who buys machines. Browsers look at big pictures; buyers look at details.

I was half right. In five days, thirty-odd people leaned into that board — and both customers who later closed were among them.

Five days, how many cards

I brought two hundred cards and ran out on the afternoon of day two; at noon on day three we printed two hundred more, rush-delivered by the print shop.

There's a craft to handing out cards. Press one on a passerby and it's in the trash within two steps. For someone who stops at the boards, offer with both hands and add a line: every machine on here comes with an inspection report.

Over 370 cards went out. About 210 came back our way — ninety-odd from African customers, forty-odd from the Middle East, and the rest a mix.

Sixty-four added us on WeChat. Many African customers weren't on WeChat back then; they left WhatsApp numbers and emails — eighty-odd of those. I bought a little notebook and stapled the cards in, sorted by market.

The laptop held photos and inspection reports for every machine in the warehouse. Ask about a machine and we'd pull it up on the spot — hours, undercarriage photos, the inspector's signature.

Chidi, the Nigerian customer, stood at our booth flipping through photos for forty minutes and asked me over twenty questions. Three I couldn't answer — I called Lao Li right there and put him on speaker so the customer could listen in.

The embarrassing moments

Noon on day three, the neighboring booth fired up their real-machine demo. The engine roar drowned out every word on our side.

The customer couldn't hear me, so I just handed him the laptop to look for himself. He looked. I stood there.

That moment was genuinely awkward. Their equipment freight alone ran six figures; everything we owned came to under twenty thousand.

Lunch was taken in turns outside the hall — fifteen-yuan boxed meals. The neighbors had meals delivered to their booth, sixty yuan apiece.

But a real machine has one problem: after the demo, the customer asks if it's for sale. It's a sample — not for sale. The customer turns and walks off; I heard the neighboring salesman explain that three times.

We didn't have that problem. Every machine in our photos had a price on it. For sale. In the warehouse. Container-ready next week.

How many deals closed

The tally after the fair: two deals paid deposits on the spot — a road roller to Ghana and a wheel loader to Lagos. Prospects we followed for three months yielded two more.

The roller customer was Ghanaian; his five-thousand-dollar deposit arrived on day three. When the finance department called to confirm, I was mid-card-handing — my hand shook.

Five days cost me four jin of body weight and my voice for three. Every night back at the hotel I keyed the day's cards into a spreadsheet until midnight.

Four deals, 260,000 yuan of combined gross profit. The booth was 32,000; with flights, hotel, and food, total cost under 50,000.

Chidi's deal didn't close until the following April — two excavators. Signing day he said: that day you couldn't answer three questions, and you didn't make things up — you made a phone call. I remembered that.

That's when I first learned that not knowing can be an asset too. A made-up answer takes three seconds; a customer remembers you for three years.

What we changed for the next fair

From year two on, still no real machines — but we did three things.

The inspection process went from text to photos — one per step, Lao Li on camera.

The business cards added our WhatsApp number, which many peers hadn't printed yet.

Photos of every machine were printed into booklets customers could take away. A booklet costs more than a card — seven yuan a copy — but nobody throws one away.

One thing didn't change: we still booked edge booths. The savings printed booklets. A booklet can be taken home; a booth can't.

Before that first fair, I worried nobody would bother with us. Once there I learned: if you truly hold machines, buyers walk over on their own.

The two boards still stand against the wall of the Panyu warehouse — not thrown out. The card-stapled notebook, I've kept too.

The booklets ran for three years, over four thousand copies handed out.

To this day, a new customer's first questions are still the same few: how many hours, what year, and can I get parts.