By Huang Yunzhi (intern) and Zhang Rurun

Building up brand image to enlarge the market

Speaking of the Shanghai International Trade Promotion Co., Ltd. (ITPC), industry players will first of all think of the East China Import and Export Commodity Fair (or East China Fair in short), and the Shanghai International Industry Fair. The East China Fair has been held annually for 15 years, while this November will witness the seventh Shanghai International Industry Fair. At present, these two fairs are the most familiar exhibitions to common citizens, and as the organizer for them, ITPC, affiliated to the Shanghai World Expo Group, has blazed its own path in building an internationalized, professional and market-oriented brand image on the back of experiences accumulated in hosting conventions and exhibitions over the past years.

Focusing upon exhibitions while providing complete accessory services

ITPC, set up in July 1993, is a professional organizer of conventions and exhibitions that undertakes and organizes domestic and international exhibitions. The company’s leading business is to organize large-scale governmental exhibitions, including hosting domestic exhibitions for overseas customers and organizing overseas exhibitions. Apart from serving governmental customers, the company also has formulated its own plans to develop run-of-the-mill exhibition services through government-sponsored exhibitions in an attempt to enlarge and expand the business of market-oriented exhibitions via various forms such as hosting exhibitions by itself or in cooperation with other exhibition firms and industry associations.

The company has built up its own system of providing an integrated suite of services, relying on its edges in foreign trade services and on the back of its experiences garnered in recent years in the exhibition services for government bodies. Following opportunities arising from the hosting of various exhibitions, it has set up a total of 10 wholly-owned or joint ventures as part of its asset operations, providing a complete range of accessory services for the exhibition sector, including project design for exhibitions, arrangement and management of exhibition booths, international freight forwarding, export and import, advertising and business travel services. These services are like a well-coordinated industry chain that creates a win-win situation for each and every link of the chain, with the terminal of this chain being the customers. The whole industry chain could be a healthy one only if the customers benefit from the chain.

Mr. Gong Huibin, the company’s Vice General Manager, said,“This business model of focusing on one core business while undertaking multilevel operations can provide convenient and professional services for companies participating in the exhibitions, and it can also facilitate the realization of the exhibition and trading functions of exhibitions. Therefore, the company has developed its own characteristics, becoming a leading player in China’s exhibition sector.”

Strive to serve the Shanghai World Expo

ITPC was incorporated into the Shanghai World Expo Group on July 1, 2004 as a wholly-owned subsidiary. The 2010 Shanghai World Expo is one of the key events for China, and it will be a new project for ITPC to avail itself of its experience and strength to better serve the Shanghai World Expo.“The Shanghai World Expo is a big project, and its impact will be broad and huge. The World Expo is much similar to common exhibitions in terms of their forms, their contents, however, are completely different. The exhibitions we organized previously were centered upon the exhibition and promotion of commodities, and although we have gained practices and experiences from organizing some government-sponsored exhibitions, it still requires much more hard work for us to meet the requirements of the World Expo,”said Mr. Xu Hua, the company’s General Manager.“The World Expo is set to exhibit trendsetting technologies and philosophies, which are big conceptions by nature. Consequently, we should work hard to improve our ability in various aspects including the organization of exhibitions, the arrangement of exhibited items and the provision of accessory services to adapt to the requirement of hosting a successful World Expo,”Mr. Xu added further.