About “23 Insights for Exhibition Success”

An interview with Paccloa’s President, Yoko Ogawa, was featured from page 108 to 115.
The full interview can be read below.

The Handbook for International Exhibitors is available at Organization for Small & Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation, JAPAN (SME Support, JAPAN), and Paccloa Co., Ltd. is sending it free of charge to the first 5 companies that request it. Please feel free to contact us from the Contact Us page to request a copy of the Handbook for International Exhibitors.

The “Introduction” of this handbook (207 pages in color) reads as follows

If you prepare well for an international exhibition, it will become more and more positive and enjoyable. However, if you don’t do what you should have done in the first place, you will gradually become depressed and bitter.

We wish all the small and medium-sized enterprises that have benefited from this book a successful return home from international exhibitions with a happy feeling.

We hope that your international exhibition will be one of the new doors that lead to the next step.

Exhibiting for SMEs is a one-shot deal; be strategic with your hypothesis.

It is said that you have to attend several international exhibitions in a row to get results, but I am of the opinion that you can get results even if you attend only once.

I think it is a high hurdle for many small and medium-sized companies to repeatedly attend the same exhibition.

When I was working for a small company, we were always told that there was no budget, and even the companies we support today are prepared to give it one shot. They are taking on challenges at the precipice, saying, “If this doesn’t work, we’ll give up on the international market. They assume that there will be no second attempt, both in terms of budget and time.

If that is the case, we have no choice but to prepare well in advance.

If you exhibit without thorough preparation and without fully understanding your objectives just because you have received a subsidy, you will end up handing out pamphlets, exchanging business cards, emailing for details later, and never receiving a response to your email.

In fact, an exhibition is not a place where you go to do such things, but rather a place where you can go to answer the “hypotheses” you have about your international expansion through specific discussions and business negotiations with visitors who have various possibilities.

Exhibiting internationally for the purpose of research, not for the purpose of customer development, is prone to failure.

We tell you that it takes an average of one year to prepare.

Even for a first-time exhibitor, it takes that much time and effort to have a dense business meeting and to get multiple inquiries.

Companies that underestimate “preparation is 90%” commonly say, “We won’t know until we exhibit once, so we’ll just go with marketing research.

I always tell them, “Would you rather have a hard time when you get back or a hard time now because you are busy preparing for the trip?” I always say, “Which is worse?

What I mean is that it is really hard when you have nothing to do after you return to your country if you have not prepared well enough to exhibit. Even if you send thank-you e-mails, you don’t receive any replies, and you don’t receive even one order.

I get looks from within the company like, “Is this international expansion just a rhetorical question? I am not sure if it is just a rhetorical question or something else.

It cost us millions of yen, and our motivation within the company was also low, so we thought it was impossible for us to go international. In addition, overseas expansion is literally “a company-wide effort. Also, overseas expansion will not be successful unless the entire company is united in the goal of expanding sales channels overseas.

When it comes to exporting, the design and manufacturing departments have to come up with specifications for international markets, and the accounting department has to deal with international invoices and foreign exchange.

Without such preparation and preparedness, even if the president and the sales side of the company exhibit only with passion, they will not be able to continue afterwards without internal cooperation.

Thorough “preparation” will make you look forward to attending the exhibition.

Some people insist on visiting the exhibition first. However, it is actually much more difficult to visit an exhibition than to exhibit.

If you go to an exhibition with a vague idea of what you want to see, you will not get much out of it.

You can only get good information by looking at the official website of the exhibition, the website of the organizer, or by researching last year’s exhibitor list, the record of the exhibition, and the conditions during the exhibition, and then making a reverse sales talk to them.

See? Don’t you think it’s difficult?

I am often called “spartan” because I pursue strict preparation, but there is a good reason for that. International competitors, especially in Asia, are accustomed to a harsh environment.

They are not supported by the government, they are responsible for everything, and they cannot trust anyone.

If they do not do the things that these competitors will naturally do, such as preliminary research on target markets, companies, products, and prices, they will not even be able to stand at the entrance of a business meeting. If you think of your business as an extension of your domestic business, you will be left behind.

However, once you get over what you need to do, the rest can be very easy.
If you build a follow-up system based on the assumption that you will receive inquiries, you will be able to start doing business immediately after you return to your home country.

That is why companies that have prepared well for a year say, “I am looking forward to the exhibition. Come on!” They are excited and welcome the day of the exhibition with a great sense of unity.

However, companies that are not prepared for the exhibition are filled with anxiety, wondering what they will be asked. At this point, you may possibly be winning or losing.

For companies that want to achieve results in their first exhibition, please refer to the “Checklist for International Exhibitions” to prevent mistakes due to lack of preparation. (Checklist is included in the booklet.)

If you feel you are financially “unable” to do so, it is better to avoid going international.

In my advice, I first talk about money.

It may take up to 15 million yen in total, depending on the country, to set up a booth, create a foreign-language website, and so on, in about three years. Moreover, there is a possibility that sales will be zero during that time. Can you stand that as a company?” And.

He replied, “Of course not!　If you feel that “I was just thinking of selling the product if I can sell it overseas,” or “I don’t want to spend 15 million yen and have zero recovery,” it would be better to continue focusing on the domestic business as it is now.

It is difficult to get international expansion off the ground unless you have a long-term plan and the determination to say, “It’s tough to have zero sales for the first three years in international markets, but I’ll spend 15 million yen and eventually earn 300 million yen.

Analyze the strengths of your products and decide which countries and exhibitions to exhibit in

Once you are ready, have an internal discussion and set a budget, which can be hypothetical. You may not know if this is your first time, but try to make assumptions first. You will also choose which exhibitions to exhibit at.

At that time, please decide on the country after carefully analyzing what the strengths of your products are and what you want to appeal to the public.

This is very important,

If the exhibition does not attract the right buyers for your products, you will not get results.
If you decide on a country to exhibit in only because it offers subsidies, you will end up spending time without meeting the buyers you want to meet, which is a roundabout way to go.

As for the market price, you can find out the market price by searching the Internet with the name of the country for products in the same genre as your company’s. If you can’t compete with the market price, you can avoid it.

If the price is too high to compete, you should avoid it. If you want to take a chance, you will need to have a strategy meeting on how to propose the added value of “It may be expensive, but this is excellent” when you are told that the price is too high.

The more we can do in-house, the easier it will be to cut budgets.

If you think you are going to clear up all these issues that have become known to you in advance, a year will go by very quickly. However, please work steadily and without haste.

There are two types of preparation: visible preparation and invisible preparation, and the invisible preparation is by far the most important.

Visible preparations include your company’s website in English, catalogs, booth setup, etc. These are very important, but they are not the only preparations you need to make. These are very important, but if you do not make the invisible preparations, such as target setting, distribution confirmation, and compliance with regulations in each country, you will not get results even if you spend millions of yen.

At first, we may need the help of many specialists such as outside consultants and branding companies to proceed, but as we gain more and more experience, the more we can do on our own, we will gradually be able to proceed with less budget than in the beginning.