Data
Four days of walking produces two thousand photographs and eleven usable facts. The gap is not memory. It is that nobody decided, before entering the first hall, what a complete record of a supplier looks like.
Contents
The photographs are not the problem. Buyers take thousands and that is fine. The problem is that a photograph of a lamp on a white shelf, taken at 14:20 in hall 11, carries no information about which company made it, what it costs, what the minimum order is, or which of the four identical booths you were standing in.
Back home, the file is called IMG_4821. The catalogue it belongs to is one of eighteen in the suitcase, all with the same blue cover. The business card is in a pocket. Three of those four things can be reconstructed if you decide in advance that every supplier record begins with the booth number.
Every exhibitor displays a booth number on a sign above the stand, and that number is unique within the phase. It is the only identifier that survives the fair: company names change, email addresses bounce, and the catalogue cover does not say which hall it came from.
Make the booth sign the first photograph of every supplier, before the products, before the business card. Then write the same number on the catalogue cover and into the first line of your note.
Hall number plus stand number is enough to find the exhibitor in the official directory when you get home, which is how you recover a contact you lost, a website you forgot to ask for, or the name of the person who actually quoted you.
A booth number also carries the phase. Halls are reallocated between phases, so a note reading 11.2 without a date can send you to the wrong industry three weeks later. Write the date next to the number.
Six photographs per supplier, in a fixed order, takes about forty seconds and makes the rest of the record self-explanatory.
| Frame | What it captures | Why it matters later |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Booth number sign | Indexes every other frame in the set |
| 2 | The product, straight on | The version you actually asked about |
| 3 | Label, rating plate or base | Model number, voltage, material, standards |
| 4 | Carton or packaging, if present | Print quality and carton markings |
| 5 | Business card, flat | Name, WeChat ID, phone, company name |
| 6 | The person, wide shot | Whom you spoke to, if the card is illegible |
Frame six is optional and should stay wide. A full-face close-up of a stranger is useless for identification and awkward to keep.
The sequence has a second benefit: it forces you to look for the label. Half the disagreements about a first order trace back to a model number nobody wrote down.
Most Chinese exhibitors put a QR code on the counter, the catalogue and the business card. It usually opens a WeChat profile or a mini-program, occasionally a website, and rarely a PDF you will ever open.
Scan at the booth, not later. Send the person a message while you are standing there, containing your company name and the product you looked at. That message is the beginning of the record, and it also proves the contact works. Half the codes on a printed card are dead by the following week.
Add a note to the contact before you move on: hall, booth, product, and the one thing they said that you did not expect. WeChat contact lists become unsearchable within days if every entry is a name and a company.
A supplier record is complete when it holds six things. Without them you cannot compare two offers and you cannot price a shipment.
The first three are the commercial conversation. The last three are the ones buyers leave behind, and they are the ones that decide the freight.
Freight is bought in cubic metres or in kilos, and neither number appears in a catalogue. A product that folds flat and a product that ships assembled can differ by a factor of three in shipping cost at identical FOB value.
Ask for the measurements of one export carton and how many units it holds. From that you can calculate the volume of a thousand units in a minute, and you will know whether your order is 2 cubic metres or 14 before you commit to anything.
Ask for it at the booth, where the carton is often standing behind the counter. Requested by email a month later, the answer arrives as a rounded guess from someone reading a specification sheet, and a rounded guess is what a booking gets built on.
Catalogues are heavy, and most of the ones taken home are never opened again. If you take one, write on the cover before you leave the booth: hall, booth number, date, the name of the person you spoke to, and the one product you actually discussed.
The most useful page in a catalogue is the one with your handwriting on it. A single line saying quote was 2.40 at 3,000 with the model number circled is worth more than the other forty pages combined.
Consider leaving the catalogue behind and photographing only the pages you need. Twenty catalogues weigh several kilos, and every airline now charges for the second bag.
The flight home is the last moment when the details are still fresh, and the first moment when nobody is walking. Spend an hour of it converting photographs into records while the memory of the conversation is intact.
Rename the photographs by booth number, move them into one folder per supplier, and paste the six numbers into a spreadsheet. Mark each supplier as shortlist, maybe, or no, with a one-line reason. The reason matters more than the rating: in three weeks you will not remember why a company you liked at the time dropped off.
What comes home should be twenty records, not two thousand photographs. The follow-up sequence that starts on day two depends entirely on whether that sorting happened.
Build the spreadsheet with one row per supplier and one column per number, not one column of prose. Twenty rows compare at a glance: the lowest unit price, the shortest lead time, the smallest carton. A page of notes per supplier reads well and compares badly.
Leave two columns empty on purpose. One for the date your first follow-up was answered, one for whether they replied to the technical question at all. Those two columns are the only evidence you will have of how a supplier behaves when nobody is standing in front of them.
Q What is the most important thing to record at a Canton Fair booth?
The booth number, followed immediately by the price at your quantity, the MOQ and the carton dimensions. The booth number is the index that lets you recover everything else from the official exhibitor directory.
Q Are QR codes at booths useful?
Yes, if you scan while standing there and send a message straight away. Many open a WeChat profile rather than a website, which is more useful for follow-up than a download you will never open. A code left on a card until you get home is often dead.
Q How many catalogues should I take?
Few. Photograph the pages you need and write the booth number on any catalogue you keep. Twenty printed catalogues weigh several kilos and most are never opened again.
Q What carton information do I need for a freight quote?
Length, width and height of one export carton, units per carton, and gross weight per carton. With those four numbers any forwarder can price the shipment; without them, the quote is a guess.
Q How do I keep supplier notes usable?
One record per supplier, one page each: booth, contact, product, the six numbers, and a line on why they are on the list. Sorting has to happen within a day or two, while the conversation is still available to you.
Q Should I photograph people at booths?
A wide shot of the stand, including the person you spoke to, helps identify who you dealt with. Keep it wide and avoid close-ups of faces and badges belonging to other buyers.
Related pages
Send us the carton dimensions and units per carton from your shortlist, and we will return a volume and weight estimate per supplier before you place the order.
Email sales8015@goodhopefreight.com | WhatsApp & phone +86 133 9216 2503