Gem fair exhibitors display mixed feelings about sales

Jewelry exhibitors from more than 15 countries placed their glittering products on sale at a four-day fair at the Venetian Macao, showcasing unique Asian gems and accessories for approximately 900 professional buyers from China and Southeast Asia.
Officials from the Macau Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM) extolled the region’s MICE facilities yesterday morning after an inaugural ceremony for the International Gem Fair, organized by three Hong Kong groups.
“Our spacious venues and concentration of rooms is one selling point,” said Irene Lau, one of IPIM’s executive directors. “There are around 20,000 rooms here, and we welcomed 9,000 guests last week. There is no other place that can hold that many people, they don’t even need a shuttle bus to commute for a meeting,” she added.
Lau said that the region’s “world-known” hardware and service pleased the organizers, who already promised to return to the city in the following two years for another exhibition.
“Primarily we touched them with our services as one of the conditions about Macau is its small size that makes it easier to communicate and set arrangements in place,” she added.
However, some of the firms expressed their discontent over part of the exhibition arrangements, chiefly regarding security, staff training and opening hours.
Vanessa Chung, sales executive at Hong Kong-based La Vie Premium admittedly disclosed that she was not optimistic about sales performance in the upcoming three days given the faraway venue of the fair, saying their involvement this time was merely an “experience.” Additionally, she criticized the event’s logistics as “incomplete.”
“We stayed up until 12:00 a.m. last night because no one had built our booth even though we had asked them to build it at noon. It was still yet to be built before the event started this morning,” she complained, also saying the staff stationed on the site failed to give proper directions.
Tony Ho, a local assisting a Zhuhai exhibitor, believed that the exhibition should be held in the evening to allow more local potential customers who worked during the daytime on workdays to attend. He also felt pessimistic about their business in the next few days, citing similar distance reasons.
Lokesh Gupta, from the Thai Manufacturer Co., who aimed for mainland Chinese customers, echoed the above two exhibitors’ pessimism about the fair: “I had hope in participating here. We hoped there would be many visitors,” he said. “But I didn’t expect it to be like this. However, let’s see how it goes later.” Nonetheless, he was satisfied with the event’s arrangement.
Staff from Hong Kong’s Legar Co. told the Times that most of the visitors to their booth were non-professional buyers, one of whom was even caught by the police for allegedly committing theft at another counter. Staff reporter