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Published on September 5, 2007

Thailand has never been well known for arranging trade exhibitions but newcomer Natprapa Yokputtharaksa hopes her company will help the country to establish a reputation in this growing sector.

Natprapa, whose career has included many different kinds of jobs, has spent the past 10 years in the exhibition business, working for renowned Thai firm Reed Tradex and Singapore Exhibitions Services before setting up her own company, Production Management & Services (PM&S).

Her company will stage its first trade exhibition - Proud Asia - from March 20-23 next year with a strong determination to create the right definition of "trade exhibition" in Thailand.

 At the event, there will be exhibitions of businesses in medical tourism and in spa and wellness industries.

 "I don't expect any exhibitor to focus on doing a hard-sell on their products or services and to keep thinking of maximising their sales. Instead, I expect them to exploit the opportunity to strengthen their image, explaining what they have, which would convince buyers and general visitors to become long-term customers or business partners," Natprapa says with a smile.

After her role in helping organisers abroad arrange trade exhibitions in places such as China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam, Natprapa got a picture of how trade exhibitions should be and saw a comparison with Thailand.

Being an exhibitor for many companies she had worked with - imitation jewellery, furniture equipment, machinery and export businesses - and servicing many Thai exhibitors to attend international trade exhibitions as well as helping those exhibitions arrange their events, she saw changes in arranging exhibitions in Thailand and gained knowledge from other countries where she had worked.

"Trade exhibitions are the place where exhibitors can meet real buyers. Therefore, inside the event should be exhibitions and conferences as well as business-matching services," she says.

But most exhibitions in Thailand are more like entertainment and money-making events for exhibitors, according to Natprapa. "We have exhibitions with stages to showcase activities by actors, actresses or singers. How many real buyers would be interested in what is showing on the stage? They just want business things like conferences," she points out.

Until five years ago, trade exhibitions were popular only in specific industries such as construction, food ingredients, oil and gas. It changed when more organisations showed interest in arranging events and hired organisers that usually specialised in entertainment events, for which their priority was to maximise the number of visitors.

As a result, trade exhibitions here have been going in the wrong direction and have decreased the opportunity for Thailand to gain a reputation to match those of Singapore and Hong Kong. Moreover, the events themselves also tended to slow down.

"Many companies that attended many events and could not find real buyers might have started to realise that it wasn't worth paying for space and brochures," Natprapa explains.

"It could happen that real buyers wanted to visit certain booths, but they were blocked by general visitors who surrounded the booths and just wanted to buy products.

"At the same time, exhibitors had no opportunity to give their brochures to the real buyers because those general visitors took them all. For international exhibitors, it costs a lot to print each brochure and they only want the real buyers to get them."

Natprapa did not have an exact figure for the number of trade exhibitions in Thailand but says other countries in the region have more real trade exhibitions. Some are even regional must-visit exhibitions for thousands of buyers from around the world, such as the annual Gift and Houseware Fair in Hong Kong.

PM&S's strategy is to try telling all corporate customers that trade exhibitions are an opportunity for building awareness and marketing companies, products and services to a precise target group.

At the same time, they are opportunities for finding possible business partners, seizing marketing information, assessing the number of competitors and learning exactly who their competitors are.

Now that she is in a strong position to create the right image for trade exhibitions in Thailand, Natprapa has a very deep hope that one day the Kingdom will enjoy the same reputation as the regional market leaders.

Yet, asked whether she expects to host the same giant trade exhibitions as those countries, she softly replies: "I would concentrate on doing my best job on a  small scale with 'Proud Asia' first.

"I expect to see exhibitors develop business relationshipsat the event and later generate large revenue, rather than seeing a large amount of visitors. Having a large number of visitors doesn't mean that your event is a success,"  she says.

Nitida Asawanipont

 The Nation