Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts (EPCH) organised the 44th edition of the IHGF from 14-18 October 2018 at the India Expo Mart Centre, Greater Noida. It was one of the best shows in India for buyers, sellers and buying agents to extend their businesses. Buying Agents Association (BAA) has been the part of the handicraft and gifts fair for years in the form of either individual agents or now as an association. This time there was a huge presence of BAA because the booth location which was provided by EPCH was right at the entrance of the fair making our presence felt in a big way. The show was a big success for BAA in terms of attendance by the members, their customer visits, finding good and reliable vendors and even finding new members who wanted to join the association.
It was a 5 days event which was filled with energy and freshness. There was a huge flow of overseas buyers on day one, two and three throughout the day. BAA members were also there who kept coming in and met each of us at the booth. The gold card for each of our member was an added benefit extended to our members by BAA which makes us stand apart from other non-member agents. The success of this show for BAA depends upon converting the registrants of the new membership. We had footfall of over 75 new buying agents to become part of BAA family.
BAA had lots of enquiries from vendors and other suppliers in the form of logistics companies, testing labs, exporters etc about how they can get benefit from BAA services. Some domestic buyers and some overseas buyers visited us, some of them wanted to have services of buying agents while the others wanted some help for getting forwarders or other information for their imports. Few of the buyers were first timers and visited India first time with small capital budget to start buying.
There was also a panel discussion by BAA on “Translating Trends into Products” on 17th October 2018 which would help guide the Indian exporter community in how to interpret trends & forecast and translate them into actual products that will appeal to international buyers.
During the fair BAA also handled the case of Glo India regarding the pending payment with a buyer by Mr. Michael Vinod along with EPCH Chairman, Mr. Prahaladka.
We would really like to give our sincere thanks to EPCH, their team including Mr. Rakesh Kumar, Mr. Siddhartha Tyagi, Mr. Verma and others.
