A traditional trade fair displays products and services that exhibitors want to sell, while visitors are interested in exploring opportunities for buying them. A reverse trade fair, however, turns this procedure upside down: the exhibitors are the buyers of products and services who display their demands, while the visitors are the potential sellers of the required products and services.
By giving buyers and suppliers a chance to meet face-to-face to tell each other about their goods and services, such a system strengthens the relationships and understanding between public and private interests. In addition, it increases the competitiveness of micro, small, and medium enterprises, and encourages them to become a part of the procurement process by bidding on government tenders.
Data bases and booths of a reverse trade fair register and display products that exhibitors want to buy with precise information on how, when, and how much they actually want to buy. Meanwhile, the visiting entrepreneurs who wish to sell can rely on a computerized system that matches information on supply and demand, allowing them to easily identify the buyers of the product(s) they have on offer.
The fairs therefore offer buyers the opportunity to expand their knowledge about current and potential suppliers of products and services they need to improve the performance of their companies. And they provide entrepreneurs the opportunity to do business and expand their market share.
Reverse trade fairs have the great advantage of generating quantifiable benefits in the short, medium, and long term for all entities linked to the local economy. For micro, small, and medium enterprises, it constitutes an excellent tool to:
- Expand their internal market
- Include already existing markets within the country
- Strengthen the industrial sector
- Diversify and integrate the productive sector
- Improve the quality of national production
- Generate employment
- Combat corruption and contraband
Reverse trade fairs have the following additional strengths:
- Transparency and information prevail – this in opposition to a system in which secrecy and informal links usually prevail above a sound commercial proposition
- Health competition – production and marketing opportunities are democratized
- Industrial development is furthered, given the need to enter commercial alliances
Over the past few years, over three dozen such reverse trade fairs have taken place in Bolivia - see for example the explanatory video (in Spanish) on the reverse trade fair of La Paz in March 2006.
The fairs are executed by the Fundación Feria a la Inversa, and overall they have generated the following economic benefit:
- 3000 contracts for micro, small and medium entrepreneurs for over US$ 22 million
- Deals made between large and small enterprises amount to more than US$ 1 million per deal
- 100% of buyers say they have found an average of fifty potential new providers during a reverse trade fair
- The value of the total annual demand in the reverse trade fairs held in the following two cities:
- Cochabamba: 157 entrepreneurs on the demand side, 587 entrepreneurs on the supply side – with a total annual demand of US$ 392 million
- Santa Cruz: 93 entrepreneurs on the demand side, 816 entrepreneurs on the supply side – with a total annual demand of US$ 400 million
- All the private companies that participated in the fairs and made deals diminished their costs in terms of paperwork and bureaucracy
In late July 2007, a second phase of this reverse trade fair concept in Bolivia was put into place thanks to the agreement between the Dutch Development Cooperation and the Fundación Procal, according to which both institutions will finance some 120 of these fairs for the next four years. The Fundación Feria a la Inversa remains in place as the executive agency.
In addition, the WBCSD's Regional Network partner in Bolivia, CEDES, signed an agreement with Fundación Ferias a la Inversa according to which CEDES will be in charge of organizing business-oriented reverse trade fairs, while the Fundación will continue to organize public sector-oriented fairs.
Read more:
- Comprehensive overview (in Spanish) by Fundación Procal on its activities in the domain of reverse trade fairs
More information:
Julio Garrett Kent
National Business Facilitator
WBCSD-SNV Alliance
La Paz, Bolivia
jgarrett@cedesbolivia.org
Tel: +591 211 56 55
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