Real Pet Trade

Jiawei and Penny visited one of the largest pet trade show in China on August 21st. The exhibition was held at Shanghai Pudong Expo next to Star Magnolia’s office (Kerry Parkside in Pudong New District). It featured pet related products, including pet food, bath tools and the equipment, which is used to pack pet food. The exhibition is open only for the wholesalers during the initial 2.5 days, then open for public (Friday afternoon through Sunday), attracting many visitors even on weekdays. This is actually our second visit after the last year by Shinya and Loyal on Aug 25. We were told it was one of the most popular trade shows in Shanghai and were overwhelmed by the large crowd (see Exhibit 1).

Exhibit 1: Photos Taken on Aug 25, 2019

We wanted to understand the current situation of a trade show, which was hit very hard by COVID-19 earlier this year. Jiawei and Penny visited on Friday afternoon (21st August). Even before entering the exhibition center, they were surrounded by a huge flock of people who were waiting to get in, and there were even more people inside (Exhibit 2). Apparently, 70%+ people brought their suitcases to buy innovative product at discount and almost all stores had long queues with people to collect small gifts after scanning QR codes (they have to follow Wechat Official Account so that the brands can send updates on their Wechat accounts). Comparing photos taken this year and last year, it seems COVID-19 had almost no impact on the trade show business (or pet-related products?). The only difference is that people are wearing masks today.

Exhibit 2: Photos Taken on Aug 21, 2020

We also visited Real Pet Food, a portfolio company of Genbridge. Real Pet Food’s booth was located in N4. Real Pet Food owns different well-recognized brands overseas: Billy Margot, Trilogy, Farmers Market, Natures Gift, Miao Mi, Fussy Cat, Ivory Coat and Love ‘EM. They entered Chinese markets after the consortium of Hosen, New Hope, Temasek and Genbridge. Genbride introduced us one of the market executives of Real Pet Food: George Dong, head of Chinese sales. He graduated from Tsinghua University with MBA. Dong stated that Billy Margot is popular and high-end pet food for dogs. It contains kangaroo meat and is imported from Australia.

Exhibit 3: Real Pet Food’s Booth and Billy Margot

Dong said that the rent of booth in this exhibition was RMB 200,000 and they spent another RMB 200,000 decorating the booth. However, this exhibition can attract many wholesalers, so it is good money to spend. Moreover, Dong mentioned that the revenue in that day is RMB 100,000, not including the wholesale revenue. On the other hand, Real Pet Food’s annual revenue is RMB 200mm in Greater China and the global revenue from is RMB 3bn per year.