You spend lakhs @ the EXHIBITION. But the buyer was deciding about you long before he reached it — and long after he walked away.
An exhibition is just the loudest, most expensive version of that dead-end.
You come home with a bag of cards and a phone full of numbers. Then orders take over, the team goes back to this month’s shipments, and the bag goes in a drawer.
Not because the show was bad — because nothing was built to catch what it produced.
One product, one HS code, one market — scored across the exhibition method and everything a buyer sees. Here’s a real one, anonymised:
Post-show, 4 in 5 contacts are never worked again.
Barely on page one for the product he exports.
A free email address on the export page.
“FSSAI certified” — no number, no issuer, no scope.
No MOQ, no Incoterms, no lead time, no port.
He barely found them — and nothing was built to catch him if he had.
I run the marketing side for food exporters doing four to five international exhibitions a year — the part that decides whether a show turns into orders or into a drawer full of cards.
I was at Gulfood in Dubai. I’ve studied how the exporters at SIAL Paris present themselves. And I’m running a client’s World Food Moscow campaign this September — part of why I’m here, learning how Indian exporters do exhibitions up close.
Three days checking how Indian exporters actually get found — before, during and after the show. It goes out this Saturday:
SHIPS SATURDAY 1 AUGUST 2026
Tell me where to send it. Fastest on WhatsApp.
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