NATIONAL 6 -(Spotlight Weekly)]

Business Promotion

Despite varieties of consumer items, number of visitors at the trade exhibition declines

By A CORRESPONDENT

Trade fairs and departmental stores are the two important development in the recent Nepalese consumer market growth. The rise of departmental stores have diminished the importance of trade fairs.

If low turn out of the consumers at the recently concluded trade fair -- Tradex 2000 -- is any indication, the consumers seem to be tired of old fashioned business fairs.

In the last one decades, the various trade fairs generated interest of consumers to the market and products. It also helped industrial houses to show off their products and services to larger audience.

As economic activities expanded in the urban areas, the business fairs offering varieties of goods and services to the consumers were organized regularly in the capital city. The response of the consumers, which was encouraging in the initial couple of years, however, continued to subside.

Six days long Tradex 2000 - the largest trade fair of Nepal -concluded recently but the number of visitors declined drastically this year.

Organized by Everest Exhibition, Tradex -2000 lured more than one hundred different stalls offering different industrial products in the exhibition. From newly built cars to consumers items and paging services, the exhibition housed several items.

Everest Exhibition - a pioneer organization for trade fairs -annually organizes a couple of trade fairs in different parts of the country with the aim to offer business and industrial houses and industries to display and sell their products to the people. The fair also provides a launching pad for new products or services.

Consumers trade fair : Declining interest

"One of the aims of our exhibition is to provide the consumers with different products in one place," said Bhaskar Raj Rajkarnikar, coordinator of the Tradex 2000 organizing committee.

Although the trade fairs in Nepal like Tradex 2000 still have many roles to play to expand the consumerism in the country, they need to innovate with times to suit the interest of business houses as well as consumers. To attract youths, concerts were also organized at the exhibition site this year.

Three seminars were also conducted at the exhibition on issues including Vehicle Emission Problems, Advertisement Policy and the Government Change and Economic Policies.

The participants to the seminar were from different strata of life including industrialists, policy-makers and others.