Entrepreneur credits CIEF for successful business career

When Wang Lixin first attended the Canton Fair in 1987, he never thought he would quit his job and start his own business — Dalian Talent Gifts, a candle supplier, in 1997. Even more unexpectedly, Wang has since attended 66 straight sessions of the fair, which is also known as the China Import and Export Fair.

"Even in 2003 when the SARS epidemic broke out, others hunkered down at home, but I resolutely traveled all the way from Northeast China's Liaoning province to Guangzhou in the south to participate in the Canton Fair," Wang said. "The fair is indispensable to the sustainable development of enterprises."

With experiences and ideas gained from the fair, Wang's company has come a long way in a short time.

In 2006 and 2009, the United States and the European Union imposed anti-dumping sanctions on China's candle manufacturers. While most of Talent's peers were pushed to bankruptcy, Talent thrived by opening new factories in Thailand and Poland.

Wang said that the Canton Fair is a barometer of China's overall foreign trade performance, where he can detect evidence of changes in overseas markets and prepare for the risk before it starts.

This also helps explain why Talent has become the world's only candle maker with plants in China, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the EU. It has exported its decorative candles to more than 100 countries and regions and established long-term and stable cooperation with Swedish furniture giant Ikea, US grocer Walmart and German retailer Metro.

"There are so many excellent enterprises at the fair. We can maintain contact with them, compete with them, and then surpass them," Wang said. "Our perfume makers discerned that candles using mixture of oils used for relaxation and massage were popular in Germany and Netherlands, so we made timely adjustments in our strategies and then received positive feedback."

Echoing the Canton Fair's call for environmental protection, Talent decided to make candles in an eco-friendly way. It stopped using paraffin wax as a raw material in its candles and turned to vegetable oils like soybean oil and palm oil.

Wang said, "Talent aims to be a world-class fragrance brand in 20 years whose small scented candles are able to brighten the world."