Nataliia Fidorenko: Our fair offers a perfect opportunity to expand business and keep in step with the times

How often do you held Children’s Fashion Fair?

We have been organizing the fair for over ten years, and autumn 2018 was its 24^th edition. Like any other fashion event, the fair is held twice a year.

Each spring edition is held as part of a wider, more ambitious project of ours, Baby Expo International Trade Fair of Children’s Goods. In addition to Children’s Fashion Fair, it includes Toy Fair Ukraine showcasing toys and games and Baby Products Fair showcasing feeding, bathing and body care products, prams and strollers, furniture, linens, accessories, etc. Each autumn edition is held as a separate event.

Children's Fashion Fair is a new name given to Baby Fashion after this year’s rebranding to better reflect the showcased product range, i.e. fashion wear and footwear for babies and toddlers, kids and teens.

Why do you hold Children’s Fashion Fair for a second time in a year as a separate event?

It is resulted from the market requirements. Children’s fashion, just as the adult one, implies introduction of at least two collections a year, autumn-winter and spring-summer.

Many manufacturers introduce even four collections a year to better satisfy the demand. Children's Fashion Fair is intended to ensure in-season supply and availability of the showcased products to end customers, so it is held twice a year.

How do you choose exhibitors?

It would be more accurate to say that we are chosen by them. They are companies wishing to enter or expand their presence in the Ukrainian market, manufacturers interested in promotion of new trademarks and collections, suppliers of fabrics and materials, trims and accessories, machines and equipment for manufacture of children’s wear and footwear.

How do you engage foreign exhibitors?

We are trying to ensure participation of as many direct manufacturers or official distributors of foreign and leading domestic trademarks as possible. For that to happen, our representatives regularly attend international trade fairs held in Poland, Germany, and Turkey. We are actively cooperating with agents in Italy, China, etc.

What countries have been represented this year?

Foreign exhibitors usually prefer spring editions, and Ukrainian ones are well represented at autumn editions as well. It is worth noting that the number of domestic manufacturers and trademarks is increasing at every edition. Technical levels and production standards are also increasing, thereby improving product quality. At the latest edition, Ukrainians amounted to about 70% of the total number of exhibitors. This year’s foreign exhibitors came from Turkey, Spain, Italy, Estonia, China, Finland, and Republic of Belarus.

Business program, along with fashion show, is an integral part of the fair. What is it aimed at?

As organizers, we want to add one more good reason to visit the fair. We are trying to get our visitors used to the idea that the fair is intended not only for making purchases and contracts, but also for obtaining useful information for business development, learning about the latest marketing trends, etc. We would like our visitors to have an opportunity of staying for two or three days in order not only to meet suppliers but also to attend business events.

Yudjes Group has participated in business program at the latest edition. SendExpert, an email marketing service by Yudjes Group, is one of business development tools used by your exhibitors. What are your common criteria for selection of speakers to be included in business program?

When selecting topics and speakers, we are guided by the key objective of our exhibitors and visitors, which is to sell. The most of our visitors are store representatives. As for the latest edition, we have invited the leading experts with minimum consultancy rate of USD 150 to hold some free-to-attend workshops. They are Gennadii Tkachenko, store and staff management coach, and Vitalii Stepanenko, store space planning practitioner. Workshop on negotiations with suppliers by our new coach Oleksandr Vietskyi has also generated intense interest. And it’s impossible not to include one more basic trend, online marketing. We have selected the hottest topics, i.e. the best email marketing cases, comparison of own websites with marketplaces in terms of sales, etc.

And how about attendance? Can you say that the latest edition was a success?

The latest autumn edition has been attended by over 1.5 thousand visitors who are merely wholesale buyers. But, you know, we always want more than what we have. I’m sad to say that low purchasing power of end customers and their shift to secondhand clothing, especially for babies and toddlers, may have an effect on attendance. And as for success, it could be assessed some time later.

What are your plans for the fair development? Are you planning to follow the lead of some other countries and launch Kids Fashion Week?

Five years ago, we were trying to cooperate with Ukrainian Fashion Week. At that time, some leading Ukrainian designers (Oksana Karavanska, Olga Balashova, and Olga Khytrychenko) were creating children’s collections. But designer clothing is not suitable for mass-market, so it does not fit easily into the fair. Maybe we’ll revert to this issue later.

Our objectives for the near future are to increase the level of the fair and raise awareness about the fair, namely abroad. Unfortunately, we still have to explain even to Europeans that Ukraine and Russia are different countries with different markets.

And the last question. How to choose the right target audience? Should marketing campaigns promoting children’s wear and footwear be targeted to kids or their parents?

Children’s Fashion Fair is a B2B event mainly visited by wholesale buyers. End customers can visit the fair to ask about the prices and stores featuring products by their favorite trademarks. Some products can be bought in Outdoor Retail Space.

Today’s parents increasingly choose children’s wear and footwear relying not on their own but child’s taste in clothing. For instance, some new fashion trends may be not very clear for me, but not for my daughter who wants to be dressed “exactly this way”. So manufacturers should take this into account and give a good showing to their products to generate children’s interest.

Our fair offers manufacturers and distributors a perfect opportunity to expand their businesses and keep in step with the times, especially in children’s fashion industry.

The interview was conducted and prepared by Tetiana Vereshchynska, Journalist at Yudjes Group