The Show Sourcing Blog
Field notes for sourcing pros
Practical writeups from the show floor and the factory tour. Landed cost math, expo prep, OCR benchmarks, and the stuff nobody teaches new importers before they blow their first order.
Landed cost: the FOB to LDP formula every importer should have memorized
Every importer eventually blows a deal by quoting FOB when they meant LDP. Here is the exact formula, walked through with a real Bluetooth speaker container out of Shenzhen.
Read →The Canton Fair buyer prep checklist
What to pack, what to install on your phone, how to schedule the three phases, and how to not lose 400 vendor cards by day 4. A veteran buyer's practical playbook.
Read →Business card OCR at trade shows: what actually works
Five languages, three script systems, gold foil, dark backgrounds. What LLM-backed card OCR gets right that classical OCR still fumbles, with real card comparisons.
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