In this issue... Norman Yau, head of Hung Hing's International Sales, gives us his view of the recent book fairs and we also look at Hung Hing's objectives in its 60th year of printing...

If you had participated in the Bologna Children’s Book Fair this year, or have spoken with someone who came back from Bologna, I am sure you get the same message as I have and that is the overall business sentiment this year at Bologna has been very upbeat. It is safe to say that the worst is over from the near global financial meltdown, for if you spoke with those who came to Bologna one year ago, back then the place had little or no activities. No one knew how long the crisis would last then and little to no publisher was placing print orders. The buzzwords last year were ‘cost out’, ‘inventory reduction’, ‘no new titles’ etc, etc, it was just an awful period. Now, fast forward to 2010, business has taken a 180 degree turn and we have seen a steady increase of print buy activities.

For us at Hung Hing Bologna 2010 turns out to be very positive. Our global commercial partners and marketing associates were busy visiting customers and discussing opportunities. Publishers we met with were once again asking for new quotations, they were showing us new titles and talking about post-Bologna factory visitation. If we look back to December and January, what we saw was an unexpected increase level of print order activities and when CNY finally came about, we were busy getting goods out to the shipping terminals before China went on the CNY holidays. So, I was not so surprised that at Bologna the common questions we heard were: ‘How’s your post CNY workers return rate?’; ‘Anything else you hear about paper price, is it still climbing?’; all in all, the trading atmosphere was cautiously optimistic but people mostly agreed that the worst is behind us.

When the London International Book Fair rolled around two weeks later, the talk of town was not publishing but the Icelandic volcanic ashes. This ‘Act of God’ had brought most businesses in Europe to a standstill. Notwithstanding the agony and pain caused by the UK and European airspace closure, day 2 at the LIBF was actually quite hustle and bustle and people we visited were telling us that they were indeed conducting a fair amount of business. By this time the paper supply situation in Asia was clear, that the mills were giving out paper allocation and in some cases they used the earthquake in the Southern hemisphere as an ‘Act of God’ to cancel contracts.

In summary, these two major fairs have a common theme, and that is the publishing industry is getting out of the lowest point in their business cycle. The challenges are not over yet but with our commercial partners working hard out in the field (as we have had already worked with a number of you), returning with timely market intelligence to our commercial organization, with everyone working hard cross functionally to capture every single opportunity, I am convinced that the future is bright and positive. As my Americas team and I am preparing for the BEA fair, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of our commercial partners located worldwide to help build Hung Hing into a strong and customer focused global print solution provider, putting high quality books into the hands of millions of readers worldwide – small kids and big people alike.

Norman Yau, May 2010

We were very lucky to have three attendees who flew in ahead of the volcanic ash clouds from Hong Kong for the London Book Fair, including Norman Yau our VP Sales and Marketing, Fiona Chan (Assistant Manager) for the conventional book team and Jasmine Wong (Marketing Executive) from the children's and novelty team.