Mai's Insight｜The true value of exhibitions lies in capturing market signals.

Mai Zijian, Co-founder of DENTALGOODNEWS (Leading Dental Industry Media, DGN) and Partner at JiZhou Online, has long been deeply involved in the frontline of the dental industry, continuously tracking the underlying logic of channel structures, policy trends, and brand strategies. The DGN editorial team will periodically invite Mr. Mai to share his on-the-ground observations and independent judgments on the industry, forming the "Mai's Industry Insights" series.

This article presents his firsthand insights from the 2026 South China International Stomatological Exhibition (SCISE).

Many exhibiting companies view trade shows merely as a "place for sales" – calculating booth fees and personnel costs, then counting how many orders were signed or business cards handed out. I believe this calculation method itself overlooks much of the real value of trade shows.

One of the true values of a trade show is that it serves as a relatively low-cost and rapid trial-and-error model to validate your market strategy. It's about discovering genuine demand from the concentrated, explosive gathering of a superabundance of precise users within a limited scope during the show. The focus shouldn't be on how much you sold, but rather on paying more attention to who actively approached you to ask questions. How has that group of proactive inquirers changed compared to previous years? What does this reflect about the market's current real needs? – They are the living map for your regional market layout in the coming year.

Mai's Seed

For example. At this SCISE, I spoke with the head of a domestic dental materials company's market department. They gave me feedback: doctors from public hospitals came to inquire significantly more frequently this time than before, and they were proactive, coming with purchasing intent. This brand's past focus has always been on the private channel – with very high coverage and stable repurchases. On the public hospital side, they haven't systematically exerted much effort before.

Against this backdrop, they feel that structural changes might be occurring in the public hospital channel. It could be that after policy adjustments, domestic materials that previously faced higher entry barriers now have opportunities to enter; or it could be that purchasing decision-making power in public hospitals is shifting from management down to frontline doctors. They haven't reached a conclusion on which specific reason it is.

Editor's Note: According to the official visitor statistics of the 2025 SCISE, visitors from public stomatological hospitals and general hospitals accounted for 12.99% of total visits, while those from private dental hospitals and clinics accounted for about 32.68%. The absolute volume of the public channel is still lower than the private one, but the change in the frequency of proactive inquiries might be an early signal of structural adjustment appearing ahead of statistical data.

The significance of this signal extends beyond this one materials brand and beyond the dental materials category alone. The same applies to Dental Implants and Digital Equipment – the channel structure is changing, and who actively seeks you out is itself the earliest warning of that change. The change captured on the exhibition floor is earlier than any policy document or industry report and more authentic than any sales data. That's why profiling proactive inquirers after the show is a more worthwhile use of time than counting the number of signed orders.

So what I want to express is: one of the most valuable pieces of information from a trade show is not how many orders were signed at the booth, but where those who actively approached you came from. Their appearance might be the earliest, lowest-cost signal of a change in market structure. The DGN editorial team will continue to track changes in the audience structure of major exhibitions as a reference for judging channel trends.

Besides paying attention to "who asks you," another thing equally worth stepping out of the booth to observe is – at this edition of the exhibition, who is new, who has disappeared, and who has grown larger. The list of exhibiting companies itself is a barometer of industry capital flow and technology bets.

At the 2026 SCISE, a clear structural change was: brands with dental robotics and digital solutions as their core selling points appeared significantly more frequently than in previous years – whether it was implant navigation robots, integrated solutions for Intraoral Scanning and CAD/CAM full-process workflows, or AI-assisted diagnostic systems, both the number of booths and their floor space were expanding. Behind this phenomenon is the result of sustained capital injection into this sector over the past two years.

I made a simple observation on-site – at 3 PM on March 5th, I remotely watched the booth of a recently listed implant navigation robot brand for 10 minutes, during which there were zero proactive inquirers. This brand's strategy was: bundling sales with Dental Implants, offering Consumables as a gift with the robot purchase, which seemed like a good deal, but no one stopped at the booth.

Why? I think three reasons overlapped:

First, the new product hasn't yet gained market acceptance. Implant robots are high-commitment products; doctors won't make impulse purchases on the exhibition floor. Without clinical data, peer endorsement, or volume-driven word-of-mouth, no matter how attractive the price looks, visitors will just look.

Second, Dental Implant prices are too transparent. Since VBP / 带量采购, the price range for implants has become highly transparent. The logic of bundling sales is based on implants having a premium margin. But the current market state is: buyers are very clear about the market rates, so the appeal of bundled discounts has significantly decreased.

Third, users have begun to form preliminary judgments about implant differentiation. This is a deeper change – in the past, implants followed the rule of "the louder the brand, the better they sell," but now more and more purchasers are starting to screen Consumables based on their own standards and needs. This means that simply relying on a "robot + implant" bundle can no longer substitute for a genuine product persuasion chain. [Note: On-site visual observation, not complete data, for reference.]

Mai's Seed

Going one layer deeper. Different trade shows have inherently different positioning; applying the same exhibition strategy across the board is insufficient. A brand's focus should adjust according to the characteristics of each show.

The SCISE, backed by Guangzhou's millennia-old commercial heritage, has the strongest transactional attribute. The audience here has decision-making power, procurement budgets, and comes to do business. Therefore, at SCISE, a brand's core action is conversion – booth design should facilitate negotiations, sales pitches should be direct, and the primary goal is to secure a contract or leave substantial leads.

The Beijing exhibition has a different audience profile, with a higher proportion of academic institutions, public hospital systems, and policy-sensitive purchasers. This determines that brands at the Beijing exhibition should bet more on professional endorsement and academic recognition – clinical evidence, KOL endorsements, and research collaborations are more persuasive than low-price promotions.

CDS (Chinese Stomatological Association Annual Meeting) follows another logic. CDS's core audience is clinical doctors; it's the annual gathering of China's dental academic circle. Technical education and word-of-mouth penetration are the main purposes for brands to participate. Enabling doctors to have hands-on experience and leave a deep impression at CDS can influence product repurchases and referrals over the next year or two more than signing any number of orders.

Mai's Seed

The true value of a trade show does not lie in how many orders were signed at once. It gives you three market signals: who actively approaches you reflects the real structure of market demand; who newly enters the exhibition reflects the direction of industry capital and technology sectors; and the on-site traffic structure tells you exactly which decision stage the market is in. Understanding these three signals, and then aligning them with your own product stage and the exhibition's positioning, allows you to design a truly effective booth strategy.

One exhibition, three signals – it just depends on whether you want to catch them.

I am Mai. Wishing everyone great fortune, great luck, and great sales!

This article is based on an oral account by Mai Zijian | Compiled by the DGN Editorial Team.