Handicraft players to woo importers at fair next week

Organisers claim fair will have more than 2,600 exhibitors including 900 permanent marts

At a time when exports are rising by double digits a month year-on-year, over 2,600 exhibitors from the handicraft segment will showcase their products, primarily to woo overseas buyers at a fair to be held from Monday in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh.

The four-day Indian Handicrafts & Gifts Fair is aimed providing a platform to the handicraft exporters from India and the importers from rest of the world to conduct business based on mutual interests.

The fair is organised twice a year.

The organisers claimed that the fair will have more than 2,600 exhibitors including 900 permanent marts, drawn from various regions and states of India displaying a very wide variety of products.

The major product categories will be gifts ware, kitchenware, decorations, furnishing, furniture, tableware, garden ware, house ware and fashion accessories.

Eco-friendly products made out of different raw material bases like wood, cane and bamboo, textiles of natural fibres, wool, silk, jute, coir, leather, terracotta, lacquer will be a focus.

The uniqueness of the products showcased at this fair will continue to be the domination of hand crafted and hand made products where machines are used only for finishing purposes, the organisers said.

Though hand crafted products are displayed at many other fairs in the world, hand crafted products produced in countries such as China, Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia are predominantly machine-made and hand work is done only for finishing.

This is the reason that these countries cater to bulk orders in thousands and millions.

Unlike this, India still has predominance of hand crafted and hand made products.

Handicrafts exports registered an increase of 11.27% in dollar terms during the first six months of the year 2013-14 over the corresponding period in the previous year.