Everything that a home-builder might need, from furniture and paintings to carpets and electrical appliances, were on display, and at marked-down prices too. Hand-knotted woolen carpets, which are usually associated with international buyers, were probably the biggest draw.
“There´s a lot of good stuff here,” said Ram Chandra Gaire, a visitor to the expo, “but it´s especially nice to see the expo offering Nepali carpets at prices that fit the budget of Nepali consumers.”
With the customers buying, the sellers too were happy. Narayan Prasad Timilsana, the manager of New Horizon Carpet, said that his company was able to sell over Rs 2, 00,000 worth of carpets in the expo. “We have been badly hit by the economic downturn, and this expo has certainly helped us,” said Timilsina.
Most of the carpet sellers were selling off their goods at a 10 percent discount: for example, a 70x140 feet carpet was priced Rs 2,793 at one stall and an 8x10 feet carpet was tagged at Rs 21,350 at another.
And maybe it was because of the bazaar-like feel of it all, coupled with the discounts offered, that some people were even plunking down cash to take home high-end furniture--closets, sofa sets and beds. Then there were others who were lured by the cheaper unbreakable plastic products, such as buckets, mugs, dust pans.
Tsering Dolkar, one of the visitors, had quite a show put on for her when she was poring over the plastic items: “Of all the things here, I found one dustpan quite interesting,” she said. “the attendant at the stall was banging it on the floor to show me how strong it was.”
And? “I was sold,” she said.
Stories of successful sales made abounded at the expo, and according to the organizers, Alternative Profile (a producer of UPVC doors and windows), Clover (a seller of crushed and dried flowers), Black and Decker (an appliance company), and Pashupati Paints attracted the most visitors. The turnout was great too.
“Our expectations have been met,” said Mahesh Khadgi, the event coordinator. “We had expected around 25,000-30,000 visitors, and the turnout was around that number, ” Mahesh Khadgi, the event coordinator, said. The show was also successful, he added, because it helped to promote local and small-scale industries.
This year´s expo needed to succeed because, as Khadgi says, in 2007, the event hadn´t gone the way the organizers expected. But success breeds confidence, and thus the organizers are now planning to expand the event outside the valley and also hold the expo every year, instead of once every two years.
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