On July 11, the 2025 Sinoexpo Informa Markets mid-year meeting was grandly held at The St. Regis Shanghai Jingan Hotel. More than 100 colleagues, including the company’s rotating chairmanship leadership, core management team, Key Managers, branch offices, subsidiaries, and speaking representatives gathered together to participate in this important meeting themed “Breaking Through Bottlenecks.” Management representatives from Sinoexpo Informa Markets’ partners, MCW Expo and Frozen Cube Exhibition, were also invited to attend this event.
Sinoexpo Informa Markets’ development reached a peak before the pandemic. During the pandemic, Sinoexpo discussed and formulated an integrated online-offline development strategy and a series of innovative initiatives, and leveraging the post-pandemic market growth wave, achieved record performance growth for the following two years.
Entering 2025, Sinoexpo’s development has encountered a “Bottleneck” period. This includes both market uncertainties and challenges to Sinoexpo’s core competitiveness. Against this background, how will we break through? How can we overcome these bottlenecks? This is a major issue facing Sinoexpo’s sustainable development. This mid-year meeting will focus on this theme, divided into the following 5 topics:
- Sustainable development (promoting growth, accelerating momentum)
- Breaking old patterns and establishing new ones (innovation, intelligent transformation)
- Development strategies (seeking new transformation models)
- Talent, organization and incentive mechanisms (adapting to Sinoexpo’s new growth dynamics)
- Others: Open Ideas (generating ideas and sharing perspectives from different angles)
Each department and team will pool their wisdom and speak freely at the mid-year meeting. After the meeting, discussions will be summarized, consensus formed, compiled into a publication that will become Sinoexpo’s development guidelines for the next 3-5 years.
Members of the company’s rotating chairmanship, Executive Chairwoman Ms. EUNICE Weng, and the company’s Executive Vice President and current Rotating Chairman Mr. JONATHAN Ni served as moderators for the morning and afternoon sessions respectively. Ms. Weng delivered the opening speech, first extending a warm welcome to everyone attending this gathering of Sinoexpo’s elite talents. She pointed out that this mid-year meeting themed “Breaking Through Bottlenecks” would feature 66 speakers sharing insights around 5 major theme topics, with 20% of the participants attending for the first time. The meeting brought together Sinoexpo’s emerging forces to contribute ideas and strategies for the company’s sustainable growth.。
Topic One: Sustainable Development (Promoting Growth, Accelerating Momentum)
This session was moderated by Ms. HELEN Fan, a member of the company’s rotating chairmanship and Executive Vice President. She summarized this discussion segment with the keyword “resilience.” She emphasized that colleagues must make proactive choices rather than face passive elimination. Following this, 15 partners from various project teams presented their perspectives using vivid viewpoints and authentic case studies, covering topics including:
“Content Partner Program,” “Going Global Strategy,” “Digital Management Dashboard,” “Industry Chain Extension,” “Finding New Tracks,” “Upgrading Content Ecosystem,” “Diversified Breakthrough,” “Competition-Driven Development,” “Regional Strategy,” “International Market Expansion,” “Innovative Synergy, Quality Development,” and more. Everyone contributed ideas and strategies for the company’s sustainable development, growth promotion, and acceleration with full enthusiasm and positive energy.
In conclusion, Ms. Fan pointed out that the three core driving forces for enterprise value creation are immediate profitability, linear growth capability, and exponential sustainable development capability, which correspond respectively to the bottom line of survival, development momentum, and the ultimate test of navigating through business cycles. For enterprises to achieve development across cycles, they must possess sustainable development capabilities.
Topic Two: Breaking Old Patterns and Establishing New Ones (Innovation, Intelligent Transformation)
The second theme was “Breaking Old Patterns and Establishing New Ones (Innovation, Intelligent Transformation),” moderated by Ms. STELLA Zhong, a member of the company’s rotating chairmanship and Executive Vice President. Fifteen colleagues from various business units and branch offices presented selected case studies including “Building a Comprehensive New Media Promotion Ecosystem,” “Financial Inquiry Automation,” “Creating Cross-Industry Training Camps,” “How to Better Utilize AI and Other New Productive Forces,” “Packaging Premium Resources for Collaborative Symbiosis,” “Exploring New Fields Through Conferences,” and “From Innovative Talent to Innovative Organization to Innovative Tools.” These presentations comprehensively demonstrated how various teams at Sinoexpo are breaking through development bottlenecks by discarding outdated approaches and establishing new ones through innovation and intelligent transformation.。
Topic Three: Development Strategies (Seeking New Transformation Models)
The third topic of the meeting addressed “Development Strategies,” moderated by Ms. EUNICE Weng, a member of the company’s rotating chairmanship and Executive Chairwoman. She divided this theme into two parts: new development strategies for mature exhibitions, and exploration of NEW LAUNCHES for new exhibitions/events/products. Fifteen colleagues shared their thoughts and practices on BD, covering topics such as “Being a Localized Innovator,” “Anchoring New Productive Forces,” “From Large and Beautiful to Specialized and Refined,” “Launching the New Lighting Exhibition,” “Becoming a Digital Application Provider,” “Realizing Industry Value Creation and Connection Platform,” “Developing Industrial Ecosystems,” and more. Building on everyone’s presentations, Ms. Weng proposed the concepts of a second growth curve (breakthroughs in exhibition-related areas, cultivation and scaling of new projects, online breakthroughs combined with offline elements) and a third growth curve (digitalization of products, profitable models for services beyond exhibitions). These insights provided numerous inspirations for the audience.
Topic Four: Talent, Organization and Incentive Mechanisms
Topic four addressed content related to talent, organization, and incentives, moderated by Ms. DENISE Fu, the company’s CHO. She shared statistics on Sinoexpo’s total number of employees, average age, and the distribution ratio of post-90s and post-00s employees, pointing out that Sinoexpo’s employee age structure and composition are trending younger. Subsequently, speakers engaged in discussions around this theme, covering:
-Regarding talent: Versatile talent, reshaping the “wolf spirit” culture, talent in the AI era, external recruitment versus internal training, promotion versus elimination.
-Regarding organization: Innovative organizational structures adapting to growth-oriented enterprise development, including company, business unit, team, and group levels.
-Regarding incentives: Reform and adjustment of existing annual salary and commission distribution structures, encouraging innovation, developing new growth, breakthrough incentive policies for challenging projects and continuously growing projects. Balancing distribution for underperforming projects.
Some new suggestions and initiatives were proposed by the speaking representatives, including: building tri-functional composite teams, innovative project incubation, using AI tests for talent screening, and constructing BD innovation groups. These proposals were particularly innovative and fresh.
Topic Five: Open Forum
This session was moderated by Mr. JONATHAN Ni, the company’s Rotating Chairman, who invited speakers to share ideas from different perspectives around the three-year sustainable development roadmap, from strategic development implementation to annual growth, in conjunction with the online-offline integration white paper and the ten-year doubling plan’s development progress.
Participants spoke freely, proposing ideas such as establishing industry alliances, upgrading and iterating competitions, breakthrough strategies for the Travel Expo themed exhibitions, Sinoexpo Premium’s creation of industry solutions, innovative models and pricing innovations for furniture factory direct sales, as well as the finance department’s comparative insight analysis of the company’s business revenue. These discussions covered different levels and dimensions, providing significant benefits to all attendees.
Conclusion from Mr. Wang Mingliang
Finally, the host invited Mr. Wang Mingliang, founder and director of Sinoexpo Informa Markets, to deliver the meeting’s conclusion. Wang mentioned the company’s performance in the first half of the year, noting the growth in net exhibition area and visitor numbers, with particularly significant growth in overseas visitors. However, he also acknowledged a slowdown in growth rate, frankly admitting that the company has encountered a development bottleneck. Against this background, this mid-year meeting was held with the hope of providing a roadmap for the company’s development over the next 3-5 years. Mr. Wang pointed out that the overall economy is currently in a period of slow growth, and the money-making skills of the past are no longer sufficient for the present. He called on everyone to focus more on substance and less on slogans in their future work. Reviewing the company’s history, he noted that Sinoexpo has experienced both bottleneck periods and rapid development phases. Looking at the elements of the previous three growth cycles: the “substance” of the first round was acquiring and introducing branded projects; the “substance” of the second round included venue factors and strategic positioning; the “substance” of the third round was the spin-off of hotel, catering, and lifestyle exhibitions, regional development, and innovation. The “substance” of the new round will unfold in the coming half year. Mr. Wang then shared several stories about willpower that he had recently read, using these to inspire all Sinoexpo colleagues. He emphasized that to achieve the company’s ten-year doubling plan, everyone needs to continuously strengthen their willpower and work together to “climb over that mountain,” which was also the main purpose of today’s meeting.
