by Alan Gensoli
The Negros Trade Fair might as well be the mother of all trade fairs in Metro Manila. It doesn’t matter that it pops up on weekends or near the holidays, or carries on all year through, if it looks like a tiangge, sells like a tiangge, feels like a tiangge, then it must be a tiangge. Indeed, even the word tiangge, the Ilonggo moniker for small store, seems to have displaced the more traditional Tagalog “sari-sari store”.
Held every September, the erstwhile Negros Trade Fair moved from
humbler venues in Makati to the Rockwell Tent and the Glorietta Mall. It is the longest-running provincial trade fair held in Manila, all of 34 uninterrupted years, uninterrupted until Covid-19. As with most businesses in the country, the Association of Negros Producers, the organization behind the Negros Trade Fair, regrouped in 2020.
The hiccup over, the Negros Trade Fair is back. And in 2021 it returns with new, palpable energy. From May 29 to June 30, the Negros Trade Fair will be physically hosted at the ANP’s new HQ in Bacolod City. Aptly called “The Hub”, it will become the permanent address of the ANP’s store, locally popularized as The Negros Showroom. And The Hub will be the center of all activities essential to the work of the ANP, from research and development, to marketing, to sales.
But the Negros Trade Fair is going beyond physical borders on May 29th . No doubt egged on in part by the pandemic, the ANP will launch an online selling platform for this year’s fair. The e-commerce website, www.shopnegrostradefair.com , will expand the audience of all products carried by the producers of the ANP.
Seeing the opportunity to be of real assistance to Negros entrepreneurs at this time, the Negros Season of Culture sought collaboration between the ANP and Union Bank GlobalLinker, a free-to-use digital platform that enables micro, small, and medium enterprises to access global growth. ANP producers will be joining the ranks of close to 300,000 entrepreneurs currently enrolled in the platform in the Philippines, India, and Thailand. They can get matched with similar businesses, meet fellow entrepreneurs, access exclusive deals, join workshops, learn from success stories, and build online stores for free.
The Negros Season of Culture believes that working with Union Bank GlobalLinker delivers a calculable impetus for the efforts of ANP producers to innovate, move ahead, and tap the opportunities of a new business landscape.
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