How to spend less on a trade show in Kazakhstan and get more out of your stand?

I am writing from Almaty, and every season we see the same thing at trade shows. A company from abroad with a good product, a local buyer who needs that product, and nobody between them to answer questions about delivery, certificates and payment in a language the buyer understands. The buyer leaves with a brochure.

You will pay for the stand whatever you decide, but the delegation is worth counting again. AUMA, which speaks for the German trade fair industry, asked 400 German exhibitors how their budgets were changing. 56.2% reported a significant rise in hotel costs and 54.2% in travel costs, and 27.1% named more people on the stand as one of the reasons their costs went up.

Going by the census, plenty of people here speak English. According to the 2021 results, 35.1% of people aged five and over understand English, and 27.6% speak it fluently. Roughly one in three, which sounds quite good. There is one caveat, and it matters: these figures are self-assessed. People answer for themselves, online or to a census taker, and nobody asks them to say a few words about themselves in English.

The EF test measures English by having people use it. They take it voluntarily and the sample does not represent the whole population, but the picture it draws is harsher. In the 2025 index Kazakhstan ranks 107th of 123 countries and regions, in the "very low proficiency" band. Speaking is the weakest of the participants' skills at 392 points, against 429 for reading. Many people find reading English easier than speaking it. And at a stand, as luck would have it, speaking is the whole job.

And that is the national average. Astana scores 460, Almaty 457, Shymkent 377, Karaganda 337. Visitors come to the shows in Almaty and Astana from other cities too, and a buyer from Shymkent will probably find it easier to discuss an order in Kazakh or Russian than in English.

Kazakh is the state language of Kazakhstan, and under the new Constitution Russian is officially used alongside it in state organisations. In our practice, contracts, specifications and correspondence with distributors are in Russian, and we add Kazakh to the materials for the end buyer when the product calls for it.

An interpreter closes this gap only in part. In 2012 the Economist Intelligence Unit asked 572 executives at companies that operate abroad or plan to whether misunderstandings had got in the way of major international deals. About half said it had happened to them more than once and had cost the company money. At a stand it happens faster and more quietly. An interpreter hired for three days translates the words faithfully. A question about the minimum order, lead times or payment deferral goes to your manager, the interpreter waits for the answer and translates it back. Every question passes through two translations, while the visitor has hundreds of other stands in the hall and is counting his time for them too.

A distributor who asked about the price of a batch at the stand reads a letter a week later in a language he understands, and it answers his question. Next he will open your website, and it helps if that is in Russian too. In September I wrote in the journal about why that takes more than translating your corporate site.

You have booked the stand, translated the catalogue and put together a team. Both questions from the start, what the trip costs and in which language a distributor will approach you, can be settled before you fly. We at Artifact work the stands of foreign manufacturers at sector fairs in Almaty and Astana: one representative comes from you, and the rest is ours. The full package takes us six weeks to put together, a team alone two. We quote for each show with every line of the estimate shown separately, and you choose the lines. The floor space and the organiser's fees you pay directly to the organiser. More about the service.

Galina Sorokina