Author
Galina Sorokina
Founder, Artifact, Almaty
Galina on LinkedInFounder of Artifact, a market entry agency in Almaty. Since 2011 the team has built and promoted more than a hundred sites for companies in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Belarus, filmed at plants and mines for ERG and KazMinerals among others, and since 2024 works on the other side of the table: presenting foreign brands to the distributors of the region.
The Journal and the market briefings are written by the Artifact team and signed by Galina. Every figure is traced to its source before it is published; where the origin cannot be found, the text says so.
Articles
- $30,000one trade-show trip to Almaty: three days, one hall. Or three months across the regionTrade shows10 September 2026 · 15 min read
Where the $30,000 of an Almaty trade show trip goes, and what the same money buys in digital marketing
In September 2025 KazBuild and Aquatherm Almaty ran for three days at the Atakent exhibition centre. In their results the organisers wrote 8,886 visitors, counted without repeat entries, and 639 companies from 30 countries, 313 of them foreign at KazBuild alone. I divided one by the other and got fourteen people per stand. You cannot count it that way, I know, one visitor walks past dozens of stands in a day. The proportion still tells you a lot: more than three hundred foreign brands, some in person and some through a local representative, shared the attention of fewer than nine thousand people for three days.
Read next - 50msall it takes to judge a homepage, before a word is readWebsites5 September 2026 · 4 min read
You Already Have a Site. Do You Need a New One for CIS or Central Asia
The company already has a website. It works, it took months to sign off, and the whole home market runs on it. Building a second one sounds like an unnecessary expense when the existing one can simply be translated. The problem is that a website carries an idea of what a company worth dealing with looks like. In another market that idea is different, and translation does not change it.
Read next - 10channels a B2B buyer touches before a deal, double the count in 2016, McKinseyTrade shows5 September 2026 · 5 min read
First Time at a Trade Show in a New Region - and They Already Expect You. This Article Explains How.
A trade fair puts the right people in one hall, which is a fair reason to go. But a distributor at your stand has a few minutes for a brand they have never heard of. If nothing preceded that meeting, the stand has to introduce you, prove you are competent and move toward a deal in the same conversation. That is too much for three minutes.
Read next - $47BUzbekistan's imports in 2025, up 18.5% in a yearMarket data5 September 2026 · 3 min read
Uzbekistan: $47 Billion of Imports, Growing 18.5% a Year. How to Test Demand for Your Product Without Leaving Your Country
Before entering a new region a manufacturer answers one question: will they buy what I make here. The usual way to answer it is with money. A stand, flights, a trip to a distributor, a year of an account manager's time. The answer arrives last, once the budget is gone. It can be bought first instead.
Read next - €37,158average direct cost of one trade show, EuropeTrade shows4 September 2026 · 4 min read
€37,158 Per Trade Show. And 67% of Your Buyers Would Rather Not Meet You.
A European manufacturer spends an average of €37,158 in direct costs on a single exhibition. In the same period, 67% of B2B buyers told Gartner they would prefer to buy without talking to a sales rep at all. Both figures are from 2026 research. Together they explain why a stand full of visitors can still produce a quiet quarter.
Read next
Next step
Thinking about the region?
The Pilot month answers the question from inside the country: demand check, distributor map, first outreach, a written go or no-go read.