( dpa ) - The Nuremberg Toy Fair company pulled out Monday of its co-organizer role at the Shanghai Toy Expo, saying the Chinese event had proved uneconomic and too inward-looking.
Organizers of German trade fairs, which are often the leading annual events in their business sectors, have set up matching regional affairs abroad, tapping into additional earnings and selling their expertise in running such events.
But the Nuremberg company, which has been organizing the Chinese event in partnership with the China Toy Association (CTA), said stand bookings by non-Chinese exhibitors had failed to grow as hoped, "despite many years of extremely intensive development work."
The "consumer market for toys" in China still lacked the necessary dynamism to generate adequate sales volume for western brands there, Nuremberg Toy Fair chief executive Ernst Kick explainesd.
Toymakers have voiced hopes for several years that the rising Chinese middle class will begin to spend heavily on US and European toy brands, partly balancing out China's massive toy exports as the world's biggest toy manufacturer.
"All in all, the Shanghai Toy Expo with 415 exhibitors at the last event has developed positively," the announcement said. "However ... the import orientation and the internationalization of the event have not achieved the targets set."
Kick said that there had also been an inflationary upsurge in the number of national toy fairs in the region, which had made it difficult to establish the Shanghai Toy Expo as the leading Asian fair in the sector.
The announcement said CTA would continue to operate the event as sole partner. The Nuremberg company also organizes the Toy Russia trade fair.