HZ info, November 24, 2025 – A highly anticipated gathering in the coatings industry, the 21st Coatings Industry Summit, was grandly convened in Shanghai. Co-hosted by iBuychem, HZ info, and Digital Silk Road, the summit convened under the theme "Efficient Revitalization, Intelligent Connectivity for a Global Reach." It brought together elites from across the coatings industry value chain, attracting active participation and support from numerous leading enterprises. Together, they contributed insights and strategies for the future development of the coatings sector.

David Guo，CEO of IBuychem

David Guo，CEO of IBuychem , delivered the opening address titled "Chinese Coatings: Born Global." Drawing from his team's experience in deeply cultivating the Saudi market since 2019, David began by noting that while China's manufacturing capacity is vast, it coexists with significant opportunities. He stated that "for Chinese manufacturing today, global expansion is no longer an option but a necessity; failure to go global means being phased out." He emphasized that the key to successful overseas expansion lies in mindset: proactively "venturing into the world" to seek growth is the path to securing the future. Conversely, expanding overseas merely as a passive reaction to domestic competition ("being rolled") or pressure ("being forced"), while persisting with old practices like low-price competition, is doomed to fail.

Based on practical experience in markets like Saudi Arabia, David outlined a roadmap for successful globalization: Deep localization is essential – building trust and becoming "trusted partners" with locals, integrating into the community, creating employment, and becoming an integral part of the local manufacturing ecosystem. Industry collaboration for collectivegoing globalis crucial to leverage China's overall advantages in formulation optimization and supply chain resilience. Enterprises should fully utilize resources from overseas Chinese business associations and Chinese embassies/consulates. Particularly, a digital-first approach is vital – establishing initial brand awareness and a customer base in target markets through online marketing and product digitalization before following up with offline visits, thereby achieving greater efficiency. To this end, iBuychem has developed services like an AI Marketing Matrix and "Foreign Trade Connect" to help companies promote themselves efficiently at low cost.

Addressing the challenging industry landscape, David pointed out that the coatings and waterproofing sector faces issues like a supply-demand reversal and overall market contraction. However, opportunities for breakthroughs remain: there is a need to guide the exit of outdated capacity; companies must steadfastly invest in R&D, focusing on opportunities in functional coatings, high-end industrial coatings, and the stock market. He specifically urged companies to "tenaciously tackle" the high-margin, high-value industrial coatings segment to avoid being trapped in vicious price wars.

David detailed how iBuychem aids corporate transformation and global expansion. For domestic trade services, iBuychem collaborates with the industry to develop high-quality "Quality Housing" and renovation projects, vigorously promotes industrial coatings market expansion, utilizes new media to advocate for industry innovation and green quality, co-develops cost and price indices with the China National Coatings Industry Association to help companies "reduce costs," refines the "Premium Materials Library" to enhance R&D efficiency, and guides firms to adopt "AI for Marketing Ecosystem Transformation" to boost efficiency. In enabling global expansion, iBuychem delivers value bilaterally, offering the "Foreign Trade Connect" digital globalization solution. As a partner of the Canton Fair's "Bridge for Trade" initiative, it helps "bring in" global procurement demand. Furthermore, it has established services in Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Nigeria, Egypt, and elsewhere, including buyer mining, overseas warehousing, and semi-hosted incubation, assisting SMEs to "go global" with precision, stability, and low cost. He revealed the team's existing presence in Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Russia, with plans to expand into Latin America, all dedicated to solving the challenge of accessing global buyers for enterprises.

Concluding with "confidence is more precious than gold,"David expressed firm belief in the vitality of China's private enterprises. He encouraged all to maintain confidence, actively embrace change, and discover new opportunities in the battle for survival shifting from "quantity" to "quality."

The successful hosting of the 2025 Coatings Industry Summit has not only established an efficient platform for technical exchange and commercial cooperation within China's coatings industry but has also propelled the concept of "Digital Globalization" to permeate deeply throughout the sector. As the global coatings market continues to grow and the wave of digitalization accelerates, Chinese coatings enterprises are poised to leverage digital technologies as their sails and their complete industrial chain as the foundation. This positions them to successfully break through bottlenecks in foreign trade growth and advance the Chinese coatings industry into a new stage of high-quality globalized development.