Sets of electronic components

Recently, after a Government organized exhibition, our Chinese future partners that manufacture buttons have visited us. One of their questions was whether we visit any exhibitions ourselves. We answered that the only civil product exhibition worth visiting in Russia is held in spring. We spoke of the costs of participation. And then I started thinking, was there at least one manufacturer who participated in the exhibition twice?

Once again, it should be noted that it is only applicable to manufacturers. Out of more than a dozen of our partners, no one has participated twice.

It makes sense. By China’s standards, Russia has only a hundred manufacturers that can be considered big. The rest of the manufacturers are small by China’s standard. Yes, most of them export by themselves, but their product amount per PCs is not very high and rarely reaches five digits. The cost of participating in Russian exhibitions starts from 100000 CNY.

It’s easier and more effective to visit most big manufacturers independently, and you don’t have to participate in an exhibition to find a distributor or a representative.
The Russian Market is not very big, it accounts to no more than 0.5% of the World Market. But now, when Western brands started to step back, setting the scene for lower-priced Chinese manufacturers, the market only decreased monetarily.  In 2020 it was believed that the Russian Market on electronic components is around US$2.5 billion, 30% of which represent domestic components. Foreign components, on the other hand, amounted to US$1.75 billion.

In reality, available sales in Russia were even lower, no more than US$1.5 billion according to my calculations.
Why is that? In Russia there are a lot of factories and assemblies manufacturing Western devices, for example LG and Samsung that have components supplied through those companies’ distribution centers. If Samsung received money for components from its own Russian factory; paid manufacturers for components and then shipped it across Russia it should definitely be considered a process of the Global market generally and the Russian Market specifically. However in terms of influence, added value and supply chain it should not be considered the Russian Market, but rather the Korean Market of electronic components. As a Russian supplier, I don’t have any chance of entering this supply chain. To supply Chinese, American or Russian components within this chain one would need to visit not Russia, but South Korea.

I work in direct sales in Russia and for me US$1.5 billion is way more realistic of a sum. It sure is large, but if we were to break it down, we would get more reasonable numbers.

For example, 8532220000 Aluminum electrolytic capacitor with fixed value
In 2022 the Market amounted to US$16 million.
This is quite a large amount, but if we were to separate it by all Chinese manufacturers of aluminium electrolytic capacitors the sum is going to decrease.
But now and in 2025 this amount of US$1.5 billion lessened even more. And this is not including 20% VAT added during customs and is not included in the sales price of the manufacturers themselves.
A minimum of 5% added fee for shipment also needs to be accounted for, meaning that net cost of components in China exceeds US$1.2 billion.
Selling to Russian companies from within China is one thing, but travelling to Russia to participate in exhibitions is not so interesting, especially for highly specialized manufacturers that only produce a single product, for example capacitors.

Below is a list of some distributors/brokers/ sales compiled by me from open sources, in billions USD.

Broker	2021	2022	2023	2024
1	0,215	0,221	0,130	0,095
2	0,079	0,063	0,036	0,044
3	0,073	0,069	0,046	0,044
4	0,071	0,101	0,099	0,099
5	0,020	0,059	0,079	0,082
6	0,012	0,017	0,021	0,016
7	0,008	0,015	0,019	0,018
8	0,027	0,025	0,023	0,018
Total	0,505	0,570	0,454	0,417

 

It is important to clearly understand that those partners only work in the civil market and only with foreign components.

There are a lot of reasons for such decline. Several factors had an influence on brokers’ declining sales.

1. The loss of the distributor status of Western brands. Right now Russia doesn’t have distributors. In China, the word “distributor” is very abstract.
2. As a result, many manufacturers drastically increased direct purchase in China. In 2023 it was even a bit too enthusiastic, due to an extreme uncertainty.
3. Microchip allocation has stopped, the prices dropped significantly.
4. Massive replacement of components to Chinese ones has begun, with rapid decrease of components’ prices. For example, part IRLML0030TRPBF made by  Infineon in Europe costs US$0.05; in Mainland China – US$0.04, and a counterpart produced by a Chinese factory costs US$0.02, which is two times cheaper than in Europe, where this component was earlier bought by Russian Infineon distributors.
5. Sanctions and key rate of The Central Bank of Russia, lowering of the production amounts by manufacturers, that had experienced a more drastic slowdown  in 2025.

Those factors, especially no. 4 led to an even larger decrease of the market in the monetary side of the civil part of the Market. It is important to understand that in Russia IRLML0030 part’s sales in single units didn’t drop or dropped unremarkably, but the total amount of revenue of IRLML0030 part dropped significantly. The same thing can be said about almost every other discretes, passive components and connectors. The situation with microchips is not so severe, but only because it’s harder to replace them, the difference in price is not that substantial and it’s still possible to buy Western chips in China. But almost every Russian manufacturer has had Chinese microchip control variants of their products for a while now.

So let’s get to the point. Russia with its millions of dollars in Chinese prices is too small for all of the Chinese manufacturers to fit in. The only ones to benefit largely from this happened to be the ones who either already were in Russia before 2022, or those who make counterparts for Western microchips.

For the rest it’s a bit too late to come to Russia. The search for partners through the exhibition is almost pointless. It’s not completely impossible, but only one of our partners has found other associates besides us in Russia, and that wasn’t even through an exhibition, but by visiting an office.

The most important thing is, Russia is a country of small and medium size factories compared to China.

Having your product in stock at a warehouse in Russia is not a particular advantage, it’s a key sales factor. Whether you’ll open said warehouse yourself or find partners is up to you.

Big Russian manufacturers will find you themselves if they are interested in your product, or you could pay them a visit.

The Russian civil market of components is surrounded by Chinese manufacturers, you are not competing with Western brands, you’re competing with other Chinese manufacturers.

In a company I work with I am responsible for development of our company’s own brand https://radiodetali.com/keen-side/
If you’re a manufacturer and are willing to make your products under our brand, please write to me over email or on LinkedIn.
Please write KEEN SIDE in the topic of the email. Important to note, I only work with Chinese manufacturers of electronic components, I’m not looking for PCB, Western components, quotations, shipment and other things.

One of my personal endeavors is making sample boxes that I distribute through our clients or sell through our partners. I make dozens of different sets on KEEN SIDE and other brands.
On the package of KEEN SIDE sample sets I write where they can be bought.
Thus, one of the options is not to invest 100000 CNY into the exhibition, but to bring me the product or already made sample boxes and like this spread your product with your contact info for contact.  If you already have sets ready, it’s possible to sell them in Russia.
Such sets are bought not by general audiences planning to fix a kettle once a year. Such sets are bought by people who frequently deal with repair, development, so those are most likely to work in companies within the electronics industry. Of course, 95% of such sets are going to be bought for personal usage, even if bought by engineers, but the other 5% is still companies, the rest will depend on your competitiveness.

Below are ready to buy sample packages that are already on sale.