The calendar of events is taking shape. Fairs in attendance heat up the engines, while maintaining a hybrid dimension (physical + digital) experienced in 2020 due to Covid. An expected and necessary return for the market that from Pitti, pioneering on June 30th, will extend to all the events scheduled after the holidays, starting with Lineapelle, scheduled at Fieramilano Rho on September 22-24. Organisational issues and trade fair expectations were discussed on May 27th during a meeting organised by specialised platform GRS ExpoNetwork.
Fairs in attendance warm up the engines
In addition to Ernico Zannini (director of Cosmoprof), Fulvia Bacchi (Lineapelle’s CEO) and Raffaello Napoleone (Pitti’s CEO) were attending the meeting. The input was very simple: “June 15th, 2021, is the date for the reopening of fairs. An important historical moment, which takes place after the most difficult and complex evolutionary path of the world trade fair system”.
Covid, in fact, explains GRS, has catapulted the international trade fair system from its record year (2019) to a collapse (that of 2020) that will take time to rebalance (“At least three years”, says Napoleone). Therefore, evaluating how the management of medium-term budgets of the target audience of events will change, the GRS ExpoNetwork survey has reached an interesting conclusion.
In other words: the vast majority of exhibitors and visitors are divided between those who believe that fairs will retain their importance and those who claim that they will have more.
Lineapelle’s challenge
“We started three weeks ago – explains Fulvia Bacchi -, so far, we have had over 400 subscriptions. We consider it an important signal, also because what we repeatedly heard is that Lineapelle he’s been missed. This is because our fair physically serves to develop the research of materials intended for the entire manufacturing industry of fashion, design, automotive”.
Here, then, is the challenge: “We have chosen, as last September, a very simplified formula, with unified stands and solutions to guarantee maximum safety. Inevitably, there won’t be many foreign visitors, starting with Asians. With them, however, we have never interrupted the relationship thanks to a continuous series of remote initiatives. The main challenge, however, is to understand what to offer in the future as an exhibition event: because Lineapelle will have to be more than a fair and be enriched with contents. Digital is complementary, but it will not replace the trade fair experience of the future”.
Pitti’s choice
In the meantime, Pitti has chosen Thebe Magugu (27-year-old South African designer winner of the LVMH Prize) as the special guest of its 100th edition. Which, chronologically, represents the reboot event of the entire fashion trade fair system, opening on June 30th. “Organisational times have been very tight since the government decided to reopen fairs and congresses – concludes Napoleon -. We are quite advanced with the subscriptions and wee noted that the most felt problem is that of safety, despite the progress of vaccination campaigns”. The return to presence has therefore begun. Expectations are cautious (in general), but the mere possibility of restarting the exhibition mechanism undoubtedly represents a positive front.
In the picture: Lineapelle, September 2020
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