In August about 40 exhibiting companies of Milano Unica will travel to China, resuming the appointment interrupted a few years ago. This was confirmed to Spola by President Alessandro Barberis Canonico at the end of the opening ceremony of Milano Unica. “Given the request of some of our exhibitors and the difficulty for many Chinese buyers to travel to Europe,” he explains, “we have decided on this institutional presence: we are talking about forty companies, therefore an excellent representation that traces the numbers of the old participations, indeed we are counting some new entries in the team. We are confident that this trip will be a success, also due to the timing at the end of August’.
This is further confirmation of the importance of the Italian textile fair in the international arena, a topic that was much discussed among the stands in Rho where the impressions generated by the last edition of Première Vision are still very much alive.
Barberis Canonico himself cannot help but make a comment on the subject: “Numbers are numbers,” he concludes, “Première Vision remains a very important fair, but the fact that today, on this first day, the number of visitors to Milano Unica from China was seven times those of the last edition certainly means something. As does the interesting presence of Korean visitors.
Only on Friday will we be able to make a true assessment, but these first figures tell us that Asia is coming back and has chosen Milano Unica. Even US visitors had a 7% increase on this first day‘.
Numbers that bode well and that go hand in hand with the sensations that many exhibitors also present in Paris perceived among the stands of the French fair. First and foremost Andrea Cavicchi, who with his Archè was also present at Première Vision but is seriously considering making an exclusive choice for Milan: “Given the timing,” he comments, “we find ourselves doubling the investment of resources and energy in the space of two weeks without having any real added value, considering the performance of the French fair in recent years. A preference for Milano Unica also comes from Dinamo through the mouth of Sandro Ciardi. But it is not a preference that only concerns the people of Prato. Massimo Colombo, CEO of Colombo Industrie Tessili, also confirms the choice for Milano Unica, which certainly has all the numbers to become the real Made in Italy fair.
