Two days in Italy to present the novelties of the fair, feel the pulse of the market and rediscover a feeling with exhibitors that had been partly lost. The first stop in Milan, the second in Prato for Florence Rousson and her team: 48 hours of meetings, presentations, slides, questions and answers to show textile entrepreneurs the path that the French manager intends to follow to bring back to the Parc des Expositions those who, in recent years, have decided not to participate in Première Vision Paris.
The fact that the thread that used to bind Italian weavers to the Paris show in what seemed to be an indissoluble way has been consumed and partly severed is demonstrated by the numbers: those of the Prato district, which in the last two years has launched signs of love for Milano Unica by renouncing its liason with PV, are almost pitiless.
It is from these assumptions that Florence Rousson has moved to try to reverse the trend: on the one hand the interest in maintaining Première Vision in the role of leading trade fair at European level, on the other the need to review the dates, with the Italians in clear majority in favour of a return to the September date, without putting themselves in opposition with exhibitors from other geographical areas, Turkey in primis.
It is a puzzle that is not easy to solve and to put it together Rousson is using tact and planning, with choices that will be judged over time: “Some things will turn out to be right and other things wrong,” he admits without presumption, but in the meantime the first novelties are already under the magnifying glass of the “disgruntled”. The change of date has arrived, the first novelties already seen in July have been confirmed, such as the Platinum Club and the layout in just two halls to optimise visitors’ time. Special focus on the PV Cube, the closed space that will allow selected exhibitors to show their fabrics to equally selected customers. In addition, there will be the possibility of new customisable stands.
The requests that came in during the meetings were partly clear (to bring the right customers for Italian quality production to the fair, to do careful matchmaking, to make sure that the expense-return ratio turns positive, to be able to participate in Blossom without doing PV) and partly more general, and the feeling is that a winning formula to bring PV back to the centre of Italian exhibitors’ desires is still being worked out.
‘A lot depends on the response of the markets,’ said Rousson, ‘starting with the nationality of the exhibitors. We are also repositioning the show at the centre of the French institutional and political system, we are supporting the incoming operation for foreign customers, we have a staff of thirty people who work with Desolina Suter to work out trends, we are implementing the digital part of the app, the website and the newsletter to give more visibility to those who participate in the show’.
Among the novelties is also a Canadian version of PV: ‘We decided to organise it,’ confirmed the general manager of the Fashion division of GL events, ‘after talking to the exhibitors of PV New York. It will take place once a year in Montreal with 80-100 companies. It is a way to ‘go home’ to an interesting market, as we have done, for example, by taking Tranoi to Tokyo’.
