Performance Days May aims for 1,000 visitors
The Sixth Performance Days Trade Fair is dues to take place in Annecy, France from 12-13 May 2011, and in Munich, Germany from 16-17 May, 2011.
The November 2010 fair had an increase in visitor numbers of 60% on previous events, and this year’s trade fair has its sights set on topping the 1000-guest mark. New to the fair are: a bigger location in Munich, a new exhibition newspaper, a new Bluesign area, and an expanded guest speaker program.
The founding family Weichert and the trade fair team are especially proud of the new location in Munich. For reasons of space, the exhibition was moved from the former location at the Reithalle to the MTC facilities (Munich Textile Centre) on Frankfurter Ring. Consequently, the number of exhibitor stands has increased from 64 to 74. Among the newcomers to the May fair are firms including Eschler from Switzerland, GE’s eVent Fabrics from the US, Borgini Jersey Mybe from Italy and Dyntex from Austria. Furthermore, the Performance Forum established by designer Alexa Dehmel has also doubled in size from 150 square metres to 300 square metres.
Another new feature at the fair is the Bluesign area, where all the Bluesign-certified suppliers have been assigned neighbouring exhibit stands for convenience. At the centre of this section is the Bluesign stand. “We now see Bluesign as one of the most important standards for the textile sector and want to emphasize this status with the area,” said Marco Weichert, fair organiser, explaining the new stand arrangement. “The professional visitor should be able to tell at a glance which of our exhibitors are Bluesign members.”
A brand new service for all professional visitors is “Performance News,” a newspaper for every exhibition containing current information about events, presentations and text and photos of the latest performance trends in functional materials. The newspaper is distributed free of charge at the fair and, as a special service to all registered guests, exhibitors, and members of the press, advance distribution of performance trends per mailing in digital format.
The guest speaker programme has also been expanded. Over the course of this round of Performance Days about ten interesting topics will be presented. In addition to the colour trends identified by designer association IDEAS, presented by Nora Kühner, for the first time there will also be a comprehensive presentation about the latest trends in functional fabrics. This talk, presented by industry journalist Ulrike Arlt, will be the kick-off address in Munich. Other new speakers include experts from the Hohenstein Research Institute, who will address the function in functional fabrics, as well as Gerd Bittl from the internet portal Sportsella, who shares the new possibilities of sales training. A special highlight is a presentation by Charline Ducas (Textile Exchange) with lots of information about sustainable materials and the recycling of polyester and nylon.
