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Home > UNITED KINGDOM > Business events
MAISON & OBJET: ITALIAN FURNISHINGS ON SHOW IN PARIS
Rome (Ign) - Maison & Objet (www.maison-objet.com), will be a crucial event for home The leading fair for professionals in the sector of decoration and home furnishing will be hosted by the Planéte Meuble in Paris-Nord Villepinte between 26 and 30 January 2007. The event will take place on a surface area of 101,000 square metres, and 2860 exhibitors will be present, including Italy with a collective participation organised by the Italian Institute for Foreign Trade (ICE). Set up in 1995 and organised as it is every year by Safi - an expression of the French art studios - the previous edition (September 2006) attracted 66,000 visitors, mostly from the EU, but also many from Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In a very short time Maison & Objet has become an unmissable opportunity for all those professionals who want to be at the forefront and learn about the new trends for the 2007spring-summer season.
Italy could not miss out, and the annual balance sheet in the textiles and fashion sector, at the end of 2006, will in fact show a return to positive figures, after a difficult five years. This is revealed in a report drawn up by the SMI-ATI research centre, according to whom after a first uncertain quarter, the increase in turnover was over 2% and this threshold was easily exceeded in the July-September period with an increase in production and a progressive shift towards the higher end of the market. The increase in turnover, compared to the €51.9bn of 2006, should thus be around 2%.
Specifically, the home-furnishing textiles sector - which provides 10,000 jobs - now accounts for a turnover of around €1.8bn, 500m of which in exports. The sector of home linen, with 7000 jobs, accounts for almost 1bn in turnover, of which 155m in exports. So far, 53% of the sector's goods are destined for EU countries, but the sector of foreign sales has wide growth margins, seeing that only 15% of the total turnover comes from abroad. But in the January-July 2006 period the tendency significantly inverted: in the US market, the sales of home textiles increased by 15.1%, in Russia by 19% and in Spain by 5%. A series of increases, both in value and volume, which compensate for the losses in the Dutch, French and German markets, but which above all explain the high potential appeal of this product also on highly competitive markets such as the USA and Russia, which have trading partners such as China and India.
Italian home textiles can also count on a whole series of industrial districts of excellence. Among these stand out the District of Chieri-Cocconato, situated between Turin and Asti. The area is made up of a basin of 36 council districts with an overall population of over 80,000 inhabitants and has a tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. Today, the two districts of Chieri and Cocconato contain a high number of companies producing home linen, carpets, curtains, embroidery work and printing, in addition to technical textiles for industry and clothing. And the textiles industry in the area is famous, not only for the quality and high specialisation of its businesses, but also for its ability to create a "system", seeing that the district brings together the various phases of the textiles processing cycle: from planning and design to the finished product, passing through spinning, weaving and dyeing.
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