Poseidon's Experience at the 2015 Milan Furniture Fair
Shanghai ,23-06-2016

This year Poseidon Advisory has made plans to actively participate in the biggest international Furniture fair and sent out its top project managers to participate to the Salone Internazionale Del Mobile, the event of international prestige that took place in Milan from the 14th to the 19th of April 2015.

During the 6-days exhibition, our team had multiple occasions to witness and discover the new trends and stories that the world of furniture is ready to share. As an overview, the 2015 fair received 310,840 visitors, including the bigger affluence registered during the weekend when the fair opened its doors to the general public. Definitely a positive sign as the organizers predicted and hoped to exceed the 300,000 visitors mark. 69% of the people visiting the fair were high-level foreign buyers and traders, as a survey conducted from the organized to the over 2,000 exhibitors confirmed. This year's fair environment was also heavily influenced by the proximity of the EXPO opening in Milan on May 1st.

The international flavor of the exhibit was indeed accentuated by the strong presence of Russian operators, while the largest number of visitors came from China, with Germany in second place. The link between the exhibition and China is even deeper as China will see the launch of its first Italian Furniture Show in 2016. The Chinese market surged by more than 22% in the first nine months of 2014 and there is hope that the trend keeps growing.

Throughout the exhibition, visiting the different showcases in the many diverse pavilions, we could observe that some main trends emerged: STORY TELLING as in creating atmospheres, forming references, working quotes was the fil-rouge of this year. Now design is not an isolated technical discipline anymore but has become an increasingly large part of much bigger concept that guides lifestyle and personal experience. Many of the narratives created were about BEAUTY, as it is this idea that leads designers to create and express «their own» idea of beauty. Beauty can be drawn from a lot of different things, and this year one of the major inspirations was PLACES: Miami (trailing along the return of '80s taste), Northern Europe (minimalism in pastel colors) and especially Africa, both Mediterranean Africa and Black Africa. This follows into ETHNICITY and LOCAL, as the local dimension that hopes of conquering a global market through its unique traits. Especially true for the Italian exhibitors, ARTISANAL WORKMANSHIP (declined in an industrial key, naturally) is therefore one of the most important factors that permeate the products and the way of doing things.

During our interactions with the major players in the design and furniture world, we have seen a clear trend of strong interest in opening or strengthening the brand efforts into the China market, as its importance and key role in the future of the industry cannot be denied. We have also noticed a distinct drive in many companies for a more structured and informed actions into China, in order to be able to successfully cope with the market requests and occupy a profitable and sustainable position.

Back to our Shanghai headquarters, bearing in mind our discussions with many Italian companies, we have been busy working on our ongoing activity of contract project mapping in different regions of China. Poseidon's strong partnership with Italian Furniture Association Federlegno both in Italy and in China gives us a unique perspective and a wide network of high end contacts in which to focus our search.

We believe our visit this year was a big success and we have laid the groundwork to cultivate positive and long lasting relationship with all the clients we have met. We also look forward to develop further our presence in the market and widen our existing client base in order to come back next year with even more contacts and new exciting projects.

Maria Pastorelli
Project Manager - Furniture and Interior Design