Franchising and Trade 2007

From 19th to 22nd October 2007 in fieramilano 22nd edition of Franchising & Trade Over 250 exhibitors expected, with a strong international participation

Franchising & Trade, the biggest European event of franchising and the innovative formulas of commerce, licensing and partnership will take place from 19th to 22nd October in fieramilano. The event will be held at the same time and in synergy with Host, the event dedicated to professional hospitality, the first in this field worldwide. Over 250 exhibitors are expected at Franchising & Trade, including Top Brands and small and medium sized companies.

The format of the event, which will enjoy an improved layout in the modern and functional fair area of Milan, as usual includes a vast and significant exhibition area which will function alongside the traditional calendar of relevant appointments, seminars, meetings and round tables which have always been a trademark of the Milanese franchising event.

“The exhibition – explains Fabio Majocchi, general manager of EXPOCTS – is both an important moment of updating and training; important meetings on the principal aspects of this activity (regulatory, economic, technical… ) will be held, as well as opportunities for training dedicated to enhancing the skills of the operators of the franchising world”.

The last edition of Franchising & Trade recorded over 25 thousand visitors, many of them from abroad. On the exhibitors front the foreign participation, as tradition demonstrates, was also considerable. Equally, the 2007 edition will be dedicated specifically to internationalisation, with well over eleven official delegations (from India, China, Great Britain, Greece, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Kuwait, Singapore and Nigeria) of influential buyers, who will visit the exhibition. The organisers are already at work to define agreements with national and international sector organisations, contacting operators from emerging areas as well as those where franchising is already a well established and developed system.

Sure benefits of awareness and promotion will also reach Franchising & Trade from the contemporary Wellness World Exhibition, the salon of the industry of wellbeing and sport, a vital sector in a phase of great expansion (thanks to the franchising formula).

This year Franchising & Trade, an exhibition dedicated to one of the peak sectors of Italian distribution, also falls within a positive and interesting conjectural phase; according to the data circulated by Assofranchising – the benchmark association of the sector which represents over 60% of the overall turnover – in 2006 in Italy the turnover grew by 8.3%, reaching 19.7 billion Euro.

From the Assofranchising/Quadrante Report it emerges that the sectors which “contribute” heavily to the overall turnover of the franchising networks are primarily large scale retail trade (in food and non food), followed by the sector of travel agencies, which is in strong growth, and fashion. The data confirm that the greater number of franchisor brands can be traced to the sectors of female and male fashion, products and specialist services and property-mediation credit agencies.

According to Graziano Fiorelli, president of Assofranchising “franchising is increasingly acknowledged not only as a kind of legal-formal and managerial method geared to optimising the distributive strategies of the companies, but also a real hinge in the process of modernisation of the system of distribution in Italy, for its active participation in the new telematic and digital technologies (e-commerce) and for the complementary nature of functions between large scale retail trade and the qualitative and focusing specialisation of services of so-called neighbourhood shops, including the small supermarkets of the district, of direct and long distance sales”.

One of the most relevant novelties of Franchising & Trade is the organisation of the 2007 edition: EXPOCTS, in fact, has outsourced the secretariat of the event to Frorida 2/Fiera del Sud. For many years Fiera del Sud has successfully promoted the salon of Franchising and innovative Commerce (whose 10th edition was held in Catania from 9th to 11th of March, achieving widespread approval in terms of participation and presence of operators).

“The next edition of Franchising & Trade will avail of the experience of Fiera del Sud Spa, to whom we have outsourced the secretariat of the event – Carlo Bassi, managing director of EXPOCTS has declared - ; it has to do with a company specialised in exhibitions all round, and for this reason – also considering that in the exhibition field a close connection between sales of space, promotion, marketing and communication exits – we have entrusted the entire organisation of Franchising & Trade to Fiera del Sud. The strategic management of the event remains in the hands of ExpoCts, which holds the brand and the institutional relations with the associations of the sector”.

Background note – Since 1988, year of its foundation, Frorida 2 has worked in the planning, organisation, promotion and administration of exhibition events at regional, national and international level. Since 1999 it is support partner of XM Europe Group, European association founded for the organisers of events, whose main objective is to create a platform for the exchange of ideas and experiences and discuss the latest trends and changes within the dynamic field of exhibition organisers.

For Sicily, “Fiera del Sud” is a benchmark for the staging of exhibitions and conference activities and other events of a different profile (shows, sports competitions, concerts, theatrical productions, information campaigns and awareness campaigns on issues of common interest); it has collaborated proficiently with institutions and public bodies in devising and organising events connected to the economic and cultural development of the Sicilian basin and has acquired an excellent capacity to diversify operationally developing a considerable know how in the creation of business events, company communication plans and other collateral activities.

Today Frorida 2 enjoys a cutting-edge company structure, dedicated to managing and planning exhibitions on the national territory.