Brazilian trade show organizers are modifying everything from the number and variety of designers on display to formats and calendar dates in order to attract more foreign buyers to next year’s events.
Organizers of the twice-yearly São Paulo Fashion Week, Latin America’s biggest fashion showcase, for example, are inviting more designers to the upcoming Jan. 19-25 SPFW, featuring winter 2005 collections. Fifty-one designers will show their wares, as opposed to 37 at the January 2004 event.
Graça Cabral, an SPFW organizer, predicted that the change could swell attendance numbers to 100,000, up from the 70,000 who turned out to both the January and June 2004 events. She also expects to receive more foreign buying groups than the 12 who appeared at the January 2004 SPFW and the 14 who appeared at the June 2004 SPFW. She doesn’t yet know, however, how many more, given that the event is still months away.
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“The more designers we invite, the more local and foreign attention they draw,” said Cabral. “Foreign buyers, for example, return to SPFW not just to see the new collections of designers they know, but those of designers they’ve never seen. These repeat visitors pique the interest of newcomer foreign buyers who also want to get a look at design alternatives not available at better-known fashion weeks.”
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Among the bigger names scheduled for the January 2005 SPFW are Alexandre Herchcovitch, who took part in New York’s last 7th on Sixth and who is known for eveningwear and day looks that mix cultural references; knitwear maker Patachou por Tereza Santos, and evening and daywear designer Lorenzo Merlino. The SPFW has not yet announced the new designers who will appear at the January 2005 SPFW.
Carol Lim, co-owner of Opening Ceremony, a boutique in New York’s SoHo district, said she and her partner are planning on returning to the upcoming SPFW. “We need to see how the four Brazilian designers we carry — among them, Herchcovitch, Merlino and Patachou — are evolving, and to check out new designers with a modern look not found elsewhere,” she explained.
Boris Denoual, the buyer for the Parisian department store La Samaritaine, is returning, in part to get last-minute apparel for a salute to Brazil that the French department store will stage between April and June. The event will cover a 1,615-square-foot section of one floor and will feature Brazilian-manufactured designer jeans, tops, T-shirts, swimwear, shoes and jewelry.
But Denoual said there are other reasons he is returning. “Brazil is becoming a new fashionable hot spot for everything from design to culture, and the only way to get a look at what’s hot in Brazil is to go there,” he explained.
SPFW takes place in the 258,000-square-foot Bienal Cultural Center. The space features four auditoriums with runways for designers to show their collections as well as curving ramps connecting three floors of exhibition space, the top floor of which features individual showrooms for all the designers who take part in runway shows.
Cabral said SPFW organizers are studying plans to move the top-floor showrooms into a separate business salon outside of, but nearby, the Bienal Cultural Center, just for foreign buyers. The salon would feature, in one concentrated space, the showrooms of SPFW designers, new designers not appearing at the SPFW and designers of jewelry, purses, shoes and accessories. The changes would take place for the June 2005 show.
“Foreign buyers, especially newcomers to the SPFW, need their own separate space for making contacts and orders with a wide array of designers, visits that would be prescheduled so as not to interfere with the SPFW runway shows they want to catch,” said Cabral. “This will insulate them from local buyers who can visit these designers’ separate showrooms before, during or after SPFW.”
Fashion Rio, Latin America’s second-biggest fashion showcase, also a twice-yearly event, is not aiming to increase its buyer traffic from the 50,000 who attended the January 2004 event and the 70,000 who attended the July 2004 event. But it is hoping foreign buyers take more interest in casual offerings, Fashion Rio’s strength in comparison to SPFW, which is held around the same time.
Among the 30 designers at the upcoming Jan. 21-25 trade show will be Maria Bonita, whose latest collection explores the vintage look, using pure cotton and a lot of white, and Isabela Capeto, whose folk-theme features include loose-fitting wear with embroidered or appliquéd flowers.
Fashion Rio occupies a 269,000-square-foot area within and around the Museum of Modern Art, located in Rio de Janeiro’s Flamengo Park. In MAM’s gardens are five large canvas tents, four for runway shows and one for Fashion Business, which features the showrooms of runway designers and others who don’t mount runway shows. MAM’s interior space, meanwhile, houses sponsors’ centers, a restaurant and lounge areas, as well as fine jewelry exhibitors.
Two other big Brazilian trade fairs, the annual Fenit/Fenatec and Couromoda, take place in the more industrial Northern Zone of São Paulo in a huge pavilion in Anhembi Park.
Fenit/Fenatec features textiles for clothing and, to a lesser extent, upholstery, as well as low-cost men’s and women’s casualwear, beachwear, athleticwear, underwear, socks and accessories.
At the previous Fenit/Fenatec, the clothing exhibitors were, for the first time, grouped by apparel category instead of by geographic region. The Fenit/Fenatec organizers changed the format because it allowed buyers to more easily find what they were looking for and compare prices.
“Because the changed format allowed buyers to more efficiently find and thus purchase clothes, they purchased more clothes at the 2004 Fenit/Fenatec fair than at past fairs,” said Antônio Alves, a Fenit/Fenatec organizer. “That’s why this format change is here to stay.”
Organizers expect the June 20-23 Fenit/Fenatec fair to have the same number of exhibitors: 431 clothing vendors and 269 textile vendors. They also anticipate visitor traffic to remain around 39,600, but predict a 10 percent increase in foreign buyers, up from the 1,100 who came to the 2004 Fenit/Fenatec.
“We’re anticipating and increasing our marketing efforts for the 2005 Fenit/Fenatec to attract more foreign buyers, especially from North America and Europe,” said Alves.
The offshoot Fenatec fair, just for textiles and held in a smaller wing of the Anhembi Pavilion, takes place Feb. 23-25, a month earlier than last year’s March show. Organizers said the schedule change was made in hopes of increasing foreign buyer traffic by 10 percent from the 80 foreign buyers it attracted last year (overall visitor traffic was at 22,500 visitors).
“We’ve restructured the calendar so that the Fenatec fair each year will be in February, instead of March, because this puts it more in sync with other international textile fairs, which are held closer to the beginning of the year,” said Alves. “We expect this calendar change, which better suits the purchasing habits of North American and European buyers who buy early in the year, will boost the number of foreign buyers to Fenatec.”
Organizers are still studying whether they’ll be holding another Fenatec fair in the second half of 2005, but are certain they will not be staging a 2005 offshoot of the clothing-driven Fenit, as they have in the past, as they believe the larger combined fair suits buyers’ needs.
Organizers of Couromoda, Latin America’s largest footwear trade show, which will be held this year from Jan. 11-14, are hoping to attract more foreign buyers by displaying more higher-quality, value-added women’s dress shoes (those that wholesale from $35 to $80 a pair, as opposed to $10 a pair). The change will up exhibitors to 1,200, compared with the 915 stands at the last fair.
Because of a 30 percent increase in exhibitors, the January 2005 Couromoda will occupy a 538,000-square-foot area, up from the 473,000 square feet of the last show. The space increase for the next Couromoda includes additional Anhembi Pavilion space, as well as new exhibition space that will occupy three floors in a recently built Holiday Inn nearby.
“Brazilian footwear makers are becoming increasingly competitive in higher-value-added women’s footwear, which is why we’re providing more space for shoemakers catering to this niche market,” said a Couromoda spokesperson. “And more foreign footwear buyers are expected at the Couromoda in 2005 because of the interest they’ve shown in Brazil as a sourcing center for this niche market.”
The Couromoda has publicized its expansion plans at footwear shows abroad, including the GDS in Düsseldorf, the Micam in Milan and various U.S. footwear shows. As a result, organizers expect to attract 60,000 visitors, up from the 55,000 visitors who went to last year’s Couromoda, with 3,000 visitors from 70 foreign countries, compared with 2,730 visitors from 65 foreign countries at the last fair.