Flavio Marabelli, honorary president of Confindustria Marmomacchine, complains that in times of Corona the stone fairs do not give enough support to the sector
Update: Flavio Marabelli has responded to our report: Dear Peter, if you want to avoid saying wrong things I suggest you don’t try to interpret me. The next time you don’t understand something, write me first, I will explain everything to you. 1) I think exactly the opposite of what you wrote about fairs: I believe fairs create irreplaceable commercial opportunities and my concerns are for companies that today must invent other opportunities to do business without being able to travel 2) about the MES Fair, I wrote that it was canceled because companies do not want to invest at the moment, and not the contrary. 3) I remind you that Stone America is organized in collaboration with KIBIS and is necessarily on the same dates as KIBIS. KIBIS is the most important American fair for kitchen and bathroom industry in which, among other things, some of the most important stone companies participate. 4) in 2021 there will necessarily be a concentration of fairs in the same period, perhaps it will surprise you but there is no war and nobody is against anyone, in fact we are all trying to restart the world stone sector. We participate in all the major fairs in the stone sector, including Tise and Vitória and the Italians, Americans and Brazilians are always interested in all the good events. Bye
Flavio Marabelli, Honorary President of the Italian stone association Confindustria Marmomacchine, has announced on his LinkedIn page that there will be a new natural stone fair in the US in 2021.
Its name will be “Stone America” and it will be held at the same time as KBIS (Kitchen and Bath Industry Show) from February 9 to 11 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida.
One of the reasons for the new show seems that Marabelli accuses the established stone fairs of not really helping the industry out of the Corona crisis. When the Middle East Stone was postponed to 2021 a while ago, he had complained on LinkedIn that its organizers would only think of their own business.
A little later, however, Marmomac in Verona had announced that it would also cancel its date for 2020 and that instead, it would only take place virtually on 2 days.
On LinkedIn, Marabelli now writes: “We must all work to have more job opportunities together… otherwise we risk dying within our companies. I don’t think that virtual fairs or the continuous video calls between us can solve our commercial needs.”
He clearly states that “Stone America” is aimed at the entire stone sector worldwide: “We will be there and you…? Don’t you think it is time to bring natural stone more strongly into the world’s largest market for the kitchen and bathroom industry?”
In our Calendar of stone trade fairs, one can see how close “Stone America” is to TISE in Las Vegas (January 25-28, 2021) and Vitória Stone Fair (February 02-05, 2021) in Brazil. If it takes place, it will deviate exhibitors from both. This could do enormous damage to Veronafiere, whose Marmomac Americas is a major contributor to TISE and which is the owner of Marmomac Latin America in Vitória.
The organizers of the new fair are Universal Marketing Srl together with GM-Expo, and Marmomacchine Servizi Srl, a subsidiary of Confindustria Marmomacchine organizing the Italian joint stands at international trade fairs.
Stone-Ideas.com’s Calendar of Stone Trade Fairs
(04.08.2020, USA: 08.04.2020)
