Once the major international trade exhibition for the entertainment technology industry, SIB saw the emergence of the Show-Way exhibition in 2007 following a split in the trade association supporting the event. APIAS, the Italian lighting and sound association, put its support behind the new Show-Way exhibition which took place in Bergamo in 2008, while a new trade association, TEN (Technology & Entertainment Design) formed by a splinter group of former APIAS members committed its support to SIB.
Show-Way, which was due for its second event this month, announced its postponement in January. Interestingly, the statement of SIB's postponement hints at an acceptance that the marketplace requires unity for a single successful exhibition to survive.
SIB's statement says: "Considering the current lengthy phase of worldwide economic depression, as well as the evolution of the professional entertainment sector and audio-video, lighting and system integration technologies, the organisers of SIB International have decided to postpone the expo to a 2011 date and, at the same time, verify possible roads to development and directions shared by all members and players of the domestic market in question."
TEN chairperson Assunta Fratocchi, managing director of cable and interconnections specialist Link Srl, was quoted: "We have already carried out a process for further target segmentation, from which fundamental new market areas have emerged, from the fashion world to that of large-scale projects. Market sectors that necessitate fine-tuned operation and a new-look expo format. The same holds for analyses carried out on the foreign markets: the most recent involved Balkan countries, India and the Middle East, and showed the keen interest of buyers in these countries, convincing us to formulate a different international slant for 2011.
She added: "We also believe that a winning expo project for the Italian market must be able to count on constructive unified support from all the association and trade components of the key domestic markets in question."
The statement from the organisers concluded: "We are certain that the market can only be offered a successful expo project if . . . it is able to count on a singleness of commitment and purpose that unites all the sector's manufacturing, association and business components: as far as this aspect is concerned, we are ready to do our share with great conviction."
(Lee Baldock)
