PITTI SCRAPS SEPTEMBER DATES, NEXT PHYSICAL SHOW TO OPEN IN JANUARY

Late on Thursday, Pitti Immagine released a statement announcing its decision to cancel its physical spring/summer 2021 trade shows that were originally rescheduled for September. The next physical fair is scheduled to take place in January 2021 for the fall/winter 2021 market.

Following a lengthy discussion, the organization’s Board acknowledged the insufficient number of confirmations of attendance, as well as the ongoing difficulties companies are experiencing, as reasons for postponing until January.

Encouraged by the work and investment carried out in order to launch the Pitti Connect platform, as well as the approval and interest that this initiative has registered among members of the trade, Pitti Immagine said it will instead concentrate all its energy this summer on the launch of its fully-digital version of Pitti Uomo, and all of its other fairs.

The organization said that its new Pitti Connect will have the same editorial and curatorial layout of the physical Pitti that we all know so well. It will render, in a digital dimension, collections, and products presented according to themed itineraries, events and special projects with preeminent guests, the promotion of up-and-coming talents, the discussion of the hottest and most highly debated topics, and collaborations and partnerships with the media.

“This was a very painful yet inevitable decision dictated by the conditions of operational and economic difficulty in which the majority of the manufacturing companies and retailers – shops, department stores- find themselves and by the uncertainties that continue to persist regarding the modalities of traveling from one country to another, including quarantine restrictions, which have obviously heavily conditioned the plans of international buyers,” said Claudio Marenzi, president of Pitti Immagine. “I should add that the prolonged absence of any certainties regarding non-repayable government and European economic support for taking part in the fairs, greatly affected the exhibitors’ decisions.”

“We will now be putting all our resources into the Pitti Connect digital fairs, for which we will be receiving decisive help from the Italian Trade Agency (Agenzia ICE),” added Raffaello Napoleone, CEO of Pitti Immagine. “We are very confident in our ability to offer companies the real Pitti service which is capable of meeting their business, promotion, and communication requirements, especially in this part of the season. Their opinion on the new functions of the platform in these last few weeks and months has been decidedly positive.

Napoleone continued, “With regard to the physical fairs, these have been three months of enthusiastic and tireless work by everyone at Pitti Immagine, with the full awareness of not having neglected anything: from the investment into sanitizing and making safe the exhibition spaces to the planning of high-quality but also very economical new layout formulas, to the facilitation agreements with the city’s hotel structures. In any case, we do not exclude the possibility of being able to make a contribution, between July and September, to getting the city started again with autonomous projects or events that are coherent with our policy. In parallel, we will immediately start to program the next winter edition in order to consolidate and support the much hoped for recovery of production and commercial trade in the fall and at the beginning of 2021.”

As of now, the next physical edition of Pitti Uomo is scheduled to take place January 12-15, 2021 in Florence.