The 71st Ispo trade show ended in Munich after four days on Feb. 9 with a record increase in attendance. The number of daily passages thr ough the turnstiles jumped by more than 25 percent from a year ago to over 80,000, confirming the fair's role as the leading international meeting point for the sporting goods sector. Many visitors and the executives of many of the exhibiting companies decided to stay one day longer than usual to get full benefit from the event. Sunday and Monday were again the hottest days, but Tuesday was pretty busy, too, and some top officials were also on hand on the last day for important business.
Visitors came over from 106 countries and 67 percent of them were not German. Among the major national contingents, the biggest increases were registered from Germany, Italy, Austria, France, the Russian Federation, Spain, Poland, Norway and the U.S. Some the halls were so crowded that it was difficult to wake through the corridors, which have been narrowed to make space for more exhibitors. Especially on the first two days, hungry visitors had to wait in line to get into the restaurants inside the fair.
Even before it started, Ispo's organizers were very optimistic, as pre-registrations went up by more than 30 percent from a year ago, partly because more exhibitors sent out vouchers for free e-tickets to the people they wanted to see at the fair. Besides an unprecedented marketing blitz by Messe München,
The number of exhibitors increased by 202 to 2,267 as compared to a year ago, with 84 percent of them coming from abroad. They came from 49 countries, up from 45.
There were many new exhibitors and others who returned to the show after a break, including Emporio Armani, 3M, Jansport and Skechers.
The net exhibition space rented out went up by 13 percent to 101,100 square meters, challenging the physical limits of the existing halls. Protest and other exhibitors are planning to come back after a brief absence next year, when Ispo is going to start one week earlier on Jan. 29. Its success may be creating new demand that can only be satisfied by setting up temporary halls on the location of certain parking lots.
Klaus Dittrich, the new chief of Messe München, was in a very upbeat mood at a press conference before the fair where he announced a new corporate design for future Ispo shows and derivatives.
Messe München's management intends to strengthen the Ispo brand's positioning as the major “point of contact for the international sports business world.” Accordingly, the new corporate claim is “Connecting Sports Business Professionals,” indicating that Ispo is the international platform for the sporting goods industry,
To highlight this orientation, Messe München has put its Ispo corporate design upside down, developing a brand-new logo, which will be adopted to future shows.
There will also be a change in names. Following unfruitful efforts in the past years to put up again a major summer edition of the fair like in the past, the surviving and thriving Ispo show in Munich will no longer be called Ispo Winter, but instead Ispo Munich. Consistently with this choice, the Ispo China fair will renamed Ispo Beijing after its next session later this month.
Expect name changes also for the bike and golf fairs organized by Messe München. There still no word about a possible “Ispo Sao Paolo” that may take place in Brazil sometime in the future though this plan is heavily twittered in the industry.
