The most important Italian pet show, Zoomark International, held every two years at the Bologna fair, closed last week. We went to visit Zoomark, and our vision, limited to a small part in the PET sector, the aquariology, is quite mild for the industry.
Speaking of aquarist world, as already announced in the post presentation of the fair, Zoomark 2013 International Pet Show in Bologna Italy, the omens were all negative. The exhibitors were few, very few, but continued the downward trend triggered off 6 years ago, now more than a parable has become an exponential loss.
This was not a good omen, and while hoping that some exhibitors were added at the last minute we found that instead someone missed just some days before the fair. The entire section based on aquarium market, with a few rare exceptions, was included in one hall, number 19, along to other product categories. 6 years ago we had one halls and a half, just to make a comparison. A major step back for the world of aquariums.
One of the reasons for this failure, speaking with vendors, was surely the costs, in fact we are talking about a major investment in order to expose at Zoomark, the same requested to go to Interzoo, that’s too much seen the major differences between these two shows.
Two years ago we went during saturday, and this year tried to go on Sunday, but we found a rather low number of visitors, especially enthusiasts who instead were strongly present at least up to four years ago. The first comment that comes to mind is that this type of trade does not draw more, but mostly it is the Zoomark does not attract people. Why?
But instead why do international fairs such Interzoo, Macna and Aquarama attract so many visitors?
Evidently there are several factors that play a great role against exhibitors and visitors, always of course talking about aquarium industry, one factor is the booth cost, and once again the lack of the public, the general public, because Zoomark continues to be open only to vendors, in contrast for example, with Interzoo in Nuremberg, that does have a couple of public days.
If companies can not have contact with the public to understand fads and trends, it decreases their willingness to participate in events like this. There aren’t neither workshops or seminars as a corollary of this show, unlike, for example, to what happens to MACNA, that being primarily oriented towards the general public can arrange a variety of events.
We have fear that, if this trend will be confirmed once again, soon the aquarium part of the Zoomark might even be cancelled for lack of interest. We hope of course that it will be not absolutely so, and the management of the fair will consider another way to proceed that could involve many companies to participate.
During this fair we were very happy to see beautiful aquariums with a strong predominance of marine aquariums, with higher level than we usually see in this show. In the coming days we will present all the news we’ve seen at the show, with pictures and explanations, because in each case several interesting products were presented.
