Creating a virtuous circle around trade shows, bringing quality and innovation, is possible. And desirable. This is demonstrated by the path taken by Messe Frankfurt. Donald Wich, CEO of the Italian branch of the German giant for 26 years, tells IFDM about the assets and the soul of an organization that navigates with awareness and energy and that will give a tangible demonstration of this with the upcoming edition of Heimtextil (January 14-17).
The world of trade fairs has changed profoundly, Covid has marked and redesigned the habits of many product sectors, conflicts have downsized channels with Eastern Europe and the Gulf, many trade fairs no longer exist or have been severely weakened: what scenario do you see for the coming years and what is the Messe Frankfurt-Thought?
Messe Frankfurt sees the world positively and, while keeping conflicts, Covid and post-Covid and economic circumstances in mind, takes its cue from the preliminary results for 2024, which see all-time record turnover and profits (in 780+ years of operation).
We see this result as an acknowledgement of the soundness of our medium- and long-term strategy, which, despite the Covid-related business interruption, recognised the foresight and constancy of the project and rewarded it well beyond our expectations and three years ahead of schedule. The world economy is growing heterogeneously and in local ways, Covid highlighted the merits and shortcomings of trade fair organisations, our strategy has three pillars: our international brands (Ambiente, Heimtextil, Light+Building and many others), the Frankfurt exhibition centre, which has focused on internationality and equipped itself with modern infrastructure, and the internationalisation process: today is among the few trade fair organisations to have gone beyond its own borders and to have its own facilities in the world’s major markets.
The digital world is advancing inexorably, consumers and designers have endless evaluation tools without moving from home, artificial intelligence is in danger of confusing the cards with reality-like actions, how do you see the situation and what ideas has Messe Frankfurt set in motion in this regard?
Certainly there are big changes related to digitalisation: what was an emotional confirmation of the Covid and immediate post-Covid period has (re)given way to the importance of face-to-face meetings and therefore trade fairs. Digital, at this time and with today’s technologies, is not able to replace the physical meeting. Messe Frankfurt has a four-year plan of EUR 80 million investment in digitisation mainly for internal processes, not visible to the outside world therefore, but which will speed up processes and thus improve service. A significant share is earmarked for those digital tools directly aimed at the focus markets of our trade fairs, especially the biennial events that are most in need of current and up-to-date containers. Currently our turnover is made up of 95% deriving from classic trade fair activity and 5% (in any case growing) from digital: if we want to do a statistical exercise, we can hypothesise that a balancing of quotas – 50% physical and 50% digital – is achievable not before 15/20 years, and the speed of approach depends above all on technology.
Is there a plan to diversify Messe Frankfurt’s presence worldwide?
Absolutely. We are currently experiencing a strong recovery in China and in order to free ourselves from a dependency that had become important we have turned to other Asia Pacific geographies such as Indonesia and Vietnam. We had to close our business in Russia, but we signed a joint venture in Uzbekistan. The Middle East is under our magnifying glass: the Emirates are travelling at a remarkable pace and we see Saudi Arabia as the next frontier in which to focus our interests, currently we have a partnership but we plan to create a direct structure.
Is there any event, initiative or trade fair that particularly surprised you this year in terms of creativity or innovation or anything else?
In the strictly trade fair sphere we did not see any particular innovation. We see great innovation with our Italian customers: in the sectors of technology for the home (the new Fesi project, the integrated sustainable building fair, will be held in Bologna in October), technology for industry, and industrial automation, Italian companies are at the top for sustainability, design, and digitalisation, and have collected numerous awards. Today, if visitors to a trade fair want to touch a high level of professionalism and innovation, they will certainly visit the Italians.
Heimtextil has chosen two very different players for the 2025 edition: Alcova for Trends and Patricia Urquiola for an installation. The former is a very brave and niche choice, a new species in the design fauna, the latter embraces the design world of the last 15 years and the top brands. How did you arrive at these choices?
The choices were motivated fundamentally by a strategy of supporting and reinforcing the Heimtextil brand, to make it always current, highly visible and innovative. Two choices that complement each other but which respond to the desire to ride the Italian imprint which is, as we said before, very strong and recognisable. Alcova represents experimentation and innovation, which is what we look for in a trend setter, Patricia Urquiola represents success in the upper echelons of the design world and hits a different target, and as we see it, it is like a brand extension of Heimtextil.
