Meet Flat Earth in Milan

Milan, Italy

Flat Earth Imports’ President Kitch Walker and Global Sourcing Director Leslie Townsend want to meet you at Macef Milano 2008. Macef, the international home show, is Europe’s largest trade show; and because it’s in Milan, it’s also one of the most stylish. It will be held January 18-21 at Fiera Milano.

Walker and Townsend will be actively recruiting manufacturers at Macef, which attracted over 88,000 visitors last year. It is a showcase for manufacturers of kitchen, tableware, home decor, gifts, jewelry, fashion accessories and classic furnishings.

At the heart of Macef’s mission is the promotion of “Made in Italy” as a brand. In recent years, Italian-made products have seen worldwide interest and have met enthusiastic consumers. As more and more consumers look for products that will hold their value, are of heirloom-quality with clear provenance and are socially conscious, this trend is only expected to grow. The Italian tradition is an ideal fit for this trend, and Macef is the ideal venue for assessing the state of these high-quality products. As a recent press release from Macef states:

“Hand-making techniques are obviously more accurate than industrial ones and therefore add more value to a product. Passed on from one generation to the next, they take up new technical solutions and long-proven processes along the way. Even in cases where hand-making has been replaced by modern industrial processes, some crucial steps such as decorating, enameling, stitching and finishing are still done by hand, thereby making each single piece one of a kind.”

Adding to this, Italian manufacturers boast unique manufacturing sites, meaning that various regions specialize in certain products. In many cases, these regional foci also reflect generations of hand-making techniques. All these elements add up to an ideal opportunity to identify and recruit manufacturers for Flat Earth’s Autentico Italiano collection.