The UK Fashion and Textile Association (UKFT) has announced updates on international textile tradeshows during the challenging times around the COVID-19 outbreak for leading UK fashion and textile businesses. UKFT is in touch with its international tradeshows and some of the key showrooms to identify which shows will take place, when and where.
The Department of International Trade (DIT) tradeshow grants are confirmed for shows scheduled to take place in June and early July, 2020, and UKFT expects to receive the rest of the grant programme for the period running from July to March 2021 very shortly. If shows are postponed, UKFT will ask DIT to carry these events over into the second half of the year and DIT have said that they will work with UKFT on this flexibly, according to a press release by UKFT.
A number of fashion weeks (like the catwalk or runway shows) scheduled in June and July, 2020, have either announced, or are believed likely to announce, that they may either postpone or reschedule. This does not necessarily mean that the tradeshows and showrooms around them will do the same, but UKFT expects to begin to hear the early plans for tradeshows such as Pitti Uomo and the Paris menswear and pre-collections shows as early as mid-April 2020.
In the meantime, a number of showrooms have put details of their collections online for buyers to see, even if they cannot travel. These can be traced via www.modemonline.com which lists most of the key international showrooms, with a link to those which have a virtual showroom campaign. In addition, Playologie (an established platform for predominantly womenswear and childrenswear brands) has offered to extend its established online showroom platform free of charge to up to 300 brands for the foreseeable future at https://www.iloveplaytime.com/hello/playologie/special-announcement.
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