MILAN — Despite economic woes, Italy is the main exporter of furnishings to China, the world’s second largest economy. As a result, Salone del Mobile.Milano said it’s making China a priority and will host two key promotional events there in November.
The first stop is at art fair West Bund Art & Design in Shanghai between Nov. 8 to 10. There, Salone del Mobile.Milano will unfurl a performative installation called The Orbit’s Orbit, dedicated to Italian design and created by artist Matilde Cassani. The installation will be on exhibit at The Orbit space, an iconic building of the West Bund Central designed by U.K.-based Heatherwick Studio.
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Salone del Mobile.Milano will touch down in Hong Kong from Nov. 11 to 21, with the SaloneSatellite Permanent Collection 1998-2024 Exhibition. It will be promoted by the IDFFHK — International Design Furniture Fair Hong Kong and the Designworks Foundation at the Arts Pavilion, in the heart of the West Kowloon cultural district. The exhibition will showcase a selection of more than 100 projects from the SaloneSatellite Permanent Collection founded and curated by Marva Griffin Wilshire in 1998, in an effort to promote young design talent worldwide.
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“For the Salone del Mobile, the special New York, Shanghai and Hong Kong projects are the upshot of a new format conception process, both performative and exhibition, devised for foreign markets, with the aim of strengthening internationalization processes, stimulating international dialogue on the issues around home living, and experimenting with multidisciplinary languages and practices in the field of design culture,” organizers said in a statement.
In a report by design fair organizer Salone del Mobile.Milano, Italian furniture exports to the Asian country are valued at more than 479 million euros. In addition, Salone del Mobile.Milano said China ranked number one in terms of foot traffic at the 62nd edition of the fair in April. In total 370,824 people flocked to Fiera Milano, Rho for the event. However, a report by Italian Statistics Bureau Istat paints a more grim picture and said overall, Italian exports to China fell 7.6 percent in August, ranking second in the drop, next to the U.S. which saw exports plummet 23.1 percent.
In 2023, Salone del Mobile’s president Maria Porro traveled to Shanghai for the Salone del Mobile promotional tour. Salone del Mobile.Milano debuted a Shanghai edition of its fair in 2016 at the Shanghai Exhibition Center in what unfolded as an exhibition designed to introduce Chinese design curious to the Italian Way of Living.
The last edition, which took place before the COVID-19 pandemic, was envisaged as a showcase for Made in Italy products and the Italian way of living in Shanghai. It remains to be seen whether or not organizers will see the fair return to China.
Elsewhere Porro’s team has amped up its promotion efforts, culminating in September with a celebration of Italian home design hosted on the sixth floor of Bloomingdale’s 59th Street flagship as part of the retailer’s “From Italy, With Love” country promotion.
Throughout 2024, Porro embarked on a promotional tour that kicked off in the European capitals of Paris, London, Berlin and Copenhagen, with U.S. stops in Dallas, New York, Las Vegas and Chicago.