Autumn Fair International is fast approaching – the season’s premier sourcing venue for all things home- and gift-oriented, it is ideally timed for buyers looking ahead to the holiday season. This year’s edition also features Home Accents, a new section dedicated to contemporary furniture and furnishings.
Autumn Fair International (AFI) 2011 will see the return of the Home Interiors & Art section, in which 100 suppliers in this sector will display their latest products to the trade. Design-led contemporary home furnishings are set to steal the show, with trendsetting contemporary home collections displayed to their best advantage within the new Home Accents sector.
Home Accents will become a permanent zone within AFI, where it will be located in Hall 3 within the existing Home Interiors & Art sector. Home Accents will incorporate designer furniture, lighting and mirrors, soft furnishings, decorative home accessories, contemporary art and textiles. Exhibitors signed up include Moltex, Abbeylands, Malini, Minka and Au Maison.
The contemporary design-led focus of Home Accents provides the market with a suitable complement to Autumn Fair’s more traditional home furnishing suppliers, and the zone is keenly positioned right next to the design-led gift suppliers at the show.
This new component is set to be an ideal launch platform for smaller companies, while larger contemporary suppliers can adopt a more specialised view to arranging meetings with a diverse selection of high-end, contemporary home retail buyers.
The long-standing contemporary Home Interiors & Art zone suppliers exhibiting include industry stalwarts such as Coach House, Art Marketing and Artko, while new companies to the show this year include Swedish giant Bloomingville, and Home of Loka.
Essential to buyers attending will be an insight into the market-leading trends that will help grow their profits in the year ahead. AFI 2011 will put future trends at the heart of the exhibition – centre stage in Hall 3 – where sister brand WGSN (World Global Style Network) will hold court at its specially-created Trend Bar feature alongside Home Accents.
Founded in 1998, WGSN’s 150-strong editorial and design team shapes winning style and design the world over, delivering insight and creative inspiration, real-time retail coverage, seasonal trend analysis, consumer research and business information. As the world’s leading trend forecaster, WGSN informs every stage of the supply chain across a variety of product sectors, including home interiors via the homebuildlife.com service.
From the WGSN fair hub, global experts in the gift and home field will provide retailers with invaluable advice, helping AFI visitors gain a competitive edge in the year ahead via a series of future-forecast presentations. All buyers attending the exhibition will be able to pick up a free trend report from this section of the show to help guide their product sourcing.
AFI takes place between 4-7th September, and the volume hall opens one day early. There are nine show sectors: Volume Gift & Home; Kitchen, Dining & Housewares; Home Interiors & Art, including Home Accents; Design-led Gifts; Fashion Jewellery & Accessories; Greetings & Stationery; Toys & Gadgets; Gifts; and Hobby & Craft.
Overall, the show will feature around 1600 exhibitors from 29 countries, including more than 150 overseas suppliers. 900 exhibitors are exclusive to AFI this season, and more than 400 are completely new to the show for 2011. A massive 500,000 products will be presented, 60,000 of which are brand new.
The ABC-audited visitor numbers for AFI 2010 reached 31,340. 87% of visiting retailers have direct purchasing power, with a combined annual spend of £6b. Visitors who pre-register for Autumn Fair will receive a series of exclusive trend cards created by WGSN, designed to provide a wealth of tips and hints that will assist buyers with their product sourcing during the show.
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