Ipex 2002: Marketing the Industry

As president of the Ipex 2002 international graphic arts exposition, it falls to me to write the first of the monthly columns that will appear as the exhibition draws closer.

I am, of course, honored by the opportunity, and delighted to report that, with only about eight months to go, we already are assured of the largest Ipex ever in terms of space and participating companies: Ipex 2002 covers over a million square feet and a record 16 halls, housing over 2,000 companies, 10% of them first-time exhibitors.

PrintCity, involving about 40 companies, has confirmed its participation, as has Xerox Corporation, which has booked about 70,000 square feet of space in a standalone structure. The licensing of Converflex @ Ipex has added an exciting and new converting and flexo feature.

The traditional role of this first column is to prepare the ground for succeeding columns, which will chart the build-up to Ipex 2002, building excitement, highlighting the technological themes of the event as they emerge, and giving visitors practical advice.

While thinking how best to set the scene, it occurred to me that the continuous growth of Ipex is more than a simple response to the success of previous shows. As one of the world's major international exhibitions, Ipex reflects and promotes the industry that we work in, and Ipex 2002 has more halls and more exhibitors because our industry has more facets, more strands, and more skills than ever before.

There is much discussion at the moment about the nature of the industry that is taking shape, and how we communicate to the world at large just how rich and varied is the business we work in.

In essence, this is a marketing issue, and in marketing Ipex 2002 the teams representing Picon [the suppliers' association that owns the show] and IIR Exhibitions [the show organizer] are marketing the industry as well and we have already seen some of the results of their work. Ipexia, our cyber guide to the future of print, publishing, and media, is already making an impact and attracting new audiences, and there are more initiatives to come.

But marketing an industry is a pretty big task, and I hope that over the months before us it is incumbent on all of us to take advantage of the platform that a major event such as Ipex 2002 provides. In recent years, all of us—magazines, suppliers, and printers—have had to compete not just with each other, but with new technologies and business models as well.

As a result, marketing is now a much more familiar discipline to us than in the past, and, working together, we can make Ipex 2002 a landmark as well as an exhibition.