The Vicenzaoro First fair officially ended on Thursday Jan. 21. The five-day event held in Vicenza, Italy, housed 1,548 exhibitors-down 11 percent from last year-with the bulk, 1,120, coming from 58 Italian provinces, according to organizer Fiera di Vicenza. The remaining 428 firms are from 31 foreign countries. The number of attendees increased dramatically, to the tune of 11 percent, over 2009 figures. Show records reveal that some 17,969 international buyers, such as Scott Martin from Saks Fifth Avenue and Mehul Choksi from the Gitanjali Group, attended the fair compared with 13,154 in 2009. Overall, the greatest number of buyers present were from France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Israel, Turkey, and the United States.

Fiera di Vicenza chalks up the increase to heightened demand for gold and jewelry, even though it is unable to determine the number of orders secured by exhibitors and reveals that 2009 demand "recorded a steep fall of about 18 percent at world level with very marked downturns in the United States (-17 percent), in the Arab countries, and in Europe." In China, however, increases in demand for gold, 12 percent, and jewelry, eight percent, buck the trend. Further data indicates "a market recovery for 2010, the scale of which will, however, be linked to the performance of the economy in the various parts of the world."

Vicenzaoro First is the first international exhibition of the new Fiera di Vicenza Spa, a company established in December 2009 with the merger by incorporation of the property company and the management company. The board of directors of the new Fiera di Vicenza met for the first time Jan. 15, 2010, and elected Roberto Ditri as chairman (Ditri also fills the role of managing director).

JCK