Leading international textile trade fairs affected by Covid-19 ourbreaks report big drop in visitor numbers

The global fashion industry was faced with challenging times even prior to the coronavirus outbreak as “winds of change” are reportedly sweeping across many markets, seeing slower growth and declining consumer confidence, while retailers and brands are under pressure to embrace digital and addressing sustainability.

Premiere Vision Paris - February 2020

With the continual escalation of the outbreak, the multi-billion-dollar industry worldwide is compounded by supply chain issues and weak demand, as many businesses and companies in a wide range of industries currently are dependent on China as both a manufacturing base and for its billion-plus-consumer market.  

Premiere Vision Paris - February 2020

While more and more international trade events for luxury items, fashion and textile industries have now announced their cancellation for this year, those that managed to stage just before the Covid-19 outbreak took hold in Italy have reported big drop in visitor and participation numbers in their February 2020 events.

Leading international trade fairs held in Paris, namely Premiere Vision and Texworld and their co-events, have seen substantial drop in attendance figures.

In the previous week, PV Paris which covers a wide array of textile, fabrics, design, yarns, leather, accessories and garment production, reported that it was visited by 44 414 international buyers and professionals to their February 2020 edition, a drop of more than 20% compared to the February 2019 show, due to travel bans from many countries and areas greatly affected by the Coronavirus, explained the organisers.

Now Messe Frankfurt France has revealed a dramatic drop of 49% in footfall for their group of six major trade fairs covering fabrics and materials, garment production, textile innovation, clothing and accessories, registering 7109 visitors compared with the previous year.  

Texworld - February 2020, Paris

Michael Scherpe, President of Messe Frankfurt France, remarked in a statement that the exceptional circumstances prevented almost 50% of Chinese exhibitors from leaving their country to come to Paris. In some cases, the European agents of these Chinese companies were able to present the Chinese’s collections on the stands.  


The results in terms of the number of discussions and amount of business reported by participants showed that the organisers got things right in staying the course and in continuing with all the events once they had consulted with the French health authorities, said the organisers, and that despite it all, their main Chinese partners have signalled their readiness to renew their confidence in the fair by confirming that they will certainly be back in September.

Texworld - February 2020, Paris

“As always, the players in this dynamic market will demonstrate their resilience and professionalism. Even if buyers decide to put alternative sourcing routes in place on a temporary basis in order to guarantee supplies, they will want to resume their usual routes quickly. For this reason, one can already imagine that the September session will be very good for business" said Mr. Scherpe.
Both fairs were particularly affected by their Chinese customers, as China is the epicentre of the Covid-19 virus, and its status as the key supplier of parts and textile products to the world’s industries has made it a most crucial link in the world’s economy,  But as life in some parts of the country has come to a stand-still due to the outbreak, the world’s reliance on China may now ironically make it the weakest link in the supply chain.

Reported in a recent article in Time magazine in March, Pierre Haren, CEO of fintech start-up Causality Link, believes consumers may soon start to see less variety on store shelves as companies concentrate their available production on products they already know to be best-sellers, and predicts there could be supply shortages as early as mid-March.

Premiere Vision Paris - Feburary 2020

Like many other industries, the fashion world has long embraced China as a source of cheap manufacturing — the country is by far the world’s largest producer of textiles, and it produces many of the other elements that go into clothes, from buttons to zippers to thread. “The vast majority of certain products are only done in China,” says Gary A. Wassner, the CEO of Hildun Corporation and the chairman of Interluxe. “We became very dependent, and we allowed it to happen because it was cost-efficient, but that’s not the only thing to consider.”

The fashion industry and other sectors are also facing big challenges from the other end of the production chain: consumer demand. Pauline Brown, the former chairman of North America at LVMH, says the luxury market is already starting to see a “fairly severe” effect due to the virus, especially as Chinese shoppers stop traveling to make big-ticket purchases in cities like New York and Paris. Brown says that, as consumers become focused on their health, they’re less likely to shop for luxury goods, as reported in Time.