InPrint 2014, which launched this year, attracted visitors from industries including ceramics, textiles, packaging, automotive, electronics, pharmaceutical and printing.
The show beat its attendance target of 5,000 by the second day and amassed 6,995 individual visitors, a third of whom attended all three days. It also attracted production managers and directors from leading blue-chip organisations including Audi, Mercedes Benz, Nike and Rolls Royce, according to FM Brooks.
“Launching a brand-new show is always difficult but we felt strongly about this area. We had 120 exhibitors and the quality of the visitors was really high. We think that we’ve helped to define a market that wasn’t there before by creating a show in a new place within the print sector,” said the show’s co-director Frazer Chesterman.
“There was an appetite from manufacturers for this show because they are improving their technology away from more traditional print technologies such as commercial print or wide-format printing for sign and graphic. You can now print on all sorts of different materials and that lends itself to new markets and opportunities.”
More than half of the show’s visitors came from the manufacturing and printing industries and others attended from the IT, research & development, technical consultancy and publishing industries.
Visitors from 61 countries attended the show with the most outside of Germany coming from the Netherlands, Poland, Italy, the UK and Austria.
InPrint 2015 will take place at Messe Munich on 10-12 November and will be co-located with Productronica, a major international trade show for electronic production. Last month’s event was co-located with industrial technology trade fair Hannover Messe.
“We think the connection with the industry shows works well. You get two benefits from co-locating. It gives the exhibitors the sense that we’re thinking about the tactical positioning of the show but also gives visitors two reasons to attend, so it has immediate synergistic value,” said Chesterman.
“For next year we will continue to market this to the print industry but also to the manufacturing industry and continue to make sure that it caters to both. We had so many big players supporting the show and a lot are already rebooking for next year; Agfa and Canon both confirmed straight away.”
