The 17th edition of SPINEXPO Shanghai was held from March 8th-10th, 2011 at the Pudong Expo Center for the last time in that venue, and recorded the most substantial increase in visitors since the trade show first launched.

With 9,456 visitors for a Spring/Summer season as compared to 7,846 visitors for the previous Autumn/Winter edition, the increase in international visitors was 22%. This hefty increase was largely due to changes in our China promotion office and to its professionalism.

The office, based in Shanghai, was strengthened in terms of size and skills, and the team assigned to visitor information cleaned up our entire China database, removing over 50% of obsolete data and carrying out research region by region, thus increasing our communication with the textile industry to a considerable degree as well as our familiarity with Chinese niche textile markets that are constantly expanding.

The number of Chinese visitors rose to 7,741 as compared to 5,970 visitors for the previous season: it is noteworthy that the most significant increase came from Northern China, including Beijing and nearby provinces, where the number of visitors rose to 499 as compared to 271 for the previous season. Shanghai and nearby provinces also recorded a significant increase with 7,488 visitors as compared to 5,381 for the previous season.

Only the Southern China region remained unchanged, which underlined the importance of the work that was carried out, since provinces in this part of China were not included in the database enrichment process. We are encouraged by these results and will carry out similar work for Hong Kong and the province of Guangdong for the upcoming Autumn/Winter season.

Visitors from outside China also recorded a significant increase, rising from 1,046 for the previous season to 1,715 for this edition (+65%). Taiwan and Hong Kong recorded a drop compared to the previous edition, but Japan is rising, as well as the United States and South America. We have begun the same process on our USA database and are beginning to record results, with major decision-makers attending the trade fair from the USA and Europe.