ICE Agency Houston and ACIMIT, the Association of Italian Textile Machinery Manufacturers, participated in Innovate Textile & Apparel , the first virtual trade fair dedicated to innovation for the textile industry that was held Oct. 15-30, 2020 and joined by 100 leading organizations and associations in the industry worldwide.

Innovate Textile & Apparel represented one of the first opportunities for the Italian mechanical-textile industry to experiment with a fully digital B2B approach to the international market and at the same time, to showcase its most advanced technology on a global stage.

Italy is now one of the leading producers and exporters of textile machinery in the world. In 2019, Italian textile machinery production was 2.3 billion euros, 82 percent of which (worth 1.9 billion euros) was exported to about 130 countries, and 8 percent to North America. The Covid-19 pandemic heavily impacted the sector resulting in negative orders in the first two quarters of 2020. However, Italian exports to the U.S. market testify to the willingness of the American market to still invest in "made in Italy" machinery. In the first seven months of 2020, Italian textile machinery sales in the U.S. reached a value of about $60.6 million The largest share of Italian machinery exported to the U.S. market refers to finishing machines (52 percent), followed by spinning machines (16 percent).

The Italian presence at Innovate Textile & Apparel was articulated in the setting up of a digital pavilion joined by 21 Italian machinery manufacturers, leaders in the sector: A.Piovan, Dell'orco & Villani, Drm, Efi Reggiani, Erhardt + Leimer, Ferraro, Guarneri Technology, I.C.S. Italian Color Solution, Lawer, Loptex, Macchine Caru ', Matex, Mcs Officina Meccanica, Mesdan, Monti Antonio, Officina Master Di Livi Raffaello, Ramallumin, Ratti Luino, Stalam, Tonello, Unitech Industries.

To give adequate visibility to the Italian presence at the fair, ICE-Agency Houston carried out a vast number of communication actions starting with an organic presence on all the official digital tools of the event: dedicated banners on the official Innovate platform, both institutional and individual presence for all companies within the Official Guide of the event, pre-event email blast on the CONNECT platform; a newsletter sent to more than 40,000 industry names in collaboration with WTin, the event organizing body.

For all companies not yet present, a company profile was created on the reference portal for "Made in Italy" industrial mechanics in the U.S., Machines Italia. The Italian digital collective was also the subject of an advertising campaign in Textile World, the industry's reference magazine.

an interactive landing page dedicated to the event was finally created, as well as an interactive digital catalog dedicated to the Italian collective present at the event.

For more information about the initiative, contact houston [at] ice.it