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City of Olympics Greets the Expo of Sports

Published: 20 Apr 2009 22:51:04 PST

With 13,500 trade professionals (2008: 11,500), the 5th ispo china winter, which took place February 19–21, 2009 at the China International Exhibition Center (CIEC) in Beijing, ended with a 17% increase in visitor numbers. The three days ispo china 09 in China's capital city were a showcase of the rapidly growing sporting goods industries in Asia, cheering up China sports industry in the cold winter.

It has been the third time that ispo china held in Beijing. Not only focuses on winter sports, ispo china also highlights in outdoor, traditional sports, equipments, sport apparels and apparent. Professional visitors populated the fairgrounds consistently during all tradeshow days with high expectations to see many new brands, products and technologies.

On 25,000 square meters of exhibition space, ispo china featured special community booths, such as the Austrian Village, the Italian Village, the Scandinavian Village, and so on, well-known domestic sporting goods manufacturers, as well as the leading sporting brands mainly from Europe and North America and their product innovations to the Asian retail market. According to the statistics, there are mainly 300 domestic and overseas brands exhibited during this expo, just like Alpina, Arctic Fox, Asolo, Bailo, Bergans of Norway, Black Yak, Brugi, Buff, Camp, Carrera, Colmar, Dolomite, Dr. Zipe, Fila, Fjällräven, Garmont, GoLite, Gore-Tex, Halti, HanWag, Kailas, Kayland, Light My Fire, Lizard, Lowa, Lowe Alpine, Marmot, Masters, Nitro, Nordica, Northland, Northwave, OutDry, Ozark, Patagonia, Quiksilver, Rollerblade, SheShe, Simple, Sun Valley, Tecnica, Teva, Trek-Sta, T-Shoes. Ttiss, Uvex, Vasque, Vibram , Völkl and so on.

Moreover, this time, the Italian-based Alpitec trade show – specialized on mountain and winter technology, the meeting point of experts and passionate of technologies and innovations– integrated into ispo china winter 09 for the first time. The combination, "ispo china&Alpitec China", is to assist ispo china to cover almost all the aspects of winter sports, and to perfectly reach all the needs and demands of the market, providing a better service for the world's most promising winter sport market - China.

At Alpitec China 09, the exhibitors included Doppelmayr, Fischer Sports, Hagan, Leitner, Microgate, Montana, Reichmann, SkiData, Wintersteiger and several other mountain and winter technology specialists. Reinhold Marsoner, director of the Fiera Bolzano/Messe Bozen, pointed out: "Alpitec China started quite small with only 40 exhibitors coming from eight nations, but the high number of visitors demonstrates the great demand and interest for Mountain-and Winter Technologies in China. The successful accomplishment of a first edition is always the basis for a runner-up". As a tradeshow platform with focus on benefitting the sporting goods retailer, ispo china winter 09 once again offered a very diverse program of featuring congresses, workshops, and fashion shows:

Match Making between Brands and Visitors: as a novelty, the "Match Making Activity" performed as a platform for the brands and professional visitors to establish cooperation andexplore business opportunities: 370 distributors had confirmed their attendance and the upcoming weeks and months will witness how many matches were made. The program was very well received and offered new possibilities for both two sides, conquering the usual language barriers and saving valuable time.

CORC 2009: co-organized by ispo china and GORE-TEX® CORC (China Outdoor Retailing Conference) has moved into its fifth year with the growth of ispo china. CORC, presenting China retailers with the advanced ideology, and promoting the development of outdoor retailing industry in China, once again attracted nearly 160 participants including individual specialist retailers, chain stores and brands to discuss current and future topics. Besides, the CORC also released the Outdoor Market Survey 2008 to summarize the general outdoor industry in 2008.

According to the statistics, in 2008, the outdoor retail brands inChina preserved an uptrend development slightly: there are 415 brands in total, represented a rise of 9.16 comparing with the same time of the previous year; the retail sales in 2008 reached 3.78 billion Yuan, increasing by 42.72% year-on year. During the whole year, the total number of professional outdoor retail stores arrived at 1,285, while the number of that in the department store rose to 1,620. Outdoor industry sees great potentials in Chinese market, and attracts domestic and overseas retailers to share the interest.

APSC: APSC (Asia Pacific Snow Conference) is one of the key conferences in Alpitec China 09&ispo china winter 09. The theme for this year's APSC is Snow Knowhow.

Experts from Europe as well as domestic professionals shared their experience on ski resorts construction and management, topics include the climate and geographic requirements in ski resorts building and location selection etc. Other activities during ispo china 09: including the In-sports Area combined fashion with sport naturally; Sport Events Promotion Area brought with you a well-known competition in China; Wearable Technology Premier showed the portable high-tech equipments; Creative Sports Products Show Lounge told you how marvelous the design is; Green Guards continued the ideology of the Prized tour last year; China Outdoor Retailer Demo Shops appeared with a new look; Ice Hockey Show with you again, and so on.

Manfred Wutzlhofer, President and CEO of Mes se München International: "This fifth edition of ispo in China was a true success and once again reflects the rapid development of the sporting goods industry in the entire Asia-Pacific Rim. We are proud and happy to return to China each year to support this powerful market and everybody involved in it. With a new visitor record, ispo china winter 09 has met our expectations."

Without any doubt, the sports industry in China is booming. Due to the fast growing Chinese economy and the increasing wealth of the Chinese, more and more winter sport enthusiasts can be found."It is estimated that, the number of Chinese winter sportsmen grows by more than 700.000 every year and should rise to around ten million skiers in the next five years", mentioned by Oskar Andesner, Austrian trade commissioner in Beijing. This is the right moment for the overseas winter sports industry to launch the Chinese market and to set new standards for the future on a worldwide level. Just as it is said: "Experience, Share, Transfer, Benefit... explore more in ispo china."