Salone del Mobile.Milano 2022: find out what happened

Text by

Ph. Marco Mazzoni

More than 262,000 attendees at the 60th edition of the Salone vouch for the event’s renewed catalytic power

The 60th edition of the Salone del Mobile.Milano ended on Sunday 12 June, after the pandemic break. And it was a huge success! The brands exhibiting numbered 2,175, 27% of them foreign, with 600 young designers. Attendance totaled 262,608 visitors in six days, from 173 countries, despite the almost complete absence of the Chinese and Russians who in 2019 accounted for more than 42,000 presences. 61% of buyers and operators in the sector came from abroad. The press was also extensively represented, with over 3,500 accredited journalists from around the world.

“This edition has confirmed the international scope of the event and the cohesion of the design community,” commented Maria Porro, President of the Salone del Mobile.Milano. “An important result that confirms the state of health and the value content of the Salone del Mobile, and it shows how teamwork across a whole sector and its creative and productive fabric can produce excellence, achieving great results even in the most complex moments. The ICE’s contribution has been precious and essential in its support in opening up new markets, with digital offerings that, this week as in previous months, have enabled us to get in touch with new countries.”

ingressi-slaonemilano-crop_0 — Ph. Diego Ravier

The event confirmed that how quality furniture has its most important global showcase in the Salone and how far it is able to attract talents, recount creativity and projects, and serve as an outstanding place for coming together, exchanging and sharing ideas that produce work and business. This year, the focus on sustainability has made the Salone an international stage for business ideas and technological solutions capable of contributing to the protection of the environment, the home and the most efficient use of resources, in keeping with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This is not just a matter of words. Green thinking has been translated into reality on both the level of organization and management of the Event, and on the level of research, the proposal of value and concrete and already feasible solutions presented by “Design with Nature”, the SaloneSatellite and many exhibitors.

“There was a great desire to be present in person again, but also to again do business in the showcase of excellence of our know-how, with the qualified public as the real protagonist. There have been many orders, opening up new markets and consolidating traditional ones. The Salone has confirmed that it is a winning formula that cannot be ignored,” said the president of FederlegnoArredo Claudio Feltrin, speaking on behalf of a supply chain that brings together 70,000 companies, with 294,000 employees with a turnover of almost 50 billion euros. “The smart home, the renewal of materials, the entwining of tradition and innovation aiming at sustainability increasingly seen as a competitive lever, are a practical demonstration of how much companies have continued to invest in these years, albeit so difficult, without ever ceasing to look to the future with optimism.”

To inform and involve, the plan to engage with the Salone del Mobile’s international community covered all the touch points of the platform: website, newsletter, app, push and social networks (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube). The results achieved by the digital platform during the days of the Event were highly positive, being supported by an activation plan begun in the previous weeks and backed up by the daily planning of content. On the front of the social media, 13.5 million accounts were reached, with more than 50,000 contents being generated by the community using the official hashtags (#salonedelmobile2022 and #salonedelmobile60th), 600,000 video views, 120,000 interactions with content and 25 million impressions. In the last week alone, the site has recorded 4.8 million page views with an average of 100,000 daily users (69.2% from Italy, 30.8% from abroad), and a 42% increase in new users registered on the platform. The Salone del Mobile.Milano app, which has doubled the number of downloads compared to its September launch, had an average of 40,000 scans made with the matchmaking service, used for directly connecting companies and professionals visiting Rho. Finally, the cycle of podcasts Design Voices – Salone del Mobile, broadcast live daily during the days of the event, ranked third in the Art category on Amazon Music, while a second season of in-depth analysis is scheduled for the coming weeks.

And there’s still more. In addition to the above-mentioned exhibition-installation “Design with Nature”, the strengths of this edition were the talks with illustrious architects, innovators and visionaries, and the Food Court of Identità Golose, areas devoted to a gourmet break with the great names of Italian cuisine. Attendance at Palazzo Reale was excellent,with the Salone staging La Scatola Magica (scheduled until 17 June), a multisensory narrative experience recounting the quality, innovation, creativity and beauty of the Event. Finally, the Hospitality Project proved extremely interesting, organized in collaboration with the Municipality of Milan, Fondazione Fiera and the main design schools of the city – Nuova Accademia, IED Istituto Europeo di Design and Scuola del Design/Politecnico di Milano. A hundred students located at key points of the city provided information to thousands of visitors from around the world about mobility in the city, the fair and the events scheduled in Milan. Thanks to the survey they conducted, we know that the visitors opted for green solutions, such as subway and trains, to reach Fiera Rho.

Thanks to all, then, and see you again at the next edition of the Salone del Mobile in Milan from 18 to 23 April 2023!