Cersaie2023Preview

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Tilecast News features and analysis brought to you by Diary of a Tile Addict. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Hi. [00:00:22] Speaker C: Tile addicts. This podcast is a little preview of. [00:00:25] Speaker B: Chair Five 2023, which is taking place next week, 25th to 29 September, Monday to Friday at the Bologna Fiere in Italy. I've got Joe Simpson here with me, hopefully to tell us what we can expect to see. [00:00:39] Speaker C: So. [00:00:39] Speaker B: Hi, Joe. [00:00:40] Speaker C: Do you know what we're going to see? [00:00:41] Speaker B: Of all the PRS been sending you. [00:00:43] Speaker C: Press releases and companies contacting you? [00:00:46] Speaker D: Yes, I've received my normal smattering of pre show PR. Some useful, most not. But I think I should start with what I have had from the show's organizers, because for my fellow tile addicts who haven't been to Bologna for a few years, they're going to see quite a few changes. The main one being that there used to be a big kind of open area where you'd always find the shipping companies, the exhibition stands and the adhesive manufacturers. Well, that's gone. And there's a massive new stand, which I think is numbered now, 37, which is full of tiles. And they've brought a lot of the old catering and stuff inside, so you don't have to go to outlying areas to eat. You can actually eat on the floor. [00:01:31] Speaker C: So what else? [00:01:33] Speaker D: This year they're going to be eight halls of tiles. There's another one dedicated to all the things that go into making tiles, and then three or four, which are all the kind of adhesives tools or whatever. But I think what people will find is that the way it's displayed now allows a bit more room for the products to breathe than they used to have. Personally, I think it's made it to better show. [00:01:57] Speaker C: So what does that tell us in terms of what's actually going to be there, though, in terms of colors, styles, patterns? [00:02:04] Speaker D: Okay, interestingly, a lot of the stuff I've had preshow has been very lacking in specifics on that. And most of the things that I've been forewarned about are pretty much old established favorites. So there have been new wood effects with different colors, with all showing kind of very authentic grain patterns and that sort of thing. There's been a smattering of releases about new and improved marble effects, classic kind of carra statuario, that sort of thing. And there have been lots of ones talking about concrete effects. So essentially all of the trends that have been established over the last few years coming through again. But amongst that, there have been one or two things which have rather more caught my fancy. [00:02:53] Speaker C: And so what are they? [00:02:55] Speaker D: I would say primarily it's 3D tiles, or quite when I say 3D, I'm talking about things that are designed to shape, like in long triangular sections, whatever, and various other more linear styles, which I think are really adaptable for curved surfaces, for feature walls, for backsplashes, that sort of thing. And the other thing, I think the thing that's going to be really different this year is there are quite a few of the bigger companies, I'm talking about the sort of iris, ceramica and the world who are going to be showing really total tiling solutions. So work tops, outdoor tiling, traditional wall and floor tiling, furniture facings, all designed to go together. And so you go on the stand, and it's going to be a complete stand, that they have made every surface that you can see, and I think we're going to see that. And I think what I'm hoping to see is that they're going to be quite clever in how they mix this up. So you're going to see concrete and wood effects mixed, you're going to see marble and plain tiles mixed, you're going to see all sorts of different sizes, formats and colors, but that go together harmoniously. So that's my hope. [00:04:08] Speaker C: So where are you heading to first? Which do you think is the most important hall for certainly, people looking to buy tiles? Which hall would you head to first? [00:04:17] Speaker D: That's a really good question and it's always a bit of a you take your money, pays your money and take your choice. But if I was going to go to one hall, it would probably be 37. If I was going to go to two, it'd be 36 and 37. But I could be completely wrong because some of the halls where the really big players used to go, like 16 and 18, seem to have taken a bit of a backstep, but you never know. It's quite a more dynamic show and I think the past, where you could pretty well ignore certain halls unless you were being very completeist about it, I think that's over and I basically think there is no excuse now for not treading the whole thing. So I think the key advice to tile addicts is pack a good pair of trainers, you're going to be doing ten to get round the show. [00:05:08] Speaker C: Yeah. And it is a hard slog, isn't it? But you can at least sit down and you can get things to eat around the show, so that's always good. [00:05:16] Speaker D: I think that's going to be a real benefit this year, because I think in the past, you always felt you had to go away to eat, and often that involved making a decision. Now I think you can actually sit and eat. You will see fellow colleagues in the UK tile industry are going to walk by and join you. And also it's an excuse to go and see some of the bits of the show that I think a lot of us tend to overlook. Things like Tiling Town, where they have the practical demonstrations. [00:05:46] Speaker C: That was great last year, wasn't it, actually? [00:05:47] Speaker D: Yeah, I thought it was great and unexpectedly humorous at times. It was a little bit like watching a sort of 1930s cartoon, really, where they were trying to move enormous sheets of tiling around a packed audience and having to set it all up. It was very much sort of Abbott and Costello about it, I thought. [00:06:09] Speaker C: No, I'm looking forward to that bit again. Okay, so it's five days in all, diary of a Tile Editor going there en masse. So we're going to be there, certainly solidly for the first three days, when we will also be doing a podcast and we'll be doing YouTube imagery up on YouTube so that you can see what we see. The things we pick out is the most interesting. And Joe's obviously going to be heading to see lots of people. You've got lots of meetings organised. [00:06:42] Speaker D: Yeah, I just thought there were just one or two things that gazing into my crystal ball of things. I have no foreknowledge of this, but I just think it's time we're going to their time has come for certain ideas, and one of the ones is you often see that Tiling will follow a certain art movement or something. So obviously Art Deco has been huge, art Nouveau has had its moment and recently we've been seeing quite a lot of stuff that is kind of more recent in time. So references to sort of post war America, particularly sort of American design linked to coffee houses and those kind of roadside cafes. My feeling is this year we might see some new influences. And one of the ones, and it may partly because I've just seen something about it on the telly recently, but Cubism, I think Cubism might be quite influential this year, which is the combination of those very earthy tones, strong vertical and diagonal lines and quite abstract patterns, but they're still recognizable. I think we might see some of that coming through into tiles. I think we might also see some revolutionary poster art influences. I'm almost certain we would have seen this but for the war, and now maybe designers would have shied away from it. But I think the kind of Russian revolutionary posters and the kind of color schemes they used and the simplified lines, I could see that just starting to emerge, and I wouldn't be surprised to see that coming back. And I think we're going to see a lot of simple curved designs on squared tiles, so dividing the faces up using semicircles and things like that. I suspect we're going to see some of that. The kind of thing that probably would be familiar to people who followed the kind of tiles that were being used by pioneering retailers in the UK, like waitrose, in the 1960s. [00:09:08] Speaker C: Okay, well, we're going to have to hold you to that. We'll come back and see what we've actually seen. And if not, maybe you're ahead of the curve here, at any rate. [00:09:17] Speaker D: And another thing which we did see last year, which we're definitely going to see again, people cooking food on porcelain, those because obviously last year there was some stands, notably ABK, who were doing that? Well, now, rack have got their own proprietary system, and there are lots of others who are going down this route. So using hidden induction hobs and then cooking food right on the porcelain worktop, it's a brilliant piece of theater. It shows the quality of the worktops and it also draws in a crowd. There's nothing like the smell of a sizzling steak and somebody playing the saxophone and a third guy talking over the top of it about forcing worktops to draw a crowd at Chess eye. [00:10:06] Speaker C: And yet another way that tile can be applied to all sorts of areas of home. [00:10:14] Speaker D: And certainly much easier to get across than the years when they had a whole load of photo luminescent tiles. They had to keep taking you into a room and turning off all the lights to demonstrate it. Not so good for a big show with 120,000 people wandering around it. [00:10:28] Speaker C: Oh, I could bring that back, though. Good for the funky bathroom. Okay, well, we're going to have to start packing our bags, so hopefully we will all tune in to hear the daily podcast monday to Wednesday next week, and we'll let you know what we find. [00:10:47] Speaker B: Thanks for listening. [00:10:49] Speaker D: Bye now. [00:10:50] Speaker A: You've been listening to tilecast produced by Diary of a Tile addict. To ensure you don't miss any future episodes, don't forget to follow us. You can also find show notes and receive updates on newsfeeds, articles, podcasts and videos direct to your inbox by subscribing to thedariaoftile Addict.com website. Get the inside track at diaryofatile addict. [00:11:15] Speaker B: Sam Close.