Picaflor postpones February edition of Playtime Shanghai show

By

Sarah Ahssen

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Feb 7, 2020

Picaflor, organiser of the Playtime childrenswear trade shows, has decided to suspend the Playtime Shanghai event scheduled on February 19-20 at the Expo-I Pavilion Shanghai, featuring 70 exhibitors, due to the coronavirus outbreak. “The epidemic’s real spread across China, the growing restrictions imposed by the Chinese government to all its citizens and foreign travellers, and the risks that exhibitors and buyers would incur, have forced us to postpone the next edition of Playtime Shanghai to the summer,” stated Picaflor in a press release.

Playtime has followed in the footsteps of textile trade shows  Intertextile, CHIC, Apparel Fabrics, Yarn Expo and Intertextile Shanghai Home Textiles that have postponed their March 2020 sessions. Playtime Shanghai was first staged in July 2019, as a response to growing demand from the Asian market and from foreign brands wishing to export there. Its second edition is therefore set to be held this July.
 
The 27th edition of the Playtime Paris show, held on January 25 to 27 at the Parc Floral exhibition centre in the French capital, hosted 450 exhibitors and 5,590 visitors, down from 7,235 visitors a year earlier. According to the organisers, this marked decrease was due to the transport strikes that have hit Paris. “The [visitor] figure was counterbalanced by two positive statistics: buyer loyalty is growing, with 49% of them returning to the show, and the number of Asian and American visitors grew significantly,” said the organisers in a press release.

The next edition of Playtime Paris is scheduled on July 4-6.