Last week, I attended the Verona Stone Show – Marmomacc – for the first time. In a word: Overwhelming!
What surprised me most about this trade show was the sheer scale. It’s like all of the other stone and countertop industry trade shows all rolled into one. Instead of a dozen CNC machine vendors, there are hundreds. I tried to capture it in my pictures, but it’s bigger than that.
Instead of Chinese stone producers having a large aisle of the show, they occupied a large building. There were 12 primary buildings in the Verona fairground – all of them dedicated to some portion of the stone industry.
I spent most of my time walking through the exhibits of the stone machinery, tooling, and related services. I ran into a few American Moraware customers, and got a chance to catch up with some of exhibitors. It didn’t hurt that many of the exhibitors had an amazing array of snacks, espresso, and wine. The consensus seems to be that the industry world-wide is doing well.
Plus, I got to see parts of the stone industry I’ve only had a tiny exposure to – huge blocks of marble, gang-saws, and equipment used for mining and extracting stone. Even more impressive to me was the design side.
There were several design exhibits in one of the halls of the show. My favorite was a rhino head carved of stone. What’s hard to see from the picture is that it’s about as tall as a person. In addition to the rhino, there were examples of stone rooms, buildings, and many other art pieces.
Plus, throughout the city of Verona there were artistic exhibits related to the Marmomacc show.
I think the most successful art piece was the #marbleselfie booth – a “photo booth” made of marble, with mirrors on the inside. It was located in a busy square downtown, and the entire time I was there, the booth was full of people taking their own pictures. Great concept.
Seriously, what’s cooler than strolling down the street in Verona, bumping into some folks you know from thousands of miles away, and being able to take a picture inside a marble box?
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