Craft Focus - February/March 2024 (Issue 101)

23 SHOWS & EVENTS  This season’s most unmissable events Shows, news & events Diary dates CHSI Stitches 25th – 26th February, 2024 Birmingham NEC www.chsi.co.uk h+h cologne March 22nd – 24th March, 2024 Cologne, Germany www.hh-cologne.com Artisan Made UK 23rd – 24th March, 2024 Skipton Auction Mart www.artisanmadeuk.com h+h americas 1st – 3rd May, 2024 Rosemont, USA www.hh-americas.com London Stationery Show 14th – 15th May, 2024 Business Design Centre www.stationeryshowlondon.co.uk Creative Empowerment as the key theme of h+h cologne 2024 The leading international trade fair for creative handicraft & hobby supplies, h+h cologne, is presenting itself from 22nd to 24th March 2024 as an inspirational ordering platform for textile handicrafts. Under the new key theme, ‘Creative Empowerment’, the trade fair is going to be the meeting point of the industry’s most creative minds, who will come together to engage in an exchange on the current collections, trends and services for knitting, crocheting, sewing, embroidery and crafting activities. For next year’s event, h+h cologne 2024 has set itself the overarching goal of supporting the individual growth of the handicraft industry: The changing needs of the specialised trade and the digital challenges the industry is increasingly faced with are the reasons for choosing ‘Creative Empowerment’ as the motto of the event. In addition to a large spectrum of product innovations, the trade audience can look forward to an extensive, partly new, event programme that focuses on the current key theme. The latter addresses industry-relevant issues like: Which marketing strategies and tools does the industry need to remain sustainable? How should we prepare ourselves for the digitalisation and future generations? And how should the specialised trade position itself? Shaping the future oneself The key to strengthening the industry lies in the joint transfer of knowledge: The trade fair offers the ideal platform for networking and establishing valuable contacts for future growth. Through a tailor-made set-up comprising of product, service, event and learning offers, the industry is to become inspired and capable of fully exploiting its potential so that the own business can be aligned in a sustainable and competitive way. h+h cologne 2024 is placing a particular focus on business-relevant aspects such as marketing and extending the reach via different sales channels and platforms. In exclusive ‘deep dive workshops’, which enhance the trusted talk programme, exhibitors, content creators and trade experts will convey crossplatform strategies and recommendations for action. This aims to inspire the participants to rethink their own business perspectives, discover innovative approaches and try new things out on-site. Statements about the key theme Katrin Schön, Director of h+h cologne emphasises: “Challenging times also offer the handicraft trade above all new opportunities - if it understands how to implement its creativity to accomplish the lovely products and projects of its target group. We offer know-how and funpacked support in allowing people to get to know stationary and digital solutions they can subsequently implement successfully in their businesses.” “The key theme Creative Empowerment stands for the special strength of our industry: Creativity is what drives us to continually set new trends and be able to develop innovations, which we use to inspire totally different target groups to design their own items. Creativity ensures that our industry constantly further develops and sees changes not only as a challenge, but also as an opportunity to try new things out. h+h cologne offers the industry an ideal platform for this purpose,” added Hedwig Ehlen, CEO of Initiative Handarbeit e.V. Interactive events The new event concept of h+h cologne 2024 encompasses several interactive and experiential formats that are allocated to a specific zone and that are each dedicated to the key theme ‘Creative Empowerment’. The trade audience can look forward to exciting talks, masterclasses, deep dive workshops, a podcast studio and a creator zone on the different event areas, which feature varying contents and formats. On the last day of the trade fair, h+h cologne is organising the Future Talents Day, where young talents and start-ups can network with established industry professionals and companies and look for joint forward-looking solutions. This enables aspiring talents to gain exciting insights into different occupations within the specialised trade, the latter benefits in turn from creative input generated by the newcomers’ new perspectives, ideas and trends. As such, h+h cologne 2024 not only offers inspiration and innovation, but also the opportunity to jointly shape the future of the handicraft industry.

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