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Textile Printers, T-Shirt Printers, Transfer Units, Inkjet Inks

ITMA ASIA + CITME 2014

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Trade ShowJuly 2014

Textile Printers, T-Shirt Printers, Transfer Units,

Inkjet InksITMA ASIA + CITME 2014

Pablo M. Lee

Once again I’m back in the beautiful Shanghai, a city full of magic and history, where the tradition merges with the technology.

Shanghai is a one of the cities where fashion sets the trends for the rest of the world. Their extended culture and diversity of visual experiences makes the more than sixteen-hour flight worth coming, from the head quarters of FLAAR Reports.

Trade Show Textile Printers, T-Shirt Printers, Transfer Units, Inkjet Inks


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This time, what brings me to this beautiful city isn’t to attend an expo dedicated to signage; this time I had the luck to attend a trade show entirely dedicated to the textile market, a theme for which Shanghai is famous and well know around the world.

ITMA ASIA + CITME is well known in Latin America, so during my flight I met a lot of Latin Amer-ican people that were coming to China just to attend this important expo that only takes place every two years.

But I also had the opportunity to talk with some people from Central America that were flying to Shanghai to make some contacts and business for their textile industry, they didn’t know about the show, until I pointed the advantage of attending it. I think it would be convenient to promote the show in the Latin American market, since this area is gaining importance year-to-year in the textile industry.



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After waiting two long years, it was finally time for ITMA ASIA + CITME 2014 and so the show began. The hot days that are characteristic of the Shanghai weather during June were substituted for a cloudy and rainy day, which was nice on a long and busy day since it refreshed the environment.



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Whenever I stay in this city I prefer to use the subway, a convenient and easy to use transportation system, even if you don’t know the language. You can take the subway in almost any part of the city; Huamu Road (the last station of line 7) is just a couple of transfers away, this stop is located at the north entrance of the Shanghai New International Expo Centre.



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The access to the expo was kind of hard. Usually the trade shows that I have attended in this expo centre are so big that they occupy all the halls, so all the entrances of the expo centre are available, but not this time.

ITMA ASIA + CITME was co-exhibiting with an expo dedicated to lo-gistics, cargo and transportation, so the north entrance was not avail-able for ITMA; instead the trade show enabled a temporary entrance closer to the north access.

Since this temporary entrance is closer to the subway station I tried to use this entrance, but to my surprise the ITMA personnel (too young and un-experienced for a trade show of these dimensions) told me that I couldn’t get my badge in this entrance and that I should go to the south entrance to get my press pass. So I began to walk towards the south entrance, a main entrance and not a provisional access, only to find out it was merged in chaos. The personnel in charge of guiding the attendees weren’t enough to handle the crowd.



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My attempts to try to explain the trade show staff that all I need was to pickup my press pass to access the show were un-fructiferous. One by one, I walked to every counter to which the confused and stressed staff members sent me, until some one sent to the “section” where the people go to complain.

In this desk you could see a lot of angry people complaining about their badges, I even saw people so angry that they started kicking the counter. Finally a kind lady that saw all I had been through tried to help me but she was also unable to understand my registration papers. So she called her manager, and when he read my papers said “MEDIA” he just walked away without saying a word.

Once again a guy came up to me and tried to read my papers but he also couldn’t understand what they said, so he gave me two options: to walk to the north entrance again to see if I can get my badge there OR pay the entrance fee, even though I was already registered as PRESS, because they couldn’t find me in their system. So once again I walked back to the north entrance and after talking with a lot of people they sent me back to the south entrance. Tired and under-standably irritated I walked one more time to the south entrance (those who have attended shows in this expo center, may know that the distance between each entrance is approximately one kilometer will sympathize).

Once more, I go one by one to every counter until a lady finally un-derstood my registration papers and gave me my press pass within five minutes.

Since ITMA ASIA + CITME is an international trade show that gains popularity all around de world each year, the staff is expected to be more friendly with the international attendees. If getting the right badge is complicated enough for the local attendees that can speak Chinese, you can imagine what it is like for anyone that speaks any language but Chinese. It would be convenient enable a counter com-pletely dedicated to international attendees with a staff that under-stands and speaks 100% English (or Spanish, German, etc).



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Once I was able to go in, everything was great. ITMA ASIA +CITMA is such a big expo where you could find anything that you could want for the textile industry, literally you could find both a needle or industrial weaving machine.



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International Sections

It was interesting to see that being an Asian expo, more than 50% of the companies that exhibited their products were Eu-ropean. You could even see how Italy and Germany were orga-nized and brought a lot of companies as an association.



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Noisy Halls

I have had the opportunity to attend a lot of trade shows all around the world, some of them with halls completely full of CNC cutting machines. I consider this type of equipment very noisy, but at this trade show there were a couple of halls filled with weaving machinery which produced 25% more noise than CNC equipment, but without the uncomfortable fumes.

In these halls I could see a lot of people using ear-plugs to cope with the noise in the hall; someone even compared the noise with “a room full of peo-ple working with old fashioned type writers”. But in a textile expo, the “typewriter sound” is 1,000,000 times more destructive to your ear drums.



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No Photos allowed is counter-productive

Many trade shows are losing exhibitors; and fewer attendees are showing up. Our interest at FLAAR is to assist trade shows (and exhibitors). But this is tough to do when every booth has a sign saying NO PHOTOS.

As I was walking the show I could observe a lot of signs that prohibited taking pictures of the equipment. Some people wouldn’t allow me to take pictures of their machinery even if there was no sign that pro-hibited photos.

These situations make my research job as a journalist a tad difficult; but they also made me more curi-ous about why almost all the companies that forbade taking pictures were foreign. So I walked around the show and asked people about these signs and they all coincided that it is to avoid people from copy-ing their technology.

This argument is a little bit ridiculous and I agree with an exhibitor that said: “that it is a bit contradictory to forbid taking pictures of the equipment during an expo; since its main purpose is for people to have access to the machinery and for the manufacturer to show the new technology available, so what is the point then to exhibit in a trade show.”

The ironic thing is that when I finished talking with this exhibitor and was going to take pictures of the printer, a local distributor in the booth walked up to me and asked me to stop taking pictures. So I ex-plained to him the manufacturer had already allowed me take photos and that made him change his mind, letting me take pictures of the most minimum detail.

I can understand why the companies do almost the impossible to protect their technology; and how to blame them if in Shanghai even at the “Fabric Market” you go with a picture of any fashion design, and they will reproduce it to the most minimum detail, just based on the picture.

Any Chinese factory can copy every intimate detail on their own; they do not need pho-tos from us at FLAAR. Any Chinese factory engineer knows how to easily obtain whatever intimate inside de-tails of any technology.

It is ironic that Chinese brands tend to be hospitable and un-derstandably want FLAAR to write about their brands. We can’t tell the world the ben-efits of a brand if we don’t know the benefits because booth personnel were not willing to assist us to learn about their brand.

Plus, anyone can take photos without waving a camera at a booth. In summary, it is not productive to limit photography when our goal is to let distributors and textile printing companies know about your brand. Every month people write us to learn what brands of printers we recommend (and which brands we suggest people should consider skipping).



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Textile Printers

MBK (Machinery BurgKie) exhibited for first time the second generation of their TDP-6000 printer.

MBK (Machinery BurgKie) TDP-6000 textile printer. DGI exhibited theri new Fabrijet FD-1904

Hongsam SD 1800 SPTT-16 printer.

Hongsam Hong-Jet HJ-8495 t-shirt printer. Human Digital TS-JET t-shirt printer.

AnaJet mPower mP5i t-shirt printer.



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T-shirt Printers

Hongsam exhibited their new t-shirt printers: Hong-Jet HJ-8495 and Hong-Jet HJ-8410B.



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Textile Ink

Spgprint booth at ITMA ASIA + CITME 2014. Hongsam Digital Sience & Technology booth.

BIPORIN booth at ITMA ASIA + CITME 2014.Inkbank exhibited their fluorecent sublimation ink.



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Always is pleasant to reunite with friends, we have made throughout the years, such as the people from Monti Antonio, who have always found time to help us with our research.

Monti Antonio Mod 853 transfer unit. Wuxi Pengda Science & Technology PD-3200 transfer unit.

Eastsign MOT-1700 transfer unit.

Transfer Units

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Also, since some reports are occasional-ly updated, if you got your version from somewhere else, it may be an obsolete edition. FLAAR reports are being updated all year long, and our comment on that product may have been revised positive-ly or negatively as we learned more about the product form end users.

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Your only assurance that you have a com-plete and authentic evaluation which de-scribes all aspects of the product under consideration, benefits as well as defi-ciencies, is to obtain these reports direct-ly from FLAAR, via the various sites in our network.

Copyright 2014



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Nicholas Hellmuth

FLAAR_Reports

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In 2016, ITMA ASIA will take place in a different location and different date. The 2016 show will be held in the Shanghai Exhibition and Conven-tion Center from October 24 to 28.

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Textile Printers, T-Shirt Printers, Transfer Units, Inkjet ...€¦ · Textile Printers, T-Shirt Printers, Transfer Units, Inkjet Inks ITMA ASIA + CITME 2014 28 29 Textile Ink Spgprint