A supermarket in the middle of a fashion fair. That was the first thing visitors saw at Bella Center this week, shelves, barcodes and all. It worked.
CIFF 66 closed on Thursday after three days in Copenhagen: around 1,000 curated brands across more than 20,000 square meters, the CIFF Super concept turning packaging into set design, 10 Corso Como opening a 600 square meter space at the entrance, and a new TechCreate zone where brands met technology providers on the main floor. gopackshot took part as an official partner of the fair. Before the impressions fade, three observations.
The market is selective now, and the aisles showed it. The organizers' recap puts overall traffic slightly below last winter, around three percent. Buyer attendance from Italy grew 34 percent in the same period, the Netherlands added 10, and more visitors came from the UK, Belgium, France and Poland. Fewer casual walkthroughs. Longer meetings. Exhibitors we spoke with described the same pattern at their stands.
Technology left the back hall. TechCreate placed production and data tools next to the collections, and buyers treated them as part of the buying conversation. After 16 years inside production studios, that is new to me: retailers asking how product photos get made, how fast, and at what cost per SKU, in the same meeting where they review the collection.
And Copenhagen keeps being the room where Scandinavian commerce happens. We have produced content for Nordic brands for years, so the three days were a dense run of conversations about imagery that sells, and about the return rates that follow when it does not.
Thanks to the CIFF team for the partnership and the welcome. The next edition opens in August. We plan to be in the building.
