The Italian Trade Commission Kicks Off 2011 with a Feast of Activities for Food Professionals and Consumers
The Italian Trade Commission starts the new year strong by sponsoring and organizing a host of food-industry-related activities in January--from the Italian Pavilion at the Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco to the VINO 2011 wine industry conference in New York to the publication of the latest editions of the Foods of Italy and Wines of Italy books on its italianmade. com web portal.
New York (PRWEB) January 16, 2011
Anyone with a penchant for Italian culture and cuisine—which seems to be nearly everyone these days—will want to take note of the exciting January the Italian Trade Commission has in store for both food industry professionals and consumers alike.
To refresh your memory, The Italian Trade Commission (ITC) is the Italian agency responsible for developing and promoting trade between Italy and other countries. It has been the driving force behind events such as the Vino 2011 - Italian Wine Week Convention and the Italian Pavilion at the Fancy Food Show. Coincidentally, these two events, among others, will headline the ITC’s impressive array of activities this January.
To start things off, more than 120 purveyors of fine Italian food and beverages will pack the Italian Trade Commission’s sponsored Italian Pavilion at the 36th Winter Fancy Food Show, taking place January 16 to 18 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. The Italian Pavilion—typically the largest and most diverse collection of exhibitors at San Francisco’s premier food industry event—will be even larger this year. With twice the number of exhibitors over last year’s event, the Pavilion will showcase the best of Italian cuisine—from sauces and pasta to cured meats, chocolate, olives and olive oil—all available for tasting and ordering. The sharp uptick in Italian exhibitors at this year’s show has created quite a buzz, signaling a decisively stronger market in the coming year for gourmet and specialty food products.
Hot on the heels of the FFS, the Third Annual VINO - Italian Wine Week convention will kick off on January 23 in New York. VINO 2011, sponsored and hosted by the ITC, will run January 23-27 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and will include 300 companies—from vintners and importers to wholesalers and retailers. The five-day conference will combine breakfast meetings, tastings, discussions, and informal get-togethers designed to bring buyers and sellers together. At this year’s event, the ITC will also introduce its VINO 2011 DIRECT program which will debut a myriad of wines from all over the peninsula available for the first time in the United States. Importers, Wholesalers, Retailers and Restaurateurs will be able to buy directly as this ambitious program has included a margin friendly import and distribution solution as well as private label opportunities for all trade tiers.
Rounding out the flurry of ITC news-worthy activities for the month will be the launch of its new italianmade. com web portal, along with the update and online publication of two books Foods of Italy - 5th edition (http://bit. ly/fnN5o6) and Wines of Italy - 9th Edition (http://bit. ly/h02VaM) by Burton Anderson. These extraordinary resources represent perhaps the best informational materials on Italian food and wine available in the English language—whether on the web or in hardcopy. These new releases cover the complete spectrum of Italian food and wine and are a direct response to burgeoning demand by consumers and trade members.
Italianmade. com already reaches 100,000 visitors each month and serves as an important vehicle for helping the Italian Trade Commission fulfill its charter of supporting Italian businesses, promoting industry innovation, and supporting Italian trade in U. S. markets.
Tom Wark, noted wine publicist and author of Fermentation, The Daily Wine Blog—one of the world’s top wine blogs focusing on marketing, wine politics and other industry related issues—expounds on the ITC‘s activities in the US markets. Wark notes: “From the marketer’s perspective here in the states, the Italian Trade Commission has not just been busy, but also very strategic and savvy in the way they carefully target key demographic and cultural trends to support their mission to expose Italian products and producers to the American marketplace. For example, due to the Italian Trade Commission’s commitment to carefully using new social media tools, VINO 2011 will be happening not just for participants in New York, but for wine trade around the world. Marketers and the wine trade always want to work with and support those most deeply and most intelligently engaged in promotion, and this is why VINO 2011 is so critical to Italian Producers – VINO 2011 marks ITC and the Italian Wine trade as savvy, intelligent and active marketers that understand the changing marketplace.”
While Italian products can be found everywhere in the U. S., one clear problem that authentic Italian products face is the misrepresentation of the imitations as the real thing. The way to protect authentic products from imitations rests solely through communication and education, both at the trade level and to the final consumer. The Italian Trade Commission is proudly continuing its efforts to do that.
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