PIEDRA Moves Ahead in 2006

The biennial stone event drew 17,407 exclusive attendees, marking a 6.2-percent increase from the last Piedra in 2004. They saw 873 exhibitors ensconced in 26,267 m(2) at the Feria de Madrid center in northeast Madrid.The event drew a total of close to 29,0000 attendees, with some 12,000 viewing Piedra as well as Veteco, a window-related show running concurrently at the Feria.Foreign attendees and exhibitors boosted the event; non-Spanish show visitors accounted for 11.5 percent of the final attendee totals, up 8.3 percent from 2004. On the exhibition side, 41 percent of the vendors came from outside Spain’s borders.Piedra’s International Buyers Programme, organized in collaboration with the Chamber of Trade and Industry of Madrid, proved to be a highly effective tool. A focus on the United States, in conjunction with the Marble Institute of America (MIA) and the Hudson Economic Group, resulted in an almost- threefold increase in the number of U.S. attendees.The international visitors also benefited from a welcoming presentation on the first day of the event, with a speaker lineup including Manuel Regueiro on behalf of the Federación Española de la Piedra Natural (FDP), the MIA’s Gary Distelhorst and Lloyd Henry of the Hudson Economic Group.The event also drew Spanish and other European architects and designers with the first-ever International Architecture Congress, organized by the FDP, the Stone Association of the Madrid Region and the Department for Economic Affairs and Technological Innovation of the Madrid Regional Government. The next edition of Piedra is set for May 7-10, 2008, in Madrid.