Alpaca United CEO Corner: Musing’s from Barcelona
Arrived here 36 hours ago after a perfect flight on Delta 94 from JFK in good shape.
The Barcelona airport is modern, clean and user friendly with knowledgeable and courteous staff at each step from passport control to customs to baggage to transportation services.
Arrived at the Acta Atrium Palace; a modest hotel but equipped with essentials like high speed internet connection, well appointed rooms, decent restaurant & coffee shop and excellent mid town location close to everything including mass transportation-we’re 20min by subway to the ITMA exhibition center.
AU creative director and ITMA project manager, Julia Balfour, arrived here 2 days earlier to meet our exhibit contractor and local printer who is publishing our show directory and collateral materials.
Spent yesterday at the ITMA site reviewing progress on our exhibit and walking 9 halls of the show reviewing construction progress on the amazing variety of booths demonstrating full scale spinning, weaving, knitting, scouring-dying-finishing, fabric cutting & sewing and ancillary textile services.
In addition to these, there are booths for research centers (including NCSU), trade groups, media and vendors of every description.
If there is justification for the term “one stop shopping” ITMA would be the one. It would take years and untold amounts of travel budget to visit these companies in their home countries not to mention the effort and networking required to secure face time with their senior management all of whom are on site this week
Today Sunday (we’re 6 hrs ahead of US EDT) we’re in the coffee shop with back to back MacBooks working on the AU website which will be live by Thursday or Friday this week with daily blog updates on ITMA!
Busy day tomorrow; hand carrying the tile mosaic display and cartons of shopping bags from hotel to the booth site and meeting construction team for mounting of display, lightening fixtures, shopping bag hooks etc.
Stay tuned, more tomorrow
Nick at AU Booth #129 Hall-5 ITMA Barcelona