First. Ahead of all the rest.
January. First month of the year. First stage of a new era. The Vicenza Fair presents First, the first international appointment for jewellery and gold.
The start-up event on the international trade fair calendar, First is scheduled by the Vicenza Fair from 13 to 20 January and officially opens the new direction taken by Vicenza gold jewellery fairs.

First has been created with ambitious goals, evident in the pay off of the new communication campaign, "the jewellery supremacy". Objectives that aim to reach a leadership position as benchmark event on a world level for the gold and jewellery sector.

The strength behind a change so radical that it has even led to a new name for the event also explains the sense of the strategic project put in place by the company's top management.
In order to reposition Italian gold jewellery in the highest market bracket, where added value is provided by design, creativity and the typical style of made in Italy, the Vicenza Fair must link with all that represents and expresses the excellence of made in Italy: fashion design, first and foremost, and that unique and unrepeatable way of conceiving luxury as exclusivity and lifestyle.
This is why the Vicenza Fair has changed the name of the first fair in 2008, has shaped it to fit its role of top event, the one that lays down the guidelines for style, market and taste trends for the whole of this year, the one that all the others will just have to follow.
A week totally dedicated to gold, jewellery and to all that they represent in terms of economics, style, consumer perception, fashions and taste.
An obligatory appointment for companies, operators, buyers, purchasing groups and wholesalers and also for the media and everything that stands for made in Italy. This is also an opportunity, cultural even, for understanding and appraising evolution in the sector.

Well-defined traits, increasingly more incisive specialisation and at the same time a marked capacity for diversification to meet the needs of everything that rotates around the gold jewellery sector: from companies to distribution channels, from trendsetters to retail trade, right through to the end consumer whose purchases determine the success of each new product.

On its part, the market is starting to show the first signs that confirm a need to focus on an increase in the added value produced by the sector as a whole.
For the first time since 2003, jewellery exports grew in the first ninth months of 2007, with volume up by 0.8% and value up by 19.2% when compared to the same period in 2006. These are encouraging figures, (even if they compensate for the increase in the price of raw materials) and they show that upward repositioning is starting to show results, both in terms of quality and of marginality.
1600 exhibitors will be showing at the first edition of First, from all over Italy and from thirty or so foreign countries. To coincide with First, there will be T-gold, an international fair and one of its kind in Italy, dedicated to machinery and tools for gold jewellery production.

First is the first step of a structural and organisational renewal project without precedent for the Vicenza Fair, which in 2007 underwent far-reaching corporate reorganisation, becoming a Limited Company and starting up an important strategic plan aimed at leadership in international gold jewellery fairs.