The curtain goes up on Coverings

Mar 17, 2004

16/03/04 - Coverings 2004, the most important exhibition of ceramic tile and natural stone floor coverings in the Americas, is about to open its doors to visitors.

The event will take place on March 23-26, 2004 in the North/South complex at the Orlando County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. More than 27,000 industry professionals from over 100 countries will converge on the exhibition to meet with 1,300 exhibitor companies from more than 45 countries hosted in a net exhibit space of about 50,000 square metres.

This year numerous companies will be taking part through country pavilions. The largest national delegations are the Italian, Spanish and American companies, which will be exhibiting in pavilions organised by the national trade associations (Assopiastrelle, Ascer and TCA respectively).
The other countries with national pavilions are Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Panama, Portugal and Turkey.

Besides the exhibition itself, the new management company NTP (National Trade Productions) of Alexandria (Washington, DC) has announced a wide variety of conferences covering all aspects of floor coverings, including design and marketing, distribution and market trends. More than 40 conferences and workshops are scheduled (Download program in pdf format).
The “Spectrum and Prism Awards” will be awarded to an architect or other design professional whose project has demonstrated creativity and achievement in the use of tile in residential and commercial design.

As usual, Ceramic World Web is offering a gallery of products that will be displayed at the tradeshow.

To view the gallery, click on: The new proposals at Coverings 2004 .

CWW will also be publishing articles on Coverings over the next few days, including reports and the latest news fresh from Orlando.

The in-focus section contains a list of the promoters and sponsors of the show.

For the figures on Coverings 2003, read: Coverings, visitors down by 12.5%focus_coverings.gifPromoters and sponsors of Coverings 2004Promoters and sponsors of Coverings 2004

The organisations sponsoring Coverings are ASCER (Spain's Ceramic Tile Manufacturers Association), Assopiastrelle (Association of Italian Ceramic Tile and Refractories Manufacturers), CTDA (Ceramic Tile Distributors Association), NTCA (National Tile Contractors Association) and TCA (Tile Council of America).

The co-sponsors include the American Institute of Architects (Orlando Chapter), the Associazione Italiana Marmomacchine, the American Society of Interior Designers (Florida North and Florida South Chapters), the Construction Specifications Institute (Greater Orlando Chapter), the International Interior Design Association (Florida Chapter), the Terrazzo Tile and Marble Association of Canada, the Tile Contractors’ Association of America, the Tile Heritage Foundation and the Marble Institute of America.