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MIDO’s organizers have announced that the Board has decided to postpone the 2020 edition until dates, still to be decided, between the end of May and mid June.
A dozen towns in northern Italy were on effective lockdown due to the news of death of one Italian and many newer cases of people infected by the COVID-19 Coronavirus surfaced.
Faced with this situation, the Board of Directors of MIDO, met on Saturday 22nd Feb, in order to set up and define a strategic response to the CoVID-19 emergency, in relation to the upcoming edition scheduled for February 29 to March 2.
Giovanni Vitaloni, President of MIDO, issued the statement below.
“We took this decision out of respect for the current alarming situation and for our exhibitors and visitors. As this health crisis is developing in Italy, we could not but choose to postpone MIDO’s 2020 edition. We immediately defined and selected a timeframe within the year which could meet the needs of the eyewear industry at a national and international level.
We are aware that this decision will require industry professionals, exhibitors, buyers, press members, opticians and everyone working for MIDO, including our staff, to re-schedule their attendance, with a significant impact on all internal organizations.
It will be a twofold effort as we are just a week away from the show, but we cannot honestly think of celebrating our 50 years when the world – and our country now in particular – is experiencing such an international crisis.
We trust though that, for the very nature of the current situation, which is alarming and continuously evolving, our exhibitors and visitors, the media and everyone involved will understand our decision. Our sense of responsibility as business people, but most of all as human beings, towards our families, our children, our colleagues, has compelled us to do something that we would have never wanted to do, especially for this special edition, the year of our 50th birthday.”
The event had already seen a lot of cancellations but was trying hard to ensure the event would still go through. We await more news from them regarding the rescheduled dates and will update it on the blog as soon as we have more information.
