New board, new directions

At its AGM during Malaysia’s MIFF exhibition this month, the International Alliance of Furnishing Publications (IAFP) elected a new board, and set out its goals for the future, writes its new chairman, Imre Zilahi …

If you haven’t heard of the IAFP before, it’s an alliance that comprises 17 leading furnishing publications from around the world, all of which co-operate to help businesses in the respective territories access information and opportunities in foreign markets.

At our recent AGM – kindly hosted by Informa Markets Malaysia (the organiser of MIFF) on 3rd March in Kuala Lumpur – outgoing chairman Casey Loo (Furniture & Furnishing Export International, Singapore) thanked his fellow board members – Paul Farley (Furniture News, UK), Takyoshi Nagashima (The Home Living, Japan), Urszula Ditrych (Biznes. Meble.pl, Poland) and Bill McLoughlin (Furniture Today, US) – for helping him maintain the alliance during the pandemic and its aftermath.

He then conferred management of the alliance to a new board, comprising: myself, chairman Imre Zilahi (Magmob, Romania); vice-chair Nesip Uzun (Furniturk, Turkey); secretary general Liyakat Ali Khan (IFJ International, India); treasurer Takyoshi Nagashima; and marketing director Paul Farley.

Following the meeting, Paul asked me to share some of my thoughts on the role of the alliance, and its likely directions. Here goes …

Nowadays, every new business move, every new furniture design, and all furniture-related events, make their easy way to the overwhelmingly immense internet, and sometimes the amount of information confuses even the furniture industry’s most experienced professionals.

The role of the specialised media – the members of the IAFP – is to filter the ocean, and fish out the most relevant information for their audience. This is what I think of as being our main purpose – the furniture media must help their readers/viewers to navigate the challenges, to be the lighthouse they trust while making decisions. General information can be published by anyone – relevant information must be selected by someone who knows the trade.

The very reason the IAFP exists is to maintain a global network, a working co-operation among the most important furniture publications from five continents. In the next two years, the alliance’s board will try to invent new methods to be used by our members, so we can lend a helping hand to each other in our international journey. www.iafp.info

We’ll also increase the number of the trade events where the IAFP is visible, and in order to do so we’ll stay open to creating new partnerships with trade fairs from every relevant continent – Africa must be added here, along with our existing co-operation with fairs in Asia, North and South America, Europe and Oceania.

My personal business tagline is ‘deadline and quality’, so I’ll do my best to offer this to my colleagues and the alliance’s partners. I’ll be happy to receive the same in return.

You can contact the alliance at contact@iafp.info, and find out more about our members on our website.