The Italian Outdoor Group (IOG) has decided to organize two separate “buying days” for Italian retailers next September and to open them up to exhibitors that are not members of the association. The first workshop will take place in Trento on Sept. 6-8, to be followed by another one staged farther south, in Piacenza, on Sept. 13-15. The aim is to attract more buyers from central Italy. The first buying days of the IOG were held only in Trento last Sept. 20-22, and they only involved 16 companies representing 30 brands and 40 retailers, mostly from the northeastern part of Italy. Luca Pedrotti, president of Aicad, recently replaced Luca Zanatta, president of Asolo-Lowe Alpine, as president of the IOG. Aicad is the company that owns the Lizard brand of sports sandals and distributes Vibram’s FiveFingers line in many European countries.
