Maredamare 2026
Firenze.

What Maredamare is, in two lines

Maredamare is the only Italian B2B fair entirely dedicated to beachwear and underwear, and one of Europe’s references for the sector. It is held every year at the Fortezza da Basso in Florence and previews the following summer’s collections, at the 2026 edition (the 19th) the SS2027. Organised by Underbeach srl, the July 2026 edition gathers over 200 brands across 11,000 sqm.

It is not a fair open to the public: access is reserved for trade professionals, and the orders that decide the season close here, across the three days and the weeks immediately after. That is why contact management matters as much as the on-site presence.

What to exhibit, where to exhibit

Maredamare is organised by product category and price positioning, not by numbered halls. The main areas:

• Beachwear / swimwear: swimsuits, bikinis, sarongs, cover-ups, resort pieces
• Underwear / homewear: lingerie, intimates, loungewear and homewear
• Beach accessories & kaftans: kaftans, beach bags, hats, beach footwear, complements

The buyer audience is vertical but with different price sensitivities: the independent multi-brand boutique wants the identity piece and the margin, the chain and department store want supply continuity and size depth. Position your stand thinking about who you want to intercept: the foreign buyer (growing, see below) tends to move in the early morning hours, when the stand is less crowded and there is time to leaf through the collection sample in hand.

Buyer profile, who actually enters the stand

The end consumer does not enter Maredamare: those who buy to resell do. The typical profile:

• Multi-brand boutique owners and buyers: the heart of the fair, choosing next summer’s sell-in
• Beachwear and lingerie retailers: specialised swimwear and intimates stores
• Department store and chain buyers: looking for volume, sizes, reordering
• Sales agents and representatives: covering multiple brands, a commercial multiplier
• Foreign buyers: US, Canada, Ireland, Kazakhstan and other markets; at the close of the 2025 edition, foreign buyers were reported up +35% on the prior edition

The operational consequence: every contact at the stand is potentially a recurring order season after season, not a one-off sale. Losing it in the noise of the fair costs far more than the average manufacturing lead.

How to prepare in the 4 weeks before the event

Week -4, sample and story audit

The beachwear buyer decides in seconds whether the collection “speaks” to their end customer. Verify that every piece on display answers three implicit questions:

1. For which end customer, a precise target (e.g. “premium resort 30-50”, “fast-fashion swimwear under 25”)
2. At what shelf price, a clear tier, a sustainable margin for the retailer
3. What sets you apart, materials, sustainability, Made in Italy, area exclusivity

No scattered catalogues. A coherent collection story, repeated by everyone on the stand.

Week -3, stand operations playbook

Define who does what across the three days:

• Who welcomes the buyer and opens the conversation
• Who handles the samples and notes the requested sizes and colours
• Who is in the back office (HQ) running live follow-up during the event (yes, this is a game changer, see below)
• Who is the point of contact for foreign buyers and agents bringing multiple doors

If the stand is staffed by more than 3 people, set up shift rotations by time slot: three July days at the Fortezza, in the heat, degrade conversation quality in the early afternoon.

Week -2, buyer qualification form

Every contact collected must be qualified on the spot, not “after the fair”. The critical questions are only 3:

1. Type of point of sale: single boutique, chain, e-commerce, agent? How many doors?
2. Season and order timing: ordering now for SS2027, or scouting for the season after?
3. Area and exclusivity: which region do they sell in, and do they want territorial exclusivity?

Everything else (indicative turnover, store seniority, social presence) can be found in the 30+ public data sources that good automated enrichment covers without you having to ask at the stand.

Week -1, CRM integrations

The classic mistake: contacts collected on business cards, photos of badges, a paper order pad, and then no one structures them into the CRM. Follow-up starts too late, by which time the buyer has already closed the season budget with another supplier.

Configure the system so that every scan, at the fair, lands directly in the company CRM, with event tag, qualification answers, and a voice note from the sales rep (e.g. “wants the bandeau bikini, sizes up to XL, Veneto exclusivity”). Not in an Excel, not in an app, not in a paper order pad “we’ll digitise on Monday”.

Does Maredamare have an official lead app?

No. The official site lists no mobile app: pre-registration (trade-only access) is via a web form. That means, unlike major fairs with an integrated badge scanner, contact collection at the stand is entirely on you.

In practice, without a dedicated tool, teams end up using the worst method:

• Business card plus paper order pad: slow to digitise, error-prone, lost leads
• Photo of the badge on your phone: ends up in the camera roll and no one reviews it
• An Excel “we’ll tidy up after the fair”: follow-up slips and the buyer has already ordered elsewhere

The absence of an official app, paradoxically, raises the value of your own lead capture system: nothing to depend on, no end-of-fair CSV export to re-import by hand. You need a workflow built for fair to CRM to follow-up. See how Linkly works.

What to do during the 3 days of the fair

Day 1 (Saturday), opening

• Team briefing in the morning: review the collection story and the roles
• Calibration: the first buyers of the day are for fine-tuning the qualification questions
• At day’s end, first debrief: which pieces draw attention, which questions recur, what to fix

Day 2 (Sunday), the traffic day

Historically the central day concentrates the heaviest flow of multi-brand buyers and agents. Keep a senior person always on the floor: the most strategic buyers (chains, foreign buyers, agents with many doors) pass through on the central day and won’t wait.

Day 3 (Monday), closing

Traffic drops, but it is the moment to:

• Close the orders started on the previous days, with more calm and less rush
• Have deeper conversations with undecided buyers (sample in hand, sizes, deliveries)
• Walk the other brands: see who is showing what, gather trend cues for the next collection

What to do in the 7 days after the fair

In beachwear the buyer’s season budget is limited and closes fast: whoever follows up first gets the order. Companies that follow up within 48 hours convert a markedly higher share of collected contacts than those who call back “in September”.

The winning follow-up playbook:

1. Within 24h: a personalised email or message to every qualified buyer. No templates: reference the pieces they looked at and the sizes and colours requested at the stand.
2. Within 7 days: 1 sales contact or agent per buyer. A specific touchpoint (sample shipment, updated price list, exclusivity confirmation), not batch email.
3. Within 14 days: deliver on promises made at the stand (samples, product sheets, terms). Automatically extractable from the sales rep’s voice notes if the system recorded them.
4. Within 30 days: an executive report on contacts collected, orders started, distribution by area and agent, estimated SS2027 pipeline. Use it to decide on renewing the stand for the next edition.

Practical FAQ

How much does it cost to exhibit at Maredamare 2026?

Costs are not officially published and vary by square footage, position, and build-out. As an indicative reference for a three-day B2B fashion fair at the Fortezza da Basso: €8,000 to €20,000 space plus basic build-out for a small/medium stand, plus €3,000 to €8,000 for staff, travel, samples, and materials. Realistic total range: €12,000 to €30,000 for a respectable presence. For exact figures, contact Underbeach srl via the official site.

Is Maredamare open to the public or trade only?

Trade only (buyers, retailers, agents, trade press). It is not a consumer fair. Access requires pre-registration via the form on the official site.

When and how do you register?

Registration is done online on the official Maredamare site, usually in the months before the fair. It is reserved for trade professionals; exhibitors should contact the organiser, Underbeach srl, directly.

Is the Monday (last day) worth staffing?

Yes. Traffic drops compared to the weekend, but it is the day when the orders started earlier get closed: fewer crowds, more time for the details of sizes, colours, and deliveries. It is often the day with the highest conversion per contact.

What is the alternative to paper for collecting buyer contacts?

Paper order pads or photos of the badge are a poor option (digitisation time, errors, lost leads). Since Maredamare has no official scanning app, the practical alternatives are two:

1. CRM with native mobile scanning (HubSpot and Salesforce have dedicated features): works if the team knows how to use them. At the fair, they often don’t.
2. Dedicated lead capture system + AI agents for enrichment, qualification, follow-up: the pattern Linkly executes, scan at the stand to contact in the CRM with event tag and voice note to automatic enrichment to personalised follow-up to a final report. See how it works.

Page updated ahead of the 2026 edition. For official information and exhibitor/trade registration, please refer to the maredamare.underbeach.eu site.