LONDON—As VMail first reported on Feb.6, Media 10 Limited announced the launch of a new international, London-based optical show called 100% Optical to be held Feb. 11-13, 2014 at Excel, London.  The announcement was made during Frame, a pop-up eyewear design event organized by Tom Davies’ (TD Tom Davies) and Media 10 that took place on Feb. 12-13 at The Vinyl Factory. Media 10 is a 10-year old, award-winning event organizer based in Loughton, Essex, UK.

Lee Newton, CEO of Media 10 said, “The response for our new event was overwhelming and we’ve booked 20 stands in 24 hours, including William Morris, Zuma, TD Tom Davis, Jono Hennessy to name a few. We want to work with associations, media and other event organizers from every country to create the UK’s first truly international event.”

Just one day after Media 10’s announcement of 100% Optical, the organizer of the long-standing UK-based Optrafair exhibition, the Federation of Manufacturing Opticians (FMO), also announced plans to launch an exhibition in London in the spring of 2014.

According to a statement from the FMO, “The FMO is pleased to announce that at a full board meeting this morning it was unanimously decided to stage a London exhibition in spring 2014. It is in discussion with a number of potential partners and will announce further details in due course.”

Nathan Garnett, Media 10’s event manager for 100% Optical added, “We can’t comment on the announcement by the FMO to launch an event in 2014 as there is no information about dates or venues at this stage. However, we are in discussion with the FMO about working together.”

Further details from the FMO were unavailable at press time.

However, Media 10 has released preliminary plans for 100% Optical. They plan to divide the next year’s event into four defined areas of focus for visitors; Equipment and Machinery, Lenses, Eyewear and Business Services. Each section will feature its own industry hub with dedicated networking zones encouraging visitors to engage with the industry. 100% Optical plans to host “live” international seminars linking research and development with the main stage, as well as designers and reports on expanding territories for business as well as educational seminars for CET career and business development will be offered.

According to Media 10, the 100% Optical will be backed by a global marketing campaign using direct marketing, advertising and social media.