Exhibitors at the Gifted craft and design fair, which takes place in Dublin's RDS this week, are reporting a resurgence in consumers wanting to shop face-to-face rather than online.
Gifted said its exhibitor numbers are up by 19% this year - growth the RDS shows have not witnessed before.
The organiser of Gifted, Patrick O'Sullivan, said that exhibitors are reporting that people do not want to be online any more.
They want to go out and meet people, and feel and touch products, Mr O'Sullivan said.
He noted that online sales would have accounted for up to 75% of the sector's annual turnover coming out of Covid, but that figure has dropped to 12% on average now.
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The design and craft sector employs about 63,000 people with 21,000 organisational design and craft enterprises. It generated €4.2 billion in gross value added (GVA) last year.
