With the election of Dick Spierenburg and Bernd Sanden, Koelnmesse has decided to start the trade fair year 2023 with a duo. The new pairing replaces their predecessor Claire Steinbrück, who has headed imm cologne since 2018 and is now Head of Food Technology in Koelnmesse’s Food division. With the appointment of Dick Spierenburg and Bernd Sanden, imm cologne is combining a realignment of the international furnishing fair at the Cologne location and a relaunch of its traditional trade fair brand. The trade fair team is currently preparing for the Spring Edition in June 2023.
The Dutch architect and designer Dick Spierenburg, born in 1953, has been working for the imm cologne as Creative Director since 2009 and will take on additional conceptual and strategic tasks in future. Over the past 13 years, Spierenburg has helped shape the imm cologne’s development from a pure furniture fair to an international interior design fair through various formats. “My mission,” says Spierenburg, “is to bring new thinking into the trade fair world. This means that we want to actively participate in shaping the future. I firmly believe that the power trade fairs can unleash in the future is far greater than would be possible with a mere presentation of product innovations.”
The 43-year-old business graduate Bernd Sanden has been with Koelnmesse for 16 years. He joined imm cologne as a sales manager and was appointed director of LivingKitchen in 2017, where he played a key role in its development. According to the trade fair, the focus of his tasks is “intensive dialogue with the companies, key-opinion leaders and associations in order to bring the strategic course set as well as Spierenburg’s creative ideas to life”. “In my view, breaking new ground is a very central point for the imm cologne’s future credibility and relevance. Our goal is a newly interpreted leading trade fair for the interior sector in Germany,” says Bernd Sanden. The imm Spring Edition is the first step towards this future.
More on ndion
Discover more articles on the topic of design and architecture.
Share this page on Social Media:
