Heimtextil Hires Herberth in Leadership Role

Heimtextil has hired Margit Herberth, who will be responsible for the home textiles segment, as director beginning Sept. 1. Together with Bettina Bär, Herberth will form the new dual leadership of the leading trade fair for home and contract textiles. Herberth, previously director marketing consumer goods/multimedia & data at Messe Frankfurt, succeeds Meike Kern, who is leaving the company of her own volition after 22 years to take on a new professional challenge.

Bär has been responsible for the home textiles segment since September.

“We are delighted to have won Margit Herberth, a proven sales strategist with a strong global sales as well as marketing background, as Director Heimtextil,” said Olaf Schmidt, vice president textiles & textile Technologies.

Herbeth has more than 10 years of sales experience as senior sales manager for Messe Frankfurt’s international consumer goods fairs Beautyworld, Hair & Beauty and Christmasworld. Since 2018, as director marketing communications, she has managed all marketing activities for the Paperworld, Christmasworld and Creativeworld brands and was responsible for the design of global brand campaigns in the consumer goods sector, for example, for Beautyworld.

Most recently, as head of multimedia & data, she decisively drove strategic performance marketing, including the implementation of targeted smart data campaigns, as well as the further development of audio and video formats for consumer goods trade shows including Ambiente.

Herberth will be responsible for the household textiles segment and thus for the world’s largest brand and private label exhibitor range of bedding, bed linen, bathroom textiles, table and kitchen linen, mattresses, sleep systems, home accessories, blankets, pillows and textile processing machinery. Another important component is the further expansion of the textile sustainability content strategy as well as an even stronger internationalization of the Heimtextil Conference Sleep & More.

Herberth replaces Kern, who is leaving the company for a new professional challenge.

“In addition to the significant expansion of national as well as global sales structures, Meike Kern has also played a trend-setting role in the further development of Heimtextil into a content platform and global condensate of environmentally friendly textile innovations, not least in 2011 with the initiation of the first green formats. We wish her all the best for her new professional station,” Schmidt said.

In her 15 years as director, Kern built strategic partnerships with customers on a global level, expanded sales channels and increased the market presence of exhibitors from core markets. In 2019, she also played a leading role in shaping the restructuring of Heimtextil and achieved an even clearer and more efficient visitor orientation at the trade fair with the targeted bundling and placement of the product range.

In addition to several sustainable formats, she also established the Heimtextil Conference Sleep & More as a knowledge platform for the bedding trade as well as the industry and helped young start-ups to gain worldwide visibility at Heimtextil as part of New & Next.Heimtextil.

International trade fair for home and contract textiles Heimtextil will take place Jan. 9-12 Jan.

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