GERMANY – With just over seven months to go before the opening of the fair in January 2019, there are already more than 160 confirmed registrations for LivingKitchen. The number of exhibitors has even edged past that of registrations at the same point in the previous year.

The team headed by Bernd Sanden, Director of LivingKitchen, is currently holding numerous meetings with prospective customers around the world. Sanden is certain that “we’ll start in January 2019 with roughly the same number of exhibitors as we had at the last event. It’s important to us to have the right mix, so of course we talk very intensively with large foreign equipment manufacturers.

At the same time, more and more kitchen furniture manufacturers are committed to the German kitchen platform, most recently including Rotpunkt Küchen”, Sanden says of the trend. Again and again, the exhibitors accentuate the importance of a German kitchen trade fair for the industry. “As a German kitchen manufacturer, of course we’ll be at the leading German kitchen trade fair”, says Andreas Wagner, Managing Partner of Rotpunkt Küchen.

As one of the leading trade fair venues in the world, Cologne has not only developed over the years into a meeting place for the international furnishing scene. Thanks to LivingKitchen, it has also become the center of the European kitchen furniture industry. Here, the kitchen industry has found a platform to raise visibility for its products and bring its innovations into the public eye before an audience of international trade visitors and end users.

“The fact that today’s modern kitchen no longer presents itself as a purely functional object, but now has the same character as living room furniture, demonstrates the special significance of the imm cologne/LivingKitchen trade fair duo. This makes it a win-win situation for everyone: industry – retailers – end users. The two events win over visitors with the right balance between showroom and business, future and suitability for everyday use, completeness and compactness”, says Matthias Pollmann, Vice President Trade Fair Management at Koelnmesse.