From the very beginning, the focus of “Interzum @home” was on networking, knowledge exchange, top-class content, an extensive supporting program, and the latest solutions and product innovations from the 142 participating companies from 24 countries. Thus, this year’s digital edition of the fair was very international. A fundamental component of the new platform was the opportunity for networking, and so visitors took advantage of the platform’s wide range of offerings for lively exchanges on all four days of the trade show. In total, there were over 80,000 chats and audio-video calls. During the 5,760 minutes of the “Interzum @home” event, more than 10,000 leads were generated, i.e. there was more than one lead every minute. 3.5 terabytes of raw video material were produced as part of the studio recordings for “Interzum @home”. There were 230 digital events with a total of 4,240 minutes of content, which had around 100,000 visits from 132 countries. This means that “Interzum @home” was once again very international. The reason for the high internationality of the digital edition lay in particular in the communication strategy of interzum, which this year adapted to the new framework conditions. The focus on a broad-based, consistently coordinated digital advertising campaign ensured high visibility for the event, thus generating a wide reach and also reaching many high-profile decision-makers from the furnishing industry.

Overall, the exhibitors agreed – a digital trade fair cannot be a substitute for the “real Interzum” in Cologne. But some things were also better than hoped. “For us as Koelnmesse, but also for the exhibitors, the last four days were a steep learning curve,” said Oliver Frese. “A few key points have certainly emerged,” the COO continued. “On the one hand, access to a platform must be as simple and convenient as possible for users, and on the other hand, well-prepared, exciting content, intensive preparation, good presentation and active lead management always win out in the end. This means that we have learned even more about which features and which topics interest visitors and which showfloor content and at which point in a stream particularly attracted a large number of viewers. These analyses are important for us, but also for the exhibitors. We will now match our experiences with the experiences of the exhibitors in order to further develop our digital platform in interaction, because the trade fair concept of the future will be hybrid in our view,” says the COO. For “Interzum” 2023, the digital building blocks will then be the logical complement to the physical presentation in the halls. The focus in the future will be on knowledge and content on the web, experience and socializing on site, but always with flowing transitions. And the connecting element is networking, which is possible both online and offline and will remain important.