Some 170 invited guests from Germany and from abroad, including numerous prominent personalities from the sporting goods scene, showed up last Monday night at a farewell party in Munich for Jürgen Lohrberg, who is retiring at the age of 63 as divisional manager of Messe München for ISPO and other important fairs.
Lohrberg is the man who built up ISPO into the world’s largest international sporting goods fair after it left Wiesbaden in 1970, adding Golf Europe in 1993. In a long impromptu speech, Manfred Wutzlhofer, president of the Munich fair organization, praised him as a passionate problem-solver who excelled in building up relations and in earning trust.
He started to work for the Munich fair 37 years ago, immediately after his marriage. As he had already planned to retire at his present age, Lohrberg has focused his energies lately on building up a solid team of young and dedicated managers to carry on his work, setting an example for many baby-boomers who are going to leave the industry soon. He plans to stick around, though, maybe consulting for one or two companies while improving his handicap in golf.
Lohrberg is leaving at a critical juncture, after the launch of ISPO’s shows in Russia and China and while Messe München is studying future scenarios to respond to the changing market conditions and to the new strategies of the major brands. In a sort of simultaneous generational change, the father figure of the industry, Adidas, is leaving ISPO at the same time as Lohrberg, and a much younger brand that has grown tremendously, Columbia Sportswear, is now taking over its distinctive place in Hall 1.
