Recap: emborado at Heimtextil 2026

Recap: emborado at Heimtextil 2026

Heimtextil 2026, held at the Messe Frankfurt exhibition grounds, is considered one of the world’s leading trade fairs for home and contract textiles. Manufacturers, retailers, designers, and industry experts from all over the world come together to showcase materials, trends, and innovations related to fabrics, carpets, curtains, bed linen, and towels.

This year, we attended the fair for the first time with emborado – as part of Tex Started, presenting at the booth of the Gesamtverband textil+mode.

A trade fair of superlatives

One thing becomes obvious immediately: Heimtextil is huge.
Countless halls, long walking distances, and an enormous density of exhibitors define the experience. Many booths are elaborately designed, sometimes spectacular, and strongly international in character. Companies from India, China, Spain, and other textile-heavy regions were especially prominent.

Content-wise, the focus is largely on:

• materials and fabric qualities
• interior and contract applications (e.g. hospitality, living spaces)
• design trends, colors, and sustainability

Many of these topics were new and unfamiliar to us as a software startup in the DIY/textile space – which made them all the more interesting.

Relevance for emborado: indirect, but insightful

For us as a startup focused on the digital management of embroidery and DIY files, Heimtextil is not a perfect fit. The fair is clearly B2B-driven and strongly oriented toward industrial applications, large volumes, and established supply chains.

Many visitors had fixed appointments and moved purposefully through the halls. Spontaneous conversations are much rarer here than at smaller, more focused events.

As a result, our best conversations usually happened when people stopped by our booth by chance – out of curiosity, not because they were actively searching for a solution like ours.

The textil+mode booth: more than just a meeting point

One real highlight for us was being integrated into the booth of the Gesamtverband textil+mode.
We were visibly placed, conversations were actively encouraged, and even on the third day of the fair there was openness to continue distributing our flyers and making introductions.

This kind of personal, eye-level exchange was especially valuable to us.

Trade fair learning #1: Without a plan, you get lost

One of the most important learnings from Frankfurt:

At a trade fair of this size, you should never attend without a clear plan.

Without concrete goals – specific halls, exhibitors, or meetings – it is easy to lose time and energy. Heimtextil is simply too big for an unstructured approach.

For future visits, we would prioritize much more clearly:

• Which halls are truly relevant?
• Which companies do we want to approach deliberately?
• Where does depth matter more than breadth?

Trade fair learning #2: Attention beats perfection 🎡

Our personal trade fair highlight was surprisingly simple: a small prize wheel.

No big branding, self-made, low budget – yet a real eye-catcher. The low-threshold approach (“You don’t have to do anything, you can only win sweets”) lowered barriers and sparked conversations.

Along the way, we learned:

• classics like Nimm2, Haribo, or Merci work extremely well
• lollipops… not so much 😄

Contacts, impulses, and new questions

In addition to many short conversations, we made several exciting contacts from industry, sales, research, and the creative sector. Not every contact will be directly relevant for emborado, but the diversity of perspectives was enriching.

We found the following particularly interesting:

• discussions about adjacent application areas such as plotting or tufting
• initial ideas for potential research collaborations
• the realization that file management is a very similar challenge across many domains

And it is quite possible that one or two textile finishing companies we met at the fair will soon be using emborado. We are curious to see what comes next! How this can look when a professional embroidery company uses emborado, you can find out here.

Our conclusion

Heimtextil 2026 was for us:

• professionally interesting
• personally very pleasant
• strategically insightful

Overall, we are taking away many learnings, great conversations, and new ideas.

And yes: traveling from Münster to Frankfurt at 1:00 a.m. to sleep on the train is something we would probably handle differently next time.
Still, the insights gained made it worth it.