Aug 3, 2017

Dümmen Orange Announces New Hires

Dümmen Orange has added industry veterans Angela Storm and Joel Kemfer to its sales and bedding plant product teams.

Storm will support customers and brokers in the western United States. She will serve western region customers as the primary point of contact, providing tailored support for their growing needs.

Her primary focus will be to facilitate a positive customer experience by liaising between customer and all facets of the Dümmen Orange organization, including production planning, logistics, product management and marketing.

Storm brings more than 22 years of experience to the organization, including appointments at Ball Horticultural Company, where she represented Ball FloraPlant and Selecta genetics, as well as nine years at Dramm & Echter serving as the general manager.

Storm will oversee the work of Whitney Voelker, junior sales associate, who is a recent addition to the sales team. Their combined efforts will result in a strong knowledge base on which to provide recommendation of growth opportunities for customers.

Joel Kempfer has also joined Dümmen Orange’s  annual bedding plant product team as Annuals Product Manager.

With more than 13 years of industry experience, including research, production, sales and product development, Joel contributes robust and
well-rounded expertise to the existing product management team.

An Army and Iraq war veteran, Kempfer comes to Dümmen Orange from the Fred C. Gloeckner Co. His industry experience also includes management of a horticulture program for the Brookwood Community, a non-profit organization near Houston, Texas, along with managing the pest and disease program for Greenleaf Nursery in El Campo, Texas. Kempfer’s role as annuals product manager at Dümmen Orange focuses on monitoring trends to identify and guide market-appropriate products through the breeding pipeline, to trials, and ultimately commercial introduction.

Emily Mason, Junior Integrated Product Team Lead for annual bedding plants, also has been promoted within the product management team. Commenting on Kefer’s hire, she said “Joel’s involvement with greenhouse growers and retail operators in the Southern and Midwest markets has provided him with first-hand experience of how Dümmen Orange annuals can be of benefit to our customers. He is very thorough and his knowledge base will help him to identify opportunities in our breeding pipeline that can best serve the market and consumer. We are pleased to welcome Joel to our team to connect the right products with the right customers.”