Born and raised in The Hague, Nienke Hoogvliet has an innate love for the sea and its inhabitants. Her great-grandparents were tailors and also her mother has a way with needles and thread. At Nienke’s parental home, there were always various textiles hanging around, waiting to be finished. The connection to the sea and the textile industry, combined with an inspiring idealism, has been passed on from one generation to the next, leading Nienke to study in the creative industries. A talented artist, she graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam in 2013 and immediately founded her own design and materials research studio: Studio Nienke Hoogvliet. Having discovered the enormous potential of seaweed as a sustainable resource, Nienke is dreaming of a world where we wear clothes made out of seaweed yarn and dye. She has shared her ideas on seaweed and natural dyeing techniques in books such as SeaweedResearch and H.E.R.B.S. Raising awareness about our waste economy, Nienke’s work has been exhibited all over the world in museums such as Centre Pompidou (Paris), Central Museum (Utrecht), Cooper Hewitt Design Museum (New York), Textile Museum (Tilburg), Victoria & Albert Museum (London), etc.

With more than 25 years of experience in the fields of marketing, management, and media, Anne Boermans is a seasoned entrepreneur, making her the ideal partner in a link-up with designer-artist Nienke Hoogvliet. The two met in 2019, and after multiple conversations and discussing the quintessential literature on seaweed, Anne too became convinced of the impact and potential of seaweed as a resource for yarn and dye.
She has been an active campaigner for implementing new developments with a blue economy motive. Anne lends to Zeefier her infectious enthusiasm, alongside her eye for business-building, marketing communication, and her know-how as a former owner of an art agency. Anne is striving for a step-by-step upscaling of seaweed as a renewable resource for the textile industry.

anne@zeefier.eu

Bianca Zomer is our business developer and co-owner.

She has a background in textile engineering and almost 25 years of experience in business development within the home & living industry.

Bianca believes in transforming the textile industry into a more responsible one, one in which pollution and health-related issues are eliminated step by step. This can only be done in collaboration with partners who share the same dream.

bianca@zeefier.eu

Dorien Derksen, our CTO, has a Ph.D. in marine and plant-based dyes, and has experience scaling up natural dyeing processes. Dorien has broad knowledge in different fields of plant chemistry: phytochemistry, natural colors, isolation, and application of natural compounds. She is leading our research lab.