Forster Rohner
The Forster Rohner AG is one in St. Gallen -based embroidery company, which is composed of the two companies Forster Willi & Co AG is composed (est. 1904) and Jacob Rohner AG (est. 1873) and now owned by the family of Ueli Forster , St Gallen is. His products follow the tradition of St. Gallen embroidery and are used in women's clothing, haute couture , prêt à porter de luxe and lingerie . In 2008 the group began to manufacture Intelligent Textiles under the name Forster Rohner Textile Innovations using the embroidery process.
Company history and structure
Until the 1950s and 1960s, blouse embroidery and bed linen trimmings made up the main part of Forster Willi & Co's production. In the 1970s, embroidery was primarily sold for fashionable prêt-à-porters, and since the mid-1980s, increasingly, embroidery for the lingerie industry. For this reason, the company acquired the Swiss textile company Jacob Rohner AG in 1988, which had a strong position in the lingerie market. In 1992 they merged to form Forster Rohner AG. In 1994 the company founded the subsidiary Forster Rohner (Suzhou) Embroidery Co., Ltd. in China. In 2000, the finishing plant SED (Suzhou Embroidery Dyeing) followed near the first location, which further globalized the Forster Rohner Group's production. In 2002, the range and production volume were expanded again with the purchase of the Swiss embroidery company Inter-Spitzen AG in Oberbüren, including its Romanian subsidiary.
With the relocation of main production to the locations in China and Romania, the parent company in St. Gallen is now responsible for technical and fashion development and maintains a design archive with over 500,000 samples, both from the history of its own companies and purchased collections .
Since it was founded in 2008, the headquarters of the subsidiary Forster Rohner Textile Innovations, whose focus is the integration of electronic functionalities in textile surfaces, known under the terms smart clothes or intelligent textiles, has also been in St. Gallen .
Forster Rohner / Products, manufacture, use
The services of the Forster Rohner Group are mainly used by high-end fashion companies, luxury laundry companies, but also department store chains. Both fashion brands such as B. Akris , Prada , Dior , Chanel , Louis Vuitton , Marc Jacobs , Haute Ungaro , and lingerie companies such as Chantelle , Marie Jo, Aubade , Simone Pérèle, Triumph , Victoria's Secret are among the customers of Forster Rohner AG. Personalities like Michelle Obama , Kate Moss and Pippa Middleton also wear Forster Rohner lace. A piece of fabric from the First Lady's inauguration dress is exhibited in the St. Gallen Textile Museum.
Awards and nominations
Tobias Forster , Head of Design and co-owner of Forster Rohner, was honored as Créateur de l'année by the Mayor of Paris on January 27, 2006 for his innovative fabric creations in the lingerie sector. Forster Rohner AG was also nominated for the 2013 Swiss Design Prize .
FRTI / Products, Manufacture, Use
The core competencies of Forster Rohner Textile Innovations include the robust, textile interconnection of electronic components on a carrier material, the development of miniaturized electronic components and their textile integration, as well as the combination of functional and aesthetic embroidery. Examples are the application of sensor surfaces and heating elements or the integration of LEDs. With the e-broidery® technology, FRTI offers for the first time an industrial manufacturing process to integrate active lighting into textiles while maintaining the textile properties of washability and drapability. The e-broidery process from Forster Rohner Textile Innovations was nominated for the Swiss Design Prize in 2013 and made its debut in the autumn / winter prêt-à-porter collection 2014 of the fashion label AKRIS.
Key figures
In 2013 the various companies employed:
| In the parent company in St.Gallen | around 110 employees |
| At Inter-Spitzen, Switzerland and Romania | around 240 employees |
| In Suzhou and Luzhi, China | around 300 employees |
Customer orders are processed in our own production facilities on around 50 state-of-the-art large embroidery machines. A further number of sample machines are available for creating new collections and for customer-specific developments.
The company does not publish sales and earnings figures.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Eva Bünter: Simply tip Schweizer Illustrierte 06/2012 (PDF; 751 kB)
- ↑ NZZ format: Von Marta, Models und Modelle - Best of NZZ Swiss made (film text). Retrieved October 22, 2013
- ↑ Victoria Secret comes from St.Gallen , tagesanzeiger.ch . Retrieved October 22, 2013
- ↑ Michael Genova: Pippa in a St.Galler fairy tale dress In: St.Galler Tagblatt, article from May 21, 2017
- ^ Award for head of design Tobias Forster , 20min.ch . Retrieved October 22, 2013
- ↑ Eastern Switzerland nominated for Design Prize Switzerland , 20min.ch . Retrieved October 22, 2013
- ↑ Nomination of e-broidery technology for the Swiss Design Prize . Retrieved March 19, 2014.
- ↑ Article about the use of luminous embroidery in the autumn / winter collection for 2014 of the fashion brand AKRIS . Retrieved March 19, 2014.