Hansgrohe

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Hansgrohe SE

logo
legal form Societas Europaea
founding 1901
Seat Schiltach , Germany
management
  • Hans Jürgen Kalmbach, CEO
  • Richard O'Reagan, Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board
Number of employees 4,711
sales EUR 1.088 billion
Branch Sanitary engineering
Website www.hansgrohe-group.com
Status: 2018

The Hansgrohe SE is a German manufacturer of sanitary products such as taps , showers, thermostats , processes and bathroom accessories. The head office is in Schiltach in the Black Forest .

The company was founded in 1901 by Hans Grohe . Hansgrohe should not be confused with Grohe , which also produces fittings and was taken over by Hans Grohe's son Friedrich .

background

Headquarters of the Hansgrohe Group in Schiltach

The Klaus Grohe family - Klaus is the youngest son of the company founder - holds 32% of the shares , the Masco Corporation in Taylor (Michigan) , USA , 68% of the shares. The company's CEO has been Hans Jürgen Kalmbach since August 1, 2018, who succeeded Thorsten Klapproth. The products are marketed under the brands Hansgrohe ( original spelling : hansgrohe) and Axor (original spelling: AXOR).

In 2019, the company generated sales of EUR 1.088 billion and a profit of EUR 130.8 million. The Hansgrohe Group employed 4,711 people worldwide in 2019, 62.9% of them in Germany. Here the company produces in four plants. There are also plants in France, the USA and China. The company has 55 branches and 33 companies in 37 countries on all continents. Hansgrohe exports to 146 countries.

Company history

On June 15, 1901, Hans Grohe , born on May 14, 1871 in Luckenwalde near Berlin, founded the company in the Black Forest community of Schiltach. The three-man business - with Hans Grohe as managing director, punch, traveling salesman and accountant in one person - initially produced metal printed goods such as watch parts, brass pans and tin showers. The entrepreneur soon specialized in metal products for the sanitary sector. In the following years he opened up new markets and from then on supplied the wholesale trade instead of individual sheet metal workers and plumbers in the Black Forest. The export business began with the first foreign delivery to Amsterdam in January 1907. As early as 1919, the company employed three office workers and 42 people in production.

The First World War led to raw material restrictions, and from 1917 the company was obliged to produce armaments (fuse parts). In the 1920s the company, which had grown to almost 100 employees, concentrated on exports. From 1929 onwards, Hans Grohe relied on a new brass printing process and from 1930 onwards began chrome-plating products . The first foreign missions were founded in 1934, including in North Africa, Palestine and Syria . In the same year Friedrich Grohe , Hans Grohe's second eldest son, left the company and in 1936, with his father's consent, took over a fittings factory in Hemer, Westphalia, today's Grohe AG . Unlike his father Hans, who mainly focused on showers and drain technology, Friedrich Grohe concentrated on the production of fittings. In 1938, Hans Grohe's company was converted into a limited partnership .

Hansgrohe Unica shower and shower rail, 1953

During the Second World War , Hans Grohe was obliged to produce detonators; For this purpose, women from the region were conscripted and the company assigned foreign workers. This increased the number of employees to 466 in 1944. The later Hansgrohe AG accepted this responsibility and joined the “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” foundation . After 1945 the French occupying forces dismantled half of the machinery and imposed import bans for various metals. Nevertheless, Hans Grohe was able to maintain production by making pots and bowls from aluminum, among other things. In 1953 he developed the world's first shower rail (Unica) .

In 1953, Hans Grohe junior (1895–1960) took over management from his father. After his sudden death on September 28, 1960, Friedrich Grohe took over as sole managing director and ran this parallel to his own company. In 1961 the company was converted into a GmbH & Co. KG . In 1968 Klaus Grohe (* 1937), the youngest son of the founder, joined the company. In January 1975 Friedrich Grohe handed over the management to Heinz Mathauer. From July 1975 Mathauer and Klaus Grohe ran the company together. After Mathauer's resignation on June 30, 1977, Klaus Grohe became sole managing director. In March 1977, was Wortbildmarke Hansgrohe introduced.

While Klaus Grohe was in charge, the company began working with external designers such as Hartmut Esslinger ( frog design ) at the end of the 1960s , followed by Phoenix Design and Philippe Starck , among others . In addition, Klaus Grohe opened up new business areas for the company: In 1981, Hansgrohe started manufacturing fittings, and in 2001 it brought gray water recycling systems onto the market. In 1985, some of Hansgrohe's shareholders sold their shares to the US investment company Masco Corporation in Taylor (Michigan) .

In 1992 the world's largest roof-integrated solar power plant in Europe was put into operation at the new production facility in Offenburg. I.a. for this, the company received the environmental award from the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of the Environment in 1995 .

In 1999 Hansgrohe was transformed into a non-listed stock corporation. In 2008, after 33 years at the helm of the company, Klaus Grohe moved to the chairmanship of the supervisory board, and has been honorary chairman of the board since April 2015. Chairman of the Board of Management is Hans Jürgen Kalmbach, who succeeded Thorsten Klapproth in August 2018. Two of the founder's grandchildren, Richard and Philippe Grohe, worked in operational business until October 2016. Since then, the founding family has accompanied the company exclusively from the shareholder perspective through their representative on the Hansgrohe SE Supervisory Board.

The company has registered around 2500 patents (as of December 31, 2015). Important inventions by Hansgrohe include the automatic waste and overflow fittings (1934), the shower rail (1953), the shower with adjustable jet types (1968), the kitchen mixer with pull-out spout (1984) as well as technologies such as water-saving air admixture (2004) and activation / Deactivation of the water flow at the push of a button (2011). In 2015, Hansgrohe registered 24 patents, 180 designs and 93 trademarks.

museum

The company has set up the Museum for Water, Bath and Design at its headquarters in Schiltach . The museum shows the development of the private house bathroom as well as that of the plumbing trade in Central Europe since the Middle Ages. In 2019, 64,371 visitors visited the museum.

Plants and locations

Germany

International

Hansgrohe also runs bathroom and kitchen exhibitions in numerous countries.

Products

Designer

Kitchen mixer with pull-out spout from AXOR

Sponsorship

Until 2010 the company had its own triathlon team, which has won the title of German team champion seven times since 2001 - most recently in 2008. a. Triathlon greats like Daniel Unger (World Champion 2007, German Champion 2008), Jan Frodeno (Olympic Champion 2008) and Steffen Justus (Vice World Champion 2010). Hansgrohe has been supporting Daniel Unger as a single starter since 2008 and the Daniel Unger junior team since 2011. From the 2017 season, the company will sponsor the Bora-hansgrohe cycling world tour team together with the manufacturer of cooktop extractors .

Bad cartel

In 2010, Hansgrohe used the leniency program in EU antitrust proceedings against the sanitary industry and thus remained unpunished. The company was, along with a few others ( Grohe , Villeroy & Boch , Duravit , Kludi , Dornbracht , Hansa ) part of the so-called Bad Cartel, which has been shown to have fixed prices to the detriment of retailers, craftsmen and consumers. The American Masco Group, to which Hansgrohe belongs, had started the EU antitrust proceedings and thus averted a fine from its own company.

Awards

Hansgrohe SE products and product lines have won 601 design awards since 1975. Thereof 103 Red Dot Design Awards , 144 German Design Awards and 153 iF Design Awards .

In 1995 the company received the environmental award from the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of the Environment.

Documentation

  • Nice shower! Hansgrohe from Schiltach. Documentary, Germany 2015, 29:32 min., Script and direction: Katharina Prokopy, production: SWR , series: made in Südwest , first broadcast: February 10, 2016 on SWR ( table of contents by ARD , video in the ARD media library , available until 8 February 2020).

literature

  • Peter Grohmann: The clever Hans or the true fairy tale of Hans in luck . 2nd, expanded edition. Schiltach 2010 ( online brochure [PDF; 6.0 MB ]).
  • Ruth Wöhrle, Klaus Kramer, Henning Storek: A company makes history. Hansgrohe 1901–2001 . Ed .: Hansgrohe AG. Schiltach 2001 (without ISBN).
  • Hansgrohe Aktiengesellschaft . In: Markus Plate ao: Large German family businesses: Generational succession, family strategy and corporate development . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011, ISBN 978-3-525-40338-9 , pp. 263-270.

Web links

Commons : Hansgrohe  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Imprint . hansgrohe-group.com
  2. ↑ Hansgrohe Group records new sales high in 2019 hansgrohe-group.com
  3. ^ History of the Grohe company. grohe.com, accessed January 25, 2017 .
  4. ↑ a b Sales and balance sheet. Hansgrohe SE, accessed on August 15, 2018 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Hansgrohe SE: Annual Report 2019. May 8, 2020, accessed on May 13, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Hansgrohe SE strengthens its production locations in Germany and France. Hansgrohe Germany, archived from the original on January 25, 2017 ; Retrieved January 25, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Markus Plate among others: Large German family businesses: Generational succession, family strategy and corporate development . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011, ISBN 978-3-525-40338-9 , here p. 266.
  8. ↑ Markus Plate among others: Large German family businesses: Generational succession, family strategy and corporate development . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011, ISBN 978-3-525-40338-9 , pp. 263-270, here pp. 266-267.
  9. ↑ Hansgrohe on course for growth. (No longer available online.) Hansgrohe SE, archived from the original on November 4, 2016 ; Retrieved November 4, 2016 .
  10. ↑ DPMAregister | Register information from the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA). In: register.dpma.de. Retrieved December 29, 2016 .
  11. ↑ Sales and balance sheet. Hansgrohe SE, accessed on December 29, 2016 .
  12. ↑ Relax at last - the bathroom is the new living room. (No longer available online.) In: Frankfurter Neue Presse . Archived from the original on September 2, 2016 ; accessed on September 2, 2016 .
  13. ↑ Mixer collection from Axor / Hansgrohe. In: AW Magazine. Retrieved September 2, 2016 .
  14. ↑ barber & osgerby: axor one, an interactive shower control. In: Design boom. September 25, 2015. Retrieved September 2, 2016 (American English).
  15. ↑ Bora has a new sponsor: into the WorldTour with hansgrohe. In: Eurosport Germany. June 30, 2016. Retrieved November 4, 2016 .
  16. ↑ Detlef Fechtner: Cartel. EU punishes bathroom suppliers. In: WAZ , June 23, 2010.
  17. ↑ Klaus Grohe: visionary and entrepreneur with down-to-earth roots. In: hansgrohe-group.com. Retrieved May 13, 2020 .