Gerhard D. Wempe
| Gerhard D. Wempe KG
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|---|---|
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| legal form | KG |
| founding | 1878 |
| Seat | Hamburg , Germany |
| management | Hellmut Wempe, Kim-Eva Wempe |
| Number of employees | 800 worldwide (2019) |
| sales | EUR 562.2 million (2019) |
| Branch | jeweler |
| Website | www.wempe.com |
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The Gerhard D. Wempe KG is a German jeweler based in Hamburg .
The family business is in the fourth generation and operates 34 shops and branded boutiques, including 26 in Germany and branches in New York , Paris , London , Vienna , Madrid , Beijing and on the cruise ships Europe and Europe 2 .
Company history
Gerhard Diedrich Wempe (born March 26, 1857, † May 4, 1921), the son of a general goods dealer and trained watchmaker, founded the company in 1878 with a starting capital of 80 marks by opening his first watch shop in Elsfleth on the Weser . After moving to Oldenburg in 1894, he opened a shop there. In 1907 another followed on the shoulder blade 141 in Altona, which was still Danish at the time . In 1951 the company comprised a total of four branches in Hamburg, making it the first in the industry to practice this business model.
Second generation
After the death of Gerhard Dietrich Wempe, his son Herbert Wempe (born February 1, 1890, † August 18, 1963), the first of five children from his marriage to Friederike Wempe, née Alws, took over the management of the business. He had already become a personally liable partner in 1917 and two years later he married Gertrud Karutz, with whom he also had five children. In 1923 he acquired an office building in Steinstrasse opposite the main church in Hamburg, Sankt Jacobi , which has since been named after the founder with “Gülden Gerd” and is still the company's headquarters today. He converted the previous limited partnership into a GmbH , from 1924 it became Gerhard D. Wempe AG . As early as the mid-twenties, she became the sole agency for the Swiss watch manufacturers Omega , Longines , Movado and Zenith as well as for the German A. Lange & Söhne and the American Waltham .
In 1928, in addition to the now seven branches, there was another in Hamburg's Alsterarkaden , which offered more expensive jewelry than the others, and for the first time also watches from the Geneva manufacturers Vacheron Constantin and Patek Philippe . A break-in in this shop in January 1929, in which the booty was worth about 30,000 marks, caused a national sensation, as Herbert Wempe placed an advertisement in which he turned to the "gentlemen burglars" and offered them the goods to buy back in a neutral place and without police. Wempe was successful with the campaign, he got almost all of the pieces back. Hans Fallada was inspired by the story of his 1934 book “Whoever eats out of the tin bowl”. In 1955 the director Jules Dassin also took up the case in his French film classic " Rififi ".
During the global economic crisis, sales collapsed in all eight branches, so that in 1931 the company owner had to terminate the employees or negotiate new contracts with them. However, when the economic situation stabilized in 1933, Herbert Wempe invested again in his business. In 1934 he became a member of the German Labor Front , whose office for the beauty of work distinguished his company in 1937 as a "National Socialist model company".
In 1938 he bought the "Chronometer-Werke Hamburg" founded in 1905 by six North German shipowners and had it renamed "Chronometer-Werke Gerhard D. Wempe". During the Second World War, they were under the command of the Naval and Aviation Ministry as an important military operation and manufactured chronometers for battleships, submarines and aircraft. The growing number of the workforce also included prisoners of war, which is why the family paid into the fund to compensate forced laborers in 2000. During Operation Gomorrah in the summer of 1943, the factories, as well as the few not yet closed Wempe stores, were destroyed by the British air raids. Only after a denazification process was the business returned to Herbert Wempe in 1948.
Third and fourth generation
The founder's grandson, Hellmut Wempe (born April 30, 1932), joined the company in 1951 and expanded it. In 1953 he brought the Swiss watch brand Rolex to Germany. In the 1950s, the first wristwatches were also produced under the name “Wempe Zeitmeister”.
When his father died in 1963, Hellmut Wempe took over the management of the business and in November of the same year opened the first branch outside of Hamburg in Lübeck . From then on, Wempe expanded continuously and opened stores in eleven major cities from 1966 to 1977, and finally in 1980 the first foreign branch on New York's exclusive Fifth Avenue , after which its own watch line was named that same year. In 1985 shops followed in Paris, Vienna (1991), London (1997), Madrid (2000) and 2001 on board the cruise ship Europa. In 2013, Beijing opened a representative office in Asia and a boutique at Europa 2.
Hellmut Wempe's daughter, Kim-Eva Wempe (born September 25, 1962), joined the family business in 1984 and, after completing a degree in business administration, became a personally liable partner of the company alongside her father in 1994 at the age of 32. In 2000 she established the jewelry brand "By Kim". These as well as one-offs are made in the "LC Köhler" factory in Schwäbisch Gmünd , which was taken over by Wempe to 50 percent in 2007 and has been operating under the name of "Wempe-Atelier LC Köhler" ever since. Since 2015, diamonds in the certified Wempe-Cut®, a cut with 137 facets instead of the classic brilliant cut with only 57 facets, have been processed into pieces of jewelry.
On the company's 125th anniversary in 2003, Kim-Eva Wempe took over the management of the company in the fourth generation and as the first woman. She was also the first woman to be voted Hamburg Entrepreneur of the Year 2007.
In 2005, Wempe bought and renovated the Urania observatory in Glashütte, Saxony , where it set up the first chronometer test center for watches in accordance with the German DIN standard . Since 2006, the company's own watch brand with the two lines “Wempe Chronometerwerke Glashütte I / SA” and “Wempe Zeitmeister Glashütte I / SA” has been manufactured here. In 2018 there was a collaboration with the singer Herbert Grönemeyer , according to whose ideas the "Zeitmeister Stahl 1" was created.
With a Rolex boutique in Berlin, Wempe installed its first mono-brand store in 2009, followed by Patek Philippe and Rolex branches in Hamburg in 2015 and 2017 respectively. At the same time, the company invested in numerous extensions and conversions of its branches. This is how the world's largest Wempe branch and, at the same time, the largest jewelry store in Germany came into being in Munich's Maximilianarkaden with 782 m² sales area on three floors.
The family business now operates 34 branches worldwide (2019) and is therefore one of the top ten in the watch and jewelry industry, and in terms of turnover (562.2 million euros, 2019) it ranks 7th.
Products (selection)
Wempe carries brands such as Rolex , Patek Philippe , A. Lange & Söhne , Baume & Mercier , Breitling , Breguet , Cartier , Chopard , Frederique Constant, Gucci , Glashütte Original , Hublot , IWC Schaffhausen , Jaeger-LeCoultre , Junghans , Longines , Montblanc , Mühle Glashütte , Nomos Glashütte , Panerai , Parmigiani, Piaget , Rado , Roger Dubuis , TAG Heuer , Tudor , Tissot , Tutima , Ulysse Nardin , Vacheron Constantin and Wempe Glashütte I / SA.
literature
- Hans H. Schmid: Lexicon of the German watch industry 1850–1980. Förderkreis Lebendiges Uhrenindustriemuseum eV, Villingen-Schwenningen 2005, ISBN 3-927987-91-3 .
- Christopher Prignitz: Wempe - the beginnings of a global company. In: Kulturland Oldenburg. Journal of the Oldenburg landscape. No. 150, 2011, ISSN 1862-9652 , pp. 38-43
- Italiaander, Rolf: At Wempe, the clocks run differently . Hardcover, 272 pages. Christians Verlag, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-7672-0532-7 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Gerhard D. Wempe in the catalog of the German National Library
- Website of Gerhard D. Wempe KG
- WEMPE Glashütte / Saxony observatory
- Gisbert L. Brunner: How the return from Wempe to Glashütte changed the watch industry . Focus Online , September 16, 2016.
Individual evidence
- ^ Gerhard D. Wempe KG . Joint register portal of the federal states, accessed on September 16, 2016.
- ↑ Martina Goy: The clock from the shoulder blade . Die Welt , July 1, 2007, revised on November 16, 2011, accessed on September 16, 2016.
- ^ Hans Biallas: National Socialist Model Companies 1937/38 , first volume. Gauverlag Bayrische Ostmark, Bayreuth, 1938, pp. 59–60.
- ^ Stephan Finsterbusch: Ring free. Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin, May 2015.
- ↑ Mira Wiesinger: The final touch. World on Sunday , December 18, 2016.
- ↑ Christoph Wirtz: She once wanted to be a hippie. World on Sunday , September 28, 2003.
- ^ Ingeborg Harms: Kim-Eva Wempe. Vogue , April 2003.
- ↑ Martina Goy: Hamburg entrepreneur of the year honored. Die Welt , March 30, 2007.
- ↑ Jürgen Kesting: Astronomy and watchmaking. A&W Special, 6/06.
- ^ Philip Cassier: Herbert's first clock. World on Sunday , August 12, 2018.