Lechler (paint manufacturer)

Lechler SpA
legal form	Società per azioni
founding	1858
Seat	Como , Italy
Number of employees	over 400 (2011)
sales	approx. 100 million EUR (2011)
Branch	Chemical industry
Website	www.lechler.eu

Lechler is a medium-sized Italian companies in the paint -Industrie than 400 employees and about 100 million euros and one with brand , the year 150th in its history, the development of colors and varnishes in the work areas automotive coatings , industrial coatings , construction paint- and boat paints actively involved Has. Today the company produces at two Italian locations in Como ( Lombardy ) and Foligno ( Umbria ) and sells its products primarily through specialist dealers in Italy, through four European branches in Manchester ( Great Britain ), Grenoble ( France ), Barcelona ( Spain ) and Kassel ( Germany ), as well as in another 60 countries through importers and their distribution network.

history

Today's company Lechler Spa comes from the Italian branch of the German company Christian Lechler und Sohn Successor , which was founded by the pharmacist Christian Lechler in Stuttgart in 1858 , further developed by his son Paul Lechler, and which was handed over to senior executives in 1878 for other activities in the field of chemistry and spray systems for liquids. Two special features have characterized the long company history: a continuous succession of ownership and management that develops within the company itself with a discontinuous presence of an owner family, which was decisive when the company was founded, but then did not exist for decades, only to become one when the company later developed Role to play.

The Italian branch of the German paint factory was opened in Ponte Chiasso ( Como ) in 1889 under the direction of the German engineer Hermann Spindler . The first customers were small dealers , craftsmen and companies who did not yet specialize in paints and who primarily had to coat wood and iron : car bodies , railroad cars , trams and furniture .

After the German parent company's decision to close the Italian branch, the three executives Brizzolara , La Regina and Rizzi turned to the local banker Edoardo Clerici (who later went by the name of Banca Amadeo ) to bring together a community of owners that would become the company invested where they would be shareholders and directors themselves. In a short time the banker succeeded in gaining a sufficient number of partners, so that in February 1910 the limited partnership Chr. Lechler & Figlio Successori was founded, which took over the ownership and management of the ex-branch. This operation is a convincing example of the financing model that was the engine of industrial development in Italy in those years . The industrialization of paint production began under the new management: the use of electricity , the first machines, and a qualified chemist employed in the laboratory. The image was also renewed: As with other paint factories, an animal was introduced into the trademark, for Lechler an “eagle with outstretched wings”.

In the second half of the 1920s, there was a gradual changeover from naturally occurring raw materials ( linseed oil , resins , pigments based on naturally occurring metal compounds) to products synthetically produced by chemical processes. The nitrocellulose that in World War I in large quantities for explosives production was used, found its way into the formulation of paints for cars and trucks. In Italy, Lechler was the first company to develop and sell a product of this type ( Lechleroid ), which dried quickly, was applied by spray application and offered in a wide range of colors . During the same period, the first alkyd resins allowed the introduction of the pigmented synthetic resin lacquer series ( Syntex ).

Between 1929 and 1944, the first generation of management gradually handed over management of the company to Onnik Manoukian , a chemist who had a doctorate at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic (now ETH Zurich ) , who joined the company in 1925 as technical director and for a long time managed the company's technological renewal, and to Aldo Bruschi who was hired for administrative management that same year.

The growth after the Second World War was achieved with a well-arranged workforce at the small site in Ponte Chiasso , which served the market through only a few sales representatives . Advertising and sales growth were based mainly on the high quality level of the products and only little on investments in the company's image. The communication was based on the direct relationship of the company's staff with the dealers and users of the products.

As in the 1920s, the large companies in the chemical industry brought new coating raw materials onto the market in the 1950s and 1960s , which enabled the development of a completely new generation of products with innovative properties. The new polyurethane binders enabled Lechler to develop market-leading coatings at an early stage: Isofan was the product name that made history in bus coating, Dermophan enabled the re- application of historical methods for leather coating and Acriplast with its diverse derivatives was the solution for coating the numerous new plastics , which played a major role both in automobile production and in home furnishings.

The modernization of the Lechler company began in the 1970s: the owners' two sons, Noubar Manoukian and Renato Bruschi , joined the company management, and the technical and administrative organization was reinforced by a large number of technicians and university graduates. A concrete sign of the renewal was the new plant in Como-Rebbio, which at the same time marked a new era of industrial buildings in Italy: the interplay of the innovative concept of Noubar Manoukian with the sensitivity and architectural expression of the architect Manouk Manoukian , who had his roots in Italian rationalism had. The formula and color stock was integrated into a systematic platform of mixing systems ( Isofan , BSB , Extralucido , Isoacryl , RS ), on the basis of which different market requirements could be met in terms of both paint technology and color-specific aspects.

In the 1990s, a new production site was opened in Foligno , central Italy, which was originally planned for architectural paints and was then gradually expanded for the production of water-based paints for all work areas. The internationalization of sales took place during the same period: first through the opening of European branches in Great Britain , France , Spain and Germany and then worldwide through the distribution network . In these years, environmentally friendly product lines for car refinishing ( Hydrofan and Macrofan ) were developed and polyvalent industrial paint and building paint mixing systems ( Lechsys and DAC ) were further developed, for which training courses for vehicle painters and painters in the various areas took place in the Lechler training center.

In the 2000s, the company became a stock corporation with an entrepreneurial model based on market segment-specific brands and business fields for automotive refinish paints ( Lechler ), industrial paints ( Lechler Tech ), architectural paints ( Chrèon ), boat paints (through the acquisition of the historic Stoppani brand ) and Habitat by acquiring the IVE brand . Since the 1990s, Lechler has been working with the Italian Historical Vehicle Association ASI ( Automotoclub Storico Italiano ) in the research, preservation and standardization of the archives of specific product and color information that was used for the coating of vintage vehicles. The result of this cooperation is the official register of historical motorcycle colors Lechler-ASI , which lists the colors used for all manufacturers by brand, model and year of manufacture. Furthermore, Lechler is the contact person for the artists Fabrizio Musa , Mariko Mori , Marco Della Torre and Raymundo Sesma in order to find suitable lacquer solutions for their needs.

literature

Gianfranco Brenni (ed.): Fabbriche di vernici e memorie storiche , Sviluppo chimica SpA, Milano 1995.
Paul Gehring: Paul Lechler. Wholesale merchant and factory owner, social reformer, founder of the German Institute for Medical Mission, 1849–1925. In: Max Miller, Robert Uhland (ed.): Schwäbische Lebensbilder , Vol. 6, Stuttgart, 1957, pp. 401-428.
Elke Elizabeth Hamacher: Paul Lechler and the housing issue around 1900. In: Journal for corporate history , supplement 31, Wiesbaden, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1984. ISBN 3-515-04070-6
Akzo Lesonal: 125 years of paint ideas. 1858-1983. Progress is a tradition , Feuerbach, 1983.
Agop Manoukian: Lechler. Storia e racconti di un marchio - Vol. 1: Vernici e Smalti dal 1858 , Venezia, Oemme edizioni, 2008. ISBN 978-88-85822-33-7 .
Agop Manoukian: Lechler. Storia e racconti di un marchio - Vol. 2: Cent'anni di Lechler italiana , Venezia, Oemme edizioni, 2010. ISBN 978-88-85822-36-8 .
Agop Manoukian, Fabio Camozzi, Luciano Valli (eds.), Lechler. Storia e racconti di un marchio - Vol. 3: Attraverso le immagini , Venezia, Oemme edizioni, 2010. ISBN 978-88-85822-37-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: look up motorcycle color series

↑ pag. 80 p. 80 Fabrizio Musa realizes his works with Lechler colors ( Memento of the original from April 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 1.1 MB) @1@ 2

↑ Mariko Mori Wave Ufo realized in cooperation with Lechler

↑ The "Bruco di Zona Tortona" realized by Marco della Torre in collaboration with Lechler

[1] Page no longer available , search in web archives: look up motorcycle color series@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.lechler.eu