Wini office furniture

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WINI office furniture Georg Schmidt

logo
legal form GmbH & Co. KG
founding 1908
Seat Marienau , Coppenbrügge
management
  • Carolina Schmidt-Karsch, Hans F. Karsch (managing partners)
  • Rudolf Bandick (Commercial Director)
Number of employees approx. 230 (2018)
sales 42.5 million euros (2018)
Branch Office furniture industry
Website www.wini.de

The WINI Büromöbel Georg Schmidt GmbH & Co. KG is a German manufacturer of office furniture. The company, founded in Duingen in 1908 , is now in the third generation of family ownership and is based in Marienau in the Hameln-Pyrmont district (Lower Saxony). The name WINI is derived from the initials of the founder Wilhelm Niemeier.

history

In 1908, at the age of 27, Wilhelm Niemeier founded a turnery in Duingen, Lower Saxony . After the trained wood turner returned from the First World War as a soldier, Niemeier continuously expanded the business into a wood goods factory. In post-war Germany, the company benefited from the reconstruction and developed into a leading German manufacturer of school and office furniture . With branches in Drakenburg , Braunschweig and Marienau - the current headquarters - Niemeier expanded the WINI group in the following period. Its workforce numbered more than 1600 about four decades after it was founded.

In 1953 the branch in Marienau filed for bankruptcy. Georg Schmidt, who worked at WINI in Duingen as a production manager after the Second World War, bought the facility. With his wife Minna, the adopted daughter of Lina and Wilhelm Niemeier, he founded the "ITH furniture factory" in 1956. In addition to gymnastics and living room furniture, it initially also produced fitted kitchens and ceiling suspensions for the prefabricated house builder OKAL . From 1960, the entrepreneur resumed the production of school and office furniture. When the Duingen WINI group was on the verge of ruin in 1967, Schmidt bought the trademark rights to "WINI" and formed the company in its current form from the remaining locations in Drakenburg and Marienau. Since 1985 the management of Carolina Schmidt-Karsch - daughter of Minna and Georg Schmidt - and her husband Hans F. Karsch has been in the hands of the third generation of the family. Until the middle of the 90s, the WINI company concentrated more and more on the production of office furniture. After the expansion of the production halls and capacities, the company achieved a peak turnover of DM 98 million in 1992, making it one of the leading European office furniture manufacturers. Marienau has been the central production site since the Drakenburg plant was closed in 1994. Today WINI is one of the 100 most innovative medium-sized companies in Germany and has made a name for itself with high-quality modular product systems. International and national design and innovation awards have repeatedly been won in recent years for the ergonomically designed office furniture. A current example of this is the "German Design Award 2019" for the acoustic system WINEA SONIC, which was designed by Uwe Sommerlade. In addition, the current table system WINEA FLOW was awarded the "German Innovation Award 2019".

Products

The company produces table systems, reception furniture and conference modules, stand / sit tables that can be adjusted by electric motors, mobile folding tables and modular cabinet and shelving systems. In addition to series furniture programs, the company produces individual furniture according to customer requirements.

Selected awards and certificates

  • iF Product Design Award (1994, 1996, 2001, 2005) for the office furnishing systems WINEA, isi4, Brisk, Winea Event and Winea Focus
  • Design award from the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry in the “Office and Shops” category (1998)
  • US award "Best New Systems Product" for the WINEA FAME table system (2000)
  • since 2002: Blue Angel for zero emissions
  • Benelux Office Products Award for the storage space system WINEA CONCEPT (2006)
  • since 2006: Quality Office (quality seal of the bso Association of Office, Seating and Object Furniture eV)
  • 2007: Recordings in the German Brand Lexicon of the German Standards Editions
  • red dot award : product design for the WINEA PRO table system (2010)
  • Plus X Award (2012) for the WINEA PRO table system
  • Active Office Award (2018) for the WINEA FLOW table system
  • IF Design Award (2018) for the WINEA PRO table system
  • German Design Award (2019) for the acoustic system WINEA SONIC
  • German Innovation Award (2019) for WINEA FLOW

Selected memberships

  • Federal German working group for environmentally conscious management (BAUM eV) since 1988
  • German Design Council since 1998
  • Lower Saxony Alliance for Sustainability since 2009

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b From a one-man business to a large company. Reprint of the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung on the occasion of Wilhelm Niemeier's 70th birthday, Hanover, September 29, 1951.
  2. ↑ a b c WINI: Wood goods factory in Duingen - a brand and its history. Exhibition brochure of the Duingen Pottery Museum. 1st edition, Duingen 2011.
  3. ↑ a b R. Antonoff (Ed.): CI Report 92 - The yearbook of exemplary corporate identity. Darmstadt 1992, pp. 256-267.
  4. ↑ a b c WINI office furniture (ed.): 100 years of WINI office furniture. (Festschrift for the 100th anniversary of WINI Büromöbel), Marienau 2008.
  5. ↑ H.-J. Warnecke: TOP 100 - The innovative middle class Germany 2002. Überlingen 2002, S. 142f.
  6. ↑ F. Langenscheid (Ed.): Deutsches Markenlexikon. Cologne 2007, p. 1148f.
  7. ↑ Florian Langenscheidt (Ed.): Deutsches Markenlexikon. Deutsche Standards EDITIONEN GmbH, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-8349-0629-8 .
  8. ↑ Peter Zec (Ed.): Doing - red dot design yearbook 2010/2011. Pp. 236-237.
  9. ↑ a b company portrait. ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )

literature

  • K. Arnecke: Hameln-Pyrmont as a business location. In: The district of Hameln-Pyrmont. Oldenburg 1998, p. 112f.
  • 100 years of WINI office furniture. Coppenbrügge 2008.
  • With a "long-runner" in the German Top 10. In: Holzzentralblatt. No. 2, 2010, p. 48f.
  • Secret P-Test - Erlkönig of a table system from WINI. AIT No. 12, 2008, pp. 86-88.
  • The workplace of the future is foldable. In: Handelsblatt supplement success factor office. No. 10, 2008, p. 27.
  • S. Zinser, D. Boch (Ed.): Flexible working worlds. Zurich 2007, ISBN 978-3-7281-3075-4 , pp. 83-100 and pp. 169-172.
  • H.-G. Schnauffer, W. Reising, R. Bandick: Formatting - Understanding and interpreting networks. (with practical example WINI office furniture). In: M. Klopp, M. Hartmann (eds.): The bat principle - strategic early detection for companies. Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-932298-06-3 , pp. 97-103.