Ill-bred ones

The labels of the companies are unimportant in the meantime.

There were about half a dozen. The losses altogether may have been around 1,5 million.

Causes: in the beginning greenness, later on disregard of my own principles.

Successful ones

One of my first and as well the least investment ever was

Niehaus, Komossa, GbR – Corporate Design Agency.

My main duties: moral support and financial background.

The agency started with the two owners, tiny office with garden, Fiat Panda as company car.

She grew steadily, moved twice to new premises, finally to an amazing office in a historic monument of the late fifties – unsurpassed in charm and beauty.

The main focus: corporate visual identity, book-covers, company journals, planning of trade shows and everything else which emphasizes the keen aspects of their customers.

The agency never grew big – she employed up to 18 personnel, mostly women.

She became successful and well known for excellence, fineness and punctuality as well as its healthy and fair business behavior. Operating profits were secondary in my mind.

Then two lucky punches

At first the biggest and the most thrilling one

 Heiner Kamps and I met each other just before he opened his third bakery outlet.

On the opening day of this outlet, his wife Petra entered the store with their new born son Sebastian in a baby buggy. From the very beginning of the encounter with him and his family we all were deeply linked to each other.

We then started the most exciting expedition of our lives.

At the end of this – only a few years lasting – journey, Kamps operated 2.000 bakery stores in different parts of Europe. Nowhere else on our continent existed a similar prominent company in bakery business running their own outlets.

Heiner and I together owned 10 % of the total value of Kamps AG, bundled in a private partnership. Of course he – as founder and man of action – held by far the bigger part.

Heiner was the boss and I was his prompter and closest buddy. We seemed inseparable.

Our journey could have gone forever if not the board of directors (German: Aufsichtsrat) would have failed. I myself was member of this board from the very beginning until the sell-off to Barilla. The board proofed to be unable to engage an additional manager whose job would have been to secure the essential and ample stability of Kamps AG during its growth.

The sell-out to Barilla should and would have been avoidable.

The most lasting one

A little more than 20 years ago I suggested to my former client and meanwhile best friend, Andreas Kielholz, that we should buy a company together. I knew that he would be an excellent manager and I also thought that he would be the perfect man as “owner driver”. That’s what we did then. After some research we found the right object. We got financial support from the Viehof family, longtime business and now true friends, formerly owners and operators of allkauf, a well-known and big self-service department store company in Germany.

The three of us bought JUMBO-Textil, a company which has been producing textiles for clothing ever since 1906. Andreas acquired one half, two quarters each Viehof and myself.

JUMBO still produces braids, strings, lacings, wires – you name it -, not for clothing anymore but for industrial purposes. Our specialty are elastic small textiles. Around two thirds of our total production heads to clients connected to the automotive industry.

Our acquisition was fabulous from the very beginning. Andreas was the skipper and I the counsel at the line. After a little more than a dozen years we build a brand-new factory.

We also connected us with vombaur. They have been producing hatbands for almost 220 years. One of the last customers nowadays are Stetson Hats in the USA as well as some hat factories in the north of South America – yet hatbands are only a tiny part of our production of today.

vombaur mainly produces high-tech articles, namely woven fabrics for technical applications in all kinds of materials such as natural fibers, man-made fibers, metals – for example stainless steel, copper, silver and so on. Almost anything which might be woven – if you know how to do it.

More than half of our turnover has to do with filtration. Just a tiny number of companies in the world know how to produce roundly woven, seamless filters.

This applies as well to the production of woven doorframes for the huge doors of air freighters. They were formerly made from titan which is much more expensive, less lasting and sturdy than the woven ones made by from vombaur. Titan origins in nasty countries.

Both companies vombaur and JUMBO operate under their common holding Textation.

Since all of our ordinary production, namely braiding, weaving and so on exclusively takes place in Germany and the years-old vombaur factory in Wuppertal has gotten much too small, we’ll be building another brand-new factory close to the JUMBO factory.

We bought the land, start building mid of 2024 and shall be producing at the end of 2025.

We now have a new and young executive team on board. Two of them sons of Andreas, additional ones coming from the outside. This team with a winning spirit shall be totally responsible as soon as Andreas will leave the command bridge. Andreas and myself are looking forward to watch their navigation – while we’re resting at the shore.

We still have been talking to competitors who were not as keen and lucky as ourselves in the change of generations. Quite a number of them want to cooperate with us in one way or the other. Some of these companies are situated in Germany others in the so-called DACH states. We’re open to those advances.

One thing is for sure in my eyes:

We are ready for the future and we’re going to play a strong role at the front of the first line.

My perspective in equity interests

Textation probably won’t be my last investment.

Presently I am dealing with a totally new approach to harvest energy from natural resources such as wind and streaming water.