Arvato services
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Arvato headquarters (2012)
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Formerly called
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Bertelsmann Industrie |
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| private | |
| Industry | Business-to-business |
| Founded | 1996 |
| Headquarters | Gütersloh, Germany |
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Area served
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worldwide |
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Key people
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| Services | customer support, information technology, logistics, finance |
| Revenue |
 €4.8 billion (2015) |
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Number of employees
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72,457 (2015) |
| Parent | Bertelsmann |
| Website | arvato |
Arvato is a global services company headquartered in Gütersloh, Germany. Its services include customer support, information technology, logistics, and finance. The history of Arvato goes back to the printing and industry services division of Bertelsmann; the current name was introduced in 1999. Today, Arvato is one of eight divisions of Bertelsmann, the media, services and education group. In 2015, Arvato had about 72,400 employees and an overall turnover of 4.8 billion euros. Since 2015, Fernando Carro has been Chief Executive Officer of Arvato.
Bertelsmann was founded as a publishing house by Carl Bertelsmann in 1835. In the following decades, the company grew steadily. After the Second World War, it developed from a mid-sized business to a large enterprise. To meet the demand from the book club Lesering and the record club Schallplattenring, Bertelsmann massively expanded its warehouse and shipping capacities in the mid-1950s. In 1959, the Kommissionshaus Buch und Ton was established to make the production and service infrastructure available for other publishing and printing companies. Bertelsmann benefited from this due to economies of scale. A punch-card index at the Lesering headquarters was acquired from Lufthansa, which later became the basis for the information technology expertise of Arvato. During the first years, Reinhard Mohn was the sole owner of the Kommissionshaus Buch und Ton. In 1968, the company became part of the newly-founded Vereinigte Verlagsauslieferung (VVA). Its purpose was the delivery of printed materials and records "in the name and on behalf of its clients."
Bertelsmann opened its printing business to outside clients in a similar way, forming a new company called Mohndruck in 1948. After purchasing powerful machines which required a high capacity utilization, Bertelsmann acquired more and more orders from other companies in the 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s, Bertelsmann founded and bought several other printing and logistics companies in France, Great Britain, Spain and other European countries. These became part of the printing and industry services division of Bertelsmann. From 1976, the branch was led by Mark Wössner, who later became Bertelsmann CEO. Under his leadership, the expansion continued. For example, Bertelsmann entered the software and hardware distribution market in 1983. Until the mid-1980s, the printing and industry services division generated more than 20 percent of the sales of the whole Bertelsmann group. In the late 1980s, the company also expanded its presence in the United States. In the 1990s, it won two major clients for new service offerings: First, Bertelsmann introduced the loyalty program Miles & More on behalf of Lufthansa in 1993. Second, Bertelsmann became responsible for customer support for the launch of Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
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