Freudenberg Group
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40,456 (2014)
The Freudenberg Group is a German family-owned diversified group of companies whose products include housewares and cleaning products, automobile parts, textiles, building materials, and telecommunications. Its headquarters are in Weinheim, Baden-Württemberg, and it has production facilities and markets in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the United States. The parent company was founded in 1849 as a producer of leather goods.
The company was founded in 1849 by Carl Johann Freudenberg, the son of a wine merchant, and his partner, Heinrich Christoph Heintze; the two took over a tannery at Weinheim. For the next 80 years, the company produced leather products exclusively. Hurt by the worldwide economic depression that began in 1929, and by shortages during World War II, it diversified into seals for motors made first of leather and later of artificial rubber (the Simmerring, named for an engineer called Walther Simmer), which led to fabrics and to cleaning fabrics and tools when it was noted that the company's cleaning ladies were using discarded scraps of the experimental fabrics.Vileda (from German: wie Leder, "like leather") window-cleaning cloths were first marketed in 1948.
In the mid-1990s the company reorganized with a "highly decentralized organizational structure": it has 16 divisions or areas of business incorporating 430 independent units. Three-quarters of its business is as a supplier to other companies. In 2004 Freudenberg had employees in 43 countries. Recently it has focused attention on markets in China and Japan; for example, it provided the floor coverings for the Shanghai Metro stations.
In 2002 the company closed its last leather tannery, marking the effective end of the leather industry in Germany. However, today Vileda is a market leader in Europe. All German cars contain parts made by another Freudenberg subsidiary, and German-made outdoor clothing contains fibers made by yet another. Almost all major airports have flooring made by another Freudenberg subsidiary. In 2015 the group was a 7,5 billion euro business with more than 40,000 employees, approximately 11,000 in Germany. Revenues rose from 7 billion euros in 2014 to 7.572 billion in 2015.
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