Hoffmann Group Celebrates its Centennial

Hoffmann Group USA is celebrating the centennial of the company’s founding. Great-granddaughter of the company founder and co-shareholder, Verena Heinrich, says, “Our employees are the driving force of our 100-year-old company. Their vision, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit enable it to adapt flexibly to changing times."

The foundations of Hoffmann SE were laid by Josef Hoffmann on March 11, 1919, in Munich, Germany. His son, Franz, joined the business in 1932. In 1936, he created the Hoffmann catalog, which is now published in 18 languages and is also available in the form of an online e-shop at hoffmann-group.com. Starting in the 1950s, Franz Hoffmann aligned the business firmly toward the selling of quality tools supported by high-level expert advice. Franz Hoffmann was also responsible for launching the company's own product lines under the Garant brand name back in 1973. As the long-standing head of the company, he molded and embodied its culture and values more than anyone else.

"We are still today putting into practice the values by which the company first gained its success, now formulated by the slogan 'Pioneering, Precise, Personal'," says Siegfried Neher, executive board member and director of technology and transformation of Hoffmann SE. 

The third generation of Hoffmann then merged the company with the Gödde, Oltrogge and Perschmann family businesses to form the Hoffmann Group. Now headed by the fourth generation of the Hoffmann family, the Hoffmann Group with its partners has 69 subsidiaries in more than 50 countries all around the world.