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 The Hartmann Furniture Company origins go right back to the year the company was established in 1911. Bernhard Hartmann builds a carpentry shop on the very spot where the company’s administrative headquarters stand today. The company is basically occupied doing various carpentry jobs for the local area in its normal course of business in these early years. By the 1930’s the company has started specializing in the manufacture of furniture. Bedroom and living room furniture is manufactured in small-scale serial production and delivered to furniture dealers. The company sells its products to customers as far away as the Ruhr industrial area during this period. Freelance trade representatives, travelling around on motor-cycles, sell the products in the Münsterland region and in the northern parts of the Ruhr region. At the beginning of the Second World War the company employs a staff of 15. During the war years production almost comes to a standstill because nearly all of the apprentices are conscripted to do military service. |
Bernhard Hartmann, 1910 |
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| Aerial photograph 1950 | End of the 1950s |
| With the introduction of the Deutschmark at the end of the war there is soon a heavy demand for furniture. With the support of his eldest son, Bernhard Theodor Hartmann, born in 1926, the company begins to convert and extend its premises. Carried along by the winds of change prevalent in the early 1950s, and driven on by the dynamic approach of the company's young leader, the company now begins to think and operate on a larger industrial scale. In the 1960s, it begins to market its products all over the country. From 1967, the furniture trade fair in Cologne becomes the most important sales fair for company business. By this time the company is now represented throughout the whole of the Federal Republic of Germany. In the period between 1965 and 1980 some large new production factories are built, which today occupy an area of around 22,000 square metres. In the peak period at the end of the 1970s up to 250 staff are now employed in the factory in Beelen. The company is affected by economic difficulties in the second half of the 1980s. The market segment for rustic, old-German style furniture, which the company had specialised in during the 70s, was now in decline and was also threatened by the increasing number of cheap imports from eastern Europe. Drops in turnover, a shorter working week and job losses were characteristic of the 1980s. This is when Bernhard Heinrich Hartmann, the present owner, joins the company and becomes a member of its board. |
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| Aerial photograph 1958 | |
| At the beginning of the 1990s the company succeeds in finding a new position on the market as a result of some innovative marketing ideas. A new market segment for solid wooden bio- furniture emerges, and the Hartmann Company is able to establish itself in this market niche. In 1995 the company sets up a subsidiary in Poland which takes over the supply of plywood boards to the company's main headquarters. Today approximately 60% of the plywood and prefabricated components are manufactured there. |
| Aerial photograph 1968 |