Flötotto Furniture - Entrepreneurial Spirit since 1906
Since its foundation in 1906 by Heinrich Flötotto, the Gütersloh-based company Flötotto has become one of the most famous German furniture brands. Today, every third German is familiar with the traditional company, lead since 2008 by the founder's great-grandson Frederik Flötotto.
From furniture workshop to serial production: The early changes to the industrial production made it possible for the company to rapidly evolve into a large furniture factory up until the 1940s.
Heinrich’s sons Franz and Fritz then joined the company. While Franz continued to manufacture home furniture, Fritz began developing ergonomically shaped office and school furniture in the 1950s. In 1952, he patented the innovative pag-shaped seat that was later known world-wide: a seat shell for chairs, made of a compacted beech plywood impregnated with phenolic resin - in principle a wooden shell with the qualities of plastic. More than 21 million Flötotto shaped seats have been sold. Between 1969 and 1991, the third generation of the family joined the corporate heritage.
Independently from each other, the sons of Franz, Elmar and Hubertus, and Fritz's son Reinhard developed different business segments, all relating to the production and sale of furniture for private and public areas.
In the 1970s, Flötotto developed a futuristic design that still characterises the strong image of the brand. The Flötotto profile system is a robust, stable and very flexible design that is still a classic today. During this time, Flötotto also became the first company to distribute its furniture directly to private customers.
After its expansion in the 1980s and financial difficulties at the end of the 1990s, the company resumed its course at the end of 2007 when Elmar Flötotto Holding acquired the Flötotto brands and product rights. Since 2008, Flötotto System Furniture GmbH works under the family-led Elmar Flötotto Holding. As a fixed institution of the international design branch, the holding proves its competence in furniture and lamps as well as accessories for the kitchen, bathroom and office with its brands Flötotto, Depot4Design and Sitting Bull.
Flötotto and the Future: A Company in Motion
The continued development of innovative and flexible institutions is the top priority of Flötotto. A team of internationally renowned designers focuses on these questions: How will we live, work and learn in the future? And how can Flötotto contribute to designing the future of living, learning and working, taking into account ergonomics, ecology and sustainability? To this end, the company invested more than 3 million euros in 2011 alone for state-of-the-art manufacturing techniques as well as product development at the production base in Delbrück-Westenholz. With the development of the chairs collection PRO, which was created in cooperation with designer Konstantin Grcic, Flötotto continues the successful tradition in manufacturing school furniture since 2012.
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