Category: Kohlhase & Kopp

On April 15, 1919, Martin Wess (great-grandfather of today’s company owners Oliver & Thilo Kopp) took the risk of becoming self-employed. As a master bag maker, he served customers such as Goldpfeil with cigar cases. For numerous renowned watch manufacturers in Switzerland, he covered metal frames with fine leather, which they used as cases for their travel alarm clocks.

Leather goods production flourished in the late 1930s. During this flourishing period, Martin Wess’ children, son Gottfried and daughter Frederike, and their husband Friedrich Kopp also joined the company. In those heydays, the company employed almost 100 people.

The family even ran a small production facility with an attached sales office on New York’s 5th Avenue in order to avoid the high import duties for German finished goods.

The company founder Martin Wess died in 1947 and only two years later his son Gottfried followed him. As was usual after the war, the surviving women played a key role in the reconstruction. The daughter Frederike accepted this responsibility and achieved great things. Together with her friend and general manager Karla Kühn, she took care of the reconstruction of the badly damaged production building in Löwenstrasse. 16 in Offenbach am Main as well as paying off the bank debts for the commercial property and reactivating old domestic and foreign business contacts. In 1954, Frederike Wess finally succumbed to tuberculosis, which was incurable at the time. From her sickbed she managed the business and prepared everything for an orderly transfer to her son Bernd Kopp.

In the years that followed, the travel alarm clock was replaced by the quartz alarm clock and the obligatory leather frame cases became obsolete. New business areas had to be explored. Contacts already existed with the Seiffert company from Kassel, at that time THE pipe importer in Germany with agencies for Savinelli and Peterson…, for whom tobacco pouches were manufactured. Bernd Kopp, himself an avid pipe smoker, had his bag maker Kurth make a copy of a pipe case and henceforth competed with the market leaders Charlotta and Dereso under the name Wess Design. The transformation was successful, business was successful. After previously only supplying wholesalers and importers, we now hired our own sales representatives. But why only sell pipe cases? It was the heyday of the pipe – keyword Terry Report… In 1969 Bernd Kopp finally acquired the first distribution rights for the legend S.Bang – Copenhagen, which the company was allowed to sell until its closure, i.e. almost 50 years.

Lothar Otto was a true pipe expert and enjoyed a high reputation in the branch. When he lost his partner, Bernd Kopp stepped in. In 1971 the company Otto & Kopp was founded. The portfolio was impressive: Ascorti, Caminetto, Nörding, Ropp, later Barling, Loewe, Hedeggard, Chacom and Peterson were added and many more

After the death of Lothar Otto, the two companies Martin Wess and Otto & Kopp merged to today’s Kopp GmbH & Co. KG.

The two competitors, Bernd Kopp and Michael Kohlhase, met again and again at trade fairs. Kohlhase was a partner in the small tobacco company Kohlhase & Bühler and had a top-class portfolio of famous Danish pipe makers: Jess Chonowitsch, Anne Julie, Tao, Ilsted. He was also the stand-in for Ashton whistles. So a merger would have made sense. Bühler finally got into financial problems and Bernd Kopp offered to be a partner again and in 1979 acquired 80% of the shares in the small 6-man forge. Sales developed very slowly at first. With the purchase of the English pipe tobacco producer Mc Connell, there was a first small boost. Kohlhase & Kopp acquired the rights to the name, know-how, recipes, a small machine park and an interesting export network.