100 Years of Schmalz: The Founding Years (1910 - 1920)

28.02.2010

Company founder Johannes Schmalz developed a machine for producing razor blades and sold the first products

The company founder is descended from the small community of Aistaig in the Black Forest, which is part of Oberndorf, today. There, Johannes Schmalz was born on 24th of October 1878 as son of the master wainwright, Jakob Schmalz, and succeeded in acquiring the title of master craftsman in the Schramberg clock spring factory.

The factory director had offered a prize for the construction of a machine for producing razor blades. Johannes Schmalz won the competition, but the prize was him denied, so he draw his conclusions and bought an oil mill and a woolwork in Glatten. Here, he wanted to manufacture razor blades in the future. On the 10th of November 1910, the family moved to Glatten, which was a fairly poor community in those days. The first products were dispatched that very same month. However, these were not razor blades but reprocessed wool that Schmalz continued to produce until June 1918.

By 1912, Johannes Schmalz already owned an impressive range of equipment: a turning lathe, an iron smithing hearth, a typewriter, a brick hardening furnace, a horizontal grinding machine, proudly marked "own product", and a polishing machine for grinding razors. The company flourished and Schmalz ran advertisements looking for employees.

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