Braun GmbH

The company views its brand image--based on the core values innovative, reliable, and distinctive--as a key success factor. "Our objective is to develop products responding to the consumer's needs which are always a step ahead of the competition in technology and design," Braun chairman Bernhard Wild has stated. Braun refuses to make any quality compromises. Extensive ongoing tests in its own test laboratories guarantee that all products meet the high Braun standards of safety, reliability, and long service. The company's "S 50" dry foil shaver and "Multimix" blender are patented. Braun GmbH is one of the world's leading manufacturers of small electric appliances. Headquartered in the small German town of Kronberg near Frankfurt am Main, the company sees itself as the world market leader for electric foil shavers, electric toothbrushes, kitchen appliances, and electric hair removers. They also make electric water kettles, coffee makers, juicers, irons, hair dryers, stylers and curlers, infrared ear thermometers, blood pressure monitors, clocks, and calculators. Braun's product range includes about 200 products which are manufactured at its ten production plants in Germany, Ireland, France, Spain, China, Mexico, and the United States. Braun products are distributed worldwide by Boston-based Gillette Group, which has owned the company since 1967. Braun's widely acclaimed reputation for innovative product design goes back to German engineer and inventor Max Braun. Max Braun, the sixth of seven sons of sailor and farmer Friedrich August Braun, grew up in a small town in eastern Prussia. At age 14 he started an apprenticeship at a nearby machine building company. His entrepreneurial spirit first emerged when, after finishing his four-year professional education as a machinist, he invented a steam-powered thresher and made his living leasing out himself and his machine to local farmers around harvest time. In 1910, Max Braun left eastern Prussia for Hamburg, where he worked at precision mechanics and machine-building company Wilhelm Fette. However, only a few months later he was drafted to serve in the German army in Berlin. After finishing the required six months of army service, Braun decided to stay in Berlin and started working for engineering firm and electrical equipment manufacturer AEG as a machinist. Later he worked for Siemens as a technical drawer and at yet another machine building firm, Storck & Co., where he became a tool designer. Besides working, Braun took evening classes at a private technical school and began studying English. In 1914, he graduated from technical school. In the same year, World War I began, and Braun was drafted again into the German army, where he served in the engineering corps. However, after only a few months he was lucky enough to be "reclaimed" by AEG to work at their turbine plant. In November 1920, following Germany's defeat in the war, Braun married and moved to Frankfurt am Main. One year later, a new era began in Germany, when the first regular radio shows were broadcast. The new medium inspired Max Braun. To learn about the new technology, he started taking evening classes organized by the Gesellschaft der Freunde der Radio-Phonie und -Telegraphie , a society of the friends of radio broadcasting and telegraphy, in Frankfurt. The first element of radio technology that caught Braun's attention was the so-called detector, a crystal connected to a needle that listeners used to tune in to different stations. This technology was neither easy to handle nor precise. For months Braun, together with a pharmacist friend, conducted experiments in the laundry room of the house where he lived, until he came up with a better solution. Instead of using unevenly shaped crystals, he heated crystal powder and formed it into a cylinder which he then connected to the contact point. By means of this device, listeners could tune in the radio stations much easier by turning the crystal cylinder. A trade j