Hella

Quality--from the rough design draft to the finished headlamp. Customer satisfaction based on quality in every aspect of a product is a decisive factor for success, now more than ever before. The corporate strategy of the international Hella Group has set its sights on three goals: First, offering customers first-class products and services at competitive prices. Second, providing employees with opportunities for dedicated, successful and personally satisfying work. Third, gaining and maintaining a position as a first-class automotive supplier. The company's first factory for lighting equipment in the United States begins operations. Hella KG Hueck & Co. is one of the leading European suppliers of lighting accessories to the worldwide automotive industry with a global market share of roughly 10 percent. Key customers include car manufacturers Audi, BMW, Volkswagen, Ford, Opel, Volvo, Renault, Daimler-Chrysler, and Scania-DAF. Based in Lippstadt, Germany, the company operates more than 60 production facilities in 18 countries around the world. In addition to lighting for passenger cars, commercial vehicles, motorcycles, boats, and bicycles, Hella also makes automotive plug-in relays, sensors, and remote controls as well as whole front-end modules. Hella also supplies replacement headlights, rear lights, fog lights, and other lighting equipment to car dealers and garages, with this aftermarket business accounting for roughly 45 percent of total sales. Together with a number of strategic partners, Hella develops innovative electronic, lighting, and wiring systems for motor vehicles. The company is owned by the German Hueck family. While the Hueck family, a Westphalian family of industrialists, played a major role in Hella's history beginning in the early 1920s, it was the Jewish Windmüller family--one of the oldest non-aristocratic families in Westphalia with predecessors reaching back to the late 13th century--that determined the company's initial success. Company founder Sally Windmüller took over his father's feed store in Lippstadt, Westphalia, after his death in 1877 and expanded it slowly but steadily. By 1888, the business employed four people and sold its products to a growing number of customers outside the region. After marrying in 1891, Windmüller started making specialty metal products such as fittings and harnesses for horse carriages. In 1895, Windmüller acquired the machinery of Cöppius-Schulte-Röttger, a nearby manufacturer of lamps that had gone bankrupt. In the same year, a new factory building was erected in Lippstadt and 30 employees began to make lamps for horse carriages and bicycles. Windmüller's new venture took off. By the late 1890s, the company had grown to a medium-sized business, employing 122 workers. To finance the company's further growth, Windmüller invited a handful of business partners to become investors in his enterprise. In 1899, the company was transformed into Westfälische Metall-Industrie Aktien-Gesellschaft--Westphalian Metals Industry Ltd. (WMI), a public limited company. While fittings, harnesses and lamps for carriages, bicycle lamps, and lanterns remained a significant part of WMI's production in the early years, it was the rise of the automobile as a means of mass transportation that spurred the company's continuous growth throughout the 20th century. The first cars that cruised Germany's unpaved roads in the early 1900s had lamps similar to horse coaches: paraffin, candle, or gas lamps. However, lighting was not standard equipment in the already extremely expensive vehicles and was therefore considered a luxury. To drum up business, Windmüller, who was the first to own an automobile in his hometown, used his vehicle as a sales tool. He equipped his car with the lighting fixtures his company made and drove around town. He also visited trade shows in Germany and abroad, showing off WMI's products. Soon the company's product range also included bulb horns, which were crafted by so