Yes, says the boss on the phone: Everything here is already “exotic”. But a visit offers a first look that could hardly be more ordinary. Work gloves, socks and compression stockings are lined up against the wall, and a vest hangs on a clothes rack. Only at second glance does it become clear what things have in common – and what makes them more complex to produce than it seems. They are all made of special yarns. The boss gradually moves the exhibits across the conference table. “In reality,” says Hans-Peter Mauch, “it’s all about the thread”; about choosing the right one from the thousands of variants.
Whether for medical supplies, sporting goods or technical applications: The Zimmermann company manufactures yarns for special requirements in the Allgäu – and is thus active in an area that can be exotic because it is so niche and largely unknown. Zimmermann has around 25 competitors across Europe, if one can speak of competitors in a statistically under-recorded world in which everyone tinkers with their own special yarns and of which the end customer hardly ever notices how and where they are made. Or why.
Hans-Peter Mauch heads the Zimmermann company, which today belongs to the Geiger Group in Oberstdorf.
(Photo: Maximilian Gerl)
If you want to explore these unknown realms, you have to go to Weiler-Simmerberg in the district of Lindau. The Zimmermann parent company, a rather inconspicuous block of buildings, is located on the outskirts. Behind them are two lonely ski lifts up the Oberberg, on the other side of the street cows whose bells sometimes accompany telephone calls when the windows are open. An alpine idyll, made to fly under the radar in public. Managing Director Mauch – Allgäu tongue, down-to-earth demeanor – is to a certain extent the best example himself. Although he’s from the area, he says he didn’t know Zimmermann until he applied for a job as an export salesman there. 1979 was that.
A lot has changed since then and a lot hasn’t. The company, founded in 1953, is now part of the Geiger Group from Oberstdorf. Among other things, it used to supply the many textile factories in the area, of which there are hardly any today since the industry moved to the Far East. Instead, the approximately 150 employees concentrate primarily on compression pants and similar items, or more precisely on the materials required for them: They refine yarns, which their customers then use to make the end products. “We are at the beginning of the textile chain,” says Mauch.
To simplify this, an elastic thread is wrapped around other inelastic threads as the core. Depending on how you control this process, the elasticity of the yarn changes, among other things. The mixture of the different yarns, in turn, ultimately makes up the product. A typical compression stocking consists of four to five different yarns; some are only used on the heel, others on the waistband. Zimmermann manufactures to order and as required. From the development of a new special yarn to the delivery of the first large quantities, a year can pass, with tests, the production of sample spools, and wearing trials. A lot of effort for a comparatively inconspicuous piece of fabric.
Only when the customers have placed the textiles on the market can Zimmermann start their own production chain to ensure a constant supply of yarn. The orders are often for smaller batches, for which it is not worthwhile for other manufacturers to start up the machines separately. In this way – in Weiler-Simmerberg, at two smaller locations in Aichach and the USA as well as through licensed production in South America – almost 1000 tons of yarn are lapped together every year. Neither Zimmermann nor the Geiger Group want to make any statements about the resulting sales, for reasons of competition, as they say. As niche as the market may seem, it is still competitive and growing: In many countries, people are getting older, which means that the need for medical stockings, socks and pants is also increasing.
In the halls in Weiler-Simmerberg, the winding machines whirr and clatter, on which the wafer-thin threads are spun into a yarn.
(Photo: Zimmermann)
A whole armada roars from the machines in the adjoining workshop. Employees with earplugs push trolleys with bobbins through the rows of machines. The twisting is done in a similar way to how the first steam-powered machines did it in the age of industrialization: For the layman, threads whirr off metal arms at breakneck speed, only to come together on others in a new composition. The yarns are then tested for tear strength in the in-house quality laboratory or checked for irregularities using a camera. The thin ribbon can then be seen very large on the computer screen.
Theoretically, things other than compression stockings can be made with special yarns. For example, with a thin wire inside, they can conduct electricity. They began to tinker with such quasi-elastic wires at Zimmermann in the early 2000s. “We developed a lot of prototypes back then,” says Mauch, including heated fabrics for interior car doors. The problem: “In the end we weren’t able to realize many things because nobody put it into series production. We were simply too small.” Even some of the younger Zimmermann employees didn’t know for a long time what had been lying in the drawers since then. “Incredible,” reports the production manager, for example, it was for him to rummage through the old plans in search of new ones: “You developed that 20 years ago?”
Nevertheless, a few technical ideas made it into the portfolio. These include conductive yarns that are used in car manufacture for seat belts with built-in microphones. They want to keep the attention for such innovations at Zimmermann in the future. The company benefits from the fact that it is also exotic internally. Because the branched Geiger Group consists mainly of construction, recycling and logistics companies, for whose business yarns play no role. According to the head office, it supports IT, marketing and controlling. Otherwise, however, in Weiler-Simmerberg they have the freedom to work with threads largely undisturbed. On the one hand, Mauch thinks it is “nice work”, even if the pressure is high to have to deliver successes in this niche: “It doesn’t grow on trees there.” That would indeed be very exotic even by local standards.