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FACE2FACE


Exclusive interview with Dr Florian Seidl


Having arranged to visit Munich for the Intersolar Fair the opportunity to invite ourselves to one of Europe’s leading fastener distributors was far too good to miss. With his customary courtesy Dr Florian Seidl extended a warm welcome to Keller & Kalmbach – including time to tour what is surely a benchmark in fastener industry central logistics operations.


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eller & Kalmbach was founded in 1878 and, as an early catalogue attests, even then was a distributor of screws


as well as blacksmith supplies. “At the time,” explains Dr Seidl, “the products were manufactured in the north of Germany. Keller & Kalmbach provided distribution for Bavaria and some parts of Austria.” The company was successful but continuity became an issue as neither of the two founders, who gave their names to the business, had children. “My great grandfather came originally from Munich but moved to the east of Bavaria,” Florian Seidl says. “His son wanted to move back to the city so looked for a company and found Keller & Kalmbach.” Hence, since 1908, the company has been owned and managed by the Seidl family. Horse gave


way to internal combustion engine and pre-war Keller & Kalmbach was slow to adapt. It was Florian Seidl’s father that, after the Second World War, emphatically changed the direction of a company to target the industrial market. Keller & Kalmbach became the market-leading distributor to Bavarian industry and in 1960 began to supply the automotive manufacturing sector, starting with Audi and Glas (the latter absorbed by BMW in the 1960s). Agricultural equipment manufacturers also provided an important customer base. Growth and the diffi culty of expanding in a central Munich location led to the relocation of Keller & Kalmbach to its current head offi ce location, west of the city at Unterschleissheim. Florian Seidl came to the family


business in 1975. “I had studied political 54 Fastener + Fixing Magazine • Issue 71 September 2011


science and philosophy so I was not exactly educated for the fastener distribution business, but I had six weeks practice in a bank and then six weeks in fastener production to prepare myself. Of course, I still made many mistakes to start with.” Four years later, occasioned by his father’s illness, he became general manager. “I thought hard about strategies and we decided to do a certain amount of decentralisation into other cities in southern Germany. From that development came the need for a central warehouse operation here in Unterschleissheim, which served us well until quite recently.” The business grew steadily and in 2002


Keller & Kalmbach bought Widex Peters in Düsseldorf to strengthen its presence in northern Germany. “It was not a small


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