These statements and many more embody our rohi philosophy, just as Marga Hielle-Vatter and her husband, Rolf Hielle, imagined they would, all those years ago in the early 1930s.
In 2013, rohi is pleased to be able to look back on 80 years of successful, family oriented business traditions.
Our success story begins with homespun yarn from a tiny attic room. In 1933 Marga Hielle-Vatter and her husband, Rolf Hielle, founded the homespun weaving mill rohi in the Bohemian town of Schönlinde. Shortly before the end of the war in 1945, the family were forced to leave Bohemia and start again from scratch, using a borrowed spinning wheel.
Their first base of operations was in Ammerland, close to Lake Starnberg, but they soon moved to Geretsried, where rohi is still based today. In 1970, their son, Bernd Hielle, assumed leadership of the company. It was he who introduced rohi to Airbus, and he who led the company to become a world famous seller of textiles for aircraft interiors.
Today, the family business is run by Katrin Hielle-Dahm, the founder’s granddaughter, and her husband, Philipp Dahm. She inherited more than just the business; her talent and enthusiasm for textile design is clear, and she, along with her design team, has won multiple awards, including the red dot award for product design. The third-generation CEOs continue to run their business traditionally but with a keen eye for innovation and modernity.
Then as now, “Made in Germany” is an important hallmark of our business, and will continue to be so in the future. Of course, we will continue to focus on AIR, LIVING, and PUBLIC as our main areas of business. We will also continue to expand our position as an established global player on the Aircraft Interiors market, and will continue to cooperate with renowned international furniture manufacturers and object oriented designers (see references for more details).
Even just recently, rohi has beaten their international com- petition and won the bid for two very prestigious projects: both in the renovated Olympiahalle in Munich, and in Lufthansa’s newly designed Business Class area, customers will be sitting com- fortably on specially designed upholstery from rohi.
