The Vollherbst Family Business: Tradition & Change

In 1856, Franz Anton Vollherbst (1824-1908) founded a bookbindery in Endingen and thus laid the foundation for the development of today’s graphic arts business.

His grandson of the same name, Franz Anton Vollherbst (1888-1962) – also a winegrower – continued the craft business in the family and founded the Vollherbst printworks in 1921. Our founding year.

Franz Vollherbst (1925-1998) took over the printworks in 1950 as the second generation and built it into a successful mid-sized company.

Dr. Franz-Josef Vollherbst (born 1950) joined the family business in 1984 in his father’s place. His ambition to be far more than a jobbing printer – and instead to work at the interfaces of marketing, design and print – opened up new paths and markets.

From 2014, Dr. Franz-Josef Vollherbst ran the company together with his sons. In 2020 the business passed to the fourth generation. Matthias Vollherbst and his management team, which includes in particular his brother Stefan, have aligned the company’s goals holistically and sustainably towards excellence.

In 1856, Franz Anton Vollherbst (1824-1908) founded a bookbindery in Endingen. He also worked as town treasurer and winegrower. His son Alexander Vollherbst (1859-1906) took over his father’s bookbindery and added a stationery shop.

To this day, the Vollherbst-Koch bookshop is run successfully in the original family building on Endingen’s Hauptstrasse – by Dr Franz-Josef Vollherbst’s cousin: Wolfgang Koch and his family.

The two houses – the print shop Vollherbst and the bookshop Vollherbst-Koch – remain connected through regular personal exchange and shared central values such as personality, creativity and the pursuit of the distinctive.

“Persistence leads to the goal” was the motto Franz Anton Vollherbst put to paper on 5 July 1921. This was our first print. From a young age Franz Anton Vollherbst had learned his craft as a bookbinder and designer from his father Alexander and his grandfather Franz Anton, as well as the work of the family’s own winegrowing estate.

His particular passion for the graphic craft took him far afield, to develop his artisanal and artistic skills in various master workshops and to discover something new. With his characteristic persistence and determination, he became a master bookbinder. After his apprenticeship and journeyman years, he took over his father’s business.

His skill came into creative use in the artistic design and finishing of book covers, producing decorative embossing and gold-leaf gilding. In doing so, he gave his successors the craft foundation and understanding of quality for printed finishing. This is still expressed today in the finely finished labels of Vollherbst quality. Beyond his professional abilities, Franz Anton Vollherbst was a gifted draughtsman, painter and lettering designer. He also made photography a further passion, from which his own postcard publishing house eventually emerged.

Franz Anton did in fact deliver to his business and private customers in the immediate region on foot. A company car was reserved for the next generation of entrepreneurs. With a fully packed rucksack and parcels under his arms, the journey often also took him over the hills into the villages of the Kaiserstuhl. With him were books he had bound, pictures framed to order, and stationery of various kinds.

His wife and family ran the shop, because he had a double day’s work to do in the workshop and among the vines. The shop sold writing instruments, fine papers, finely printed matter and standard forms. The wish to design and produce fine printed materials himself, together with growing demand for customised, individual printing and business forms, led him to found a small print shop of his own. This took place in 1921 with the purchase of the first printing press in the Vollherbst family business. He bought a second-hand platen press, which remains in working order to this day and is passed on from generation to generation as a precious heirloom. Exactly on the hundredth anniversary, on 5 July 2021, a special edition for the occasion is printed on the historic Vollherbst platen press.

The founder Franz Anton soon expanded his production capabilities with further printing presses and equipment for finishing. This enabled him to produce and offer more demanding printed products in larger formats and higher print runs as well.

His son Franz grew up in the printworks and, after finishing school, chose an apprenticeship as a typesetter in nearby Freiburg so that he could later continue the business.

In 1950, Franz Vollherbst took over his father’s small letterpress printworks as a young master typesetter. Over three decades he developed the business into a mid-sized industrial company with around one hundred employees. His wife Fin initially kept the books and managed her duties as mother of the growing family and bookkeeper in the “business” through countless night shifts in the office.

With entrepreneurial energy and courage, Franz Vollherbst introduced new techniques in prepress, printing and converting: from hot-metal typesetting to phototypesetting, from letterpress to offset printing, from hand bronzing to foil stamping, from steel-rule cutting on a platen press to precision die-cutting machines.

The production rooms in Endingen’s old town soon became too small. With a new building at the present site, the operating area could be expanded considerably in 1964. Franz Vollherbst placed the highest value on highly qualified specialists who had mastered their craft. He was a mentor to well over one hundred apprentices.

Initially, catalogues, advertising brochures and business stationery still belonged to the portfolio of the independent printworks Franz Vollherbst. With the consistent focus on high-quality labels especially for wine, sparkling wine and spirits, new markets were opened up and innovative printing and finishing techniques were continually implemented and developed.

New label orders in the early years, incidentally, could largely be acquired only through new design. For what seems astonishing from today’s perspective: it was market custom that the established label printers supplied the graphic design without charge and in return claimed the “copyright” and thus the right to reproduction and reprinting. Under these particular circumstances, graphic design competence was the decisive factor in winning new print orders for labels. A decisive advantage for Franz Vollherbst, who as a recognised typographer with calligraphic skills, together with his own graphic team, played a major role in shaping the 1960s and 1970s trend towards “typographic labels” in the wine sector. In design as in print technology, Vollherbst labels became a byword for quality in the market.

The remarkable growth of the family business was only possible through a highly motivated workforce, which Franz Vollherbst liked to call the “company family”, through charismatic leadership and pragmatic organisation – but above all through very close, personal customer relationships. With daughter Gerlinde as chief secretary and son Franz-Josef contributing continuously alongside his studies, Franz Vollherbst found welcome support.

High-quality printed products, perfect service and manufacturing performance extended the market for Vollherbst labels far beyond the region.

At home in the family business, Dr. Franz-Josef Vollherbst learned the printer’s craft and discovered a talent for creative design. After studying business administration and completing a doctorate (on the social responsibility of the enterprise), he succeeded his father in the family company in 1984.

“From the outset I was fascinated by what labels do in the market. The function of our products in packaging marketing. That perspective gave our team an entirely new approach. We did not just want to print beautiful, high-quality labels; we also wanted to understand our customers’ markets, so that together with marketing and design we could create the best, market-right product presence for our customers, because ‘packaging sells’.” That is how Dr. Vollherbst sums up the corporate ethos he shaped in the third generation.

This strategic orientation was followed by the company’s own claim to be far more than printers who simply execute – rather, to occupy the interfaces between marketing, design and print with the highest competence. This opened new paths and markets – and made it possible to go beyond previous boundaries.

To fulfil this ambition and to qualify the Vollherbst team for it, Dr. Vollherbst relied on workshops and collaborations with the leading graphic designers of the time, such as Olaf Leu, Kurt Weidemann and Günter Gerhard Lange. In 1986 he initiated a widely noted design competition, “Das neue Weinetikett”, whose results ushered in a genuine turning point in wine-label design in this country. “The product wine became more contemporary, more modern, less dusty. […] One name stands for that: Vollherbst in Endingen am Kaiserstuhl – as the spearhead of this movement” comments design professor Olaf Leu (GETRÄNKE-GASTRONOMIE 6/1994).

With this repositioning, Vollherbst sharpened its profile and established itself in the market with an expanded range of services and a fresh image.

“Vollherbst: Wir machen Marken stark. We empower brands” was the claim Dr. Franz-Josef Vollherbst set, expressing the company’s distinctive offering and special competence and communicating its unique selling point. “We Empower Brands”. With this competence Dr. Vollherbst and his team also opened up international markets. Today more than a third of Vollherbst labels go to other countries, as far as overseas.

“What is special about Vollherbst is an advisory competence that goes far beyond the usual: through diverse, constructive input to optimise designs and realise them as attractive product packaging. That is genuine added value for our customers.”

The new path led to success. Expansions of the business became necessary and possible. In 1989 a new office wing was built, with a representative reception area for customers and business partners. In 1991 came the building extension for production and warehousing. The dynamic technical development of the printing industry and growing demand for self-adhesive labels required intelligent, future-oriented investment. “In doing so we placed particular emphasis on the qualitative optimisation of our print finishing, in order to secure our position as market leader specifically in this field,” stresses Dr Vollherbst.

It was during the era of the third generation of entrepreneurs at Vollherbst that digitalisation also entered the printing industry at almost every level. From order management through prepress and print production to finishing. And yet the techniques of print finishing are still largely based on analogue, classical printing processes. This is how embossing of every kind is produced – whether hot foil stamping, embossing, blind embossing or debossing – in the so-called letterpress process. The best results call for artisan skill – both in conceiving and producing the embossing tools and in applying them on press, as Dr. Franz-Josef Vollherbst notes: “We learned this from the ground up – that is part of the Vollherbst DNA.” The gift for fine drawing and sculpting, and the delicate working of printing formes, runs in the family. “My grandfather and my father were very good draughtsmen. From my grandfather, the master bookbinder, I still learned how embossing is done on books. In his early days, my father even cut the printing blocks for artistic prints and posters himself from linoleum plates. I was allowed to make my first attempts at producing my own printing formes then too,” reports Dr. Franz-Josef Vollherbst. To this day he brings all of that experience to numerous, demanding embossing projects and draws the artwork himself. Thanks to a team of specialists who learned their craft from the ground up and have mastered it, this artisan know-how is firmly established at Vollherbst.

Renowned national and international awards continue to confirm the family company’s capability in outstanding premium labels.

Dr. Vollherbst: “In a family business, lasting success and continuity are only possible with the full support of the family. Some holiday destinations were also guided by business interests. What’s more, I was fortunate to have my wife Doris as the best conceivable ‘Personal Coach’ under my own roof. And the joy of knowing that my sons Matthias and Stefan would succeed me in the company.”

Matthias Vollherbst (born 1985) studied business administration in Mannheim, like his father. He joined the company in 2013, quickly took on responsibility, changed processes and in 2020 became Managing Partner of the printworks. His team is very close to his heart, as are his customers and an understanding of the wine and gourmet market in general. He wants to be at the pulse, at home at the base, in the company. And at the same time to feel the pulse outside, with the winegrowers or distillers on site, at trade fairs, in specialist retail or at international events. He values the small and close at hand and loves the big picture. Alongside the strategic direction of the company he looks after many customer projects himself; including the entire Africa export market. He shares the passion for travel and for South Africa in particular with his wife and children.

His brother Stefan Vollherbst (born 1983) learned the printing craft from the ground up and has been with the family company since 2010. He began as a production planner and was soon head of the finishing department. He can think his way into every depth and nuance of printing, and discusses and plans at a very high technical level. At the same time as Matthias joined the company in 2020, Stefan also took on a new role in the leadership team: as Resource Manager he is responsible for strategic purchasing, the site and the buildings. As Human Resources Manager he is responsible for all personnel. As an authorised officer (Prokurist), Stefan also holds extensive commercial power of representation. Stefan is a true family person and, in the company, an important companion and confidant for Matthias. His children often drop by the printworks with their mother, full of curiosity.

The inner leadership team also includes Prokurist Michael Vetter. Michael started at Vollherbst as a working student, has to this day passed through all the essential areas of the company, and for many years was the “right hand” of Dr. Franz-Josef Vollherbst. Since 2018 he has been “Head of Production” of the company and is thus responsible for the entire value-creation process: from plate-making through printing and finishing to the timely dispatch of goods. Several experienced team leaders support him in achieving the best result for customers every day.

The Vollherbst family, the leadership circle and the entire team feel they belong not only to the printing and design industry, but to a high degree to the wine and enjoyment sector as well. Whether winegrower, cellar master, distiller or jam maker: “It is about a deep understanding: where does the customer want to go? What makes the brand? And how can we contribute to making the brand even more successful?” says Matthias Vollherbst. The customer and the product are taken with the utmost seriousness. This standard becomes clear again and again in conversation with Vollherbst customers.

Vollherbst looks internationally and across industries for inspiration and innovation. The idea for the augmented-reality app “LABELinMotion” originated in Australia, for example. Years of collaboration with leading international design agencies are, for Matthias Vollherbst, “more than a source of inspiration”. That is how mental boundaries are crossed, new horizons discovered and unusual paths taken. That is how strong, authentic brands are created – brands that tell a story.

Vollherbst was the very first printer to be certified by “Fair’n Green” certified, an award for sustainability in the wine industry. Stefan Vollherbst: “Sustainability is one of the most important topics of the future for us. Our customers – winegrowers, beekeepers or jam makers – work directly with nature. As a label manufacturer we feel equally committed to nature and take responsibility for people and the environment.”