HISTORY
HÖFATS - A FIRE STORY
2021
The fire keeps growing
Following 2020, 2021 marks another record-breaking year: We are doubling our team in all departments to over 60 fire friends and are determined to maintain our open communication and fast, unbureaucratic way of working.
Creativity needs space. That's why we are tripling our office space to 900 square metres, creating not only room for our new employees, but also a design lab to experiment with fire and hone the perfect flame. The expansion also offers space for our own showroom, where we can now present our entire product range to our dealers. Finally, we also open a new main warehouse from which we can ship our products directly to our customers.
Especially the latter turns out to be a double blessing. Our warehouse makes it possible to remain consistently able to ship, even in times of worldwide delivery obstacles due to Corona and cargo ship blockades. At peak times, we bring almost 1500 parcels per day directly into dispatch. This requires extra hands, especially during the Christmas season when the höfats team spirit shows once again: when things are burning, everyone pitches in.
Of course, we also introduced new products this year. The SPIN hanging fire is not only another, fourth adaptation of our famous tabletop fireplace, but also the first fire worldwide that hangs from the ceiling - indoors as well as outdoors! The SQUARE CANDLE immerses our tables in soft candlelight and proves that it doesn't always have to be the biggest fire to evoke a cosy atmosphere.
The most important point however, is that our customers and fire fans become even more central to everything we do: we launch an even more beautiful and optimised höfats web shop and distribute our höfats fire stories 6 magazine almost half a million times to provide inspiration. We are also stepping up a gear in the retail sector and by the end of the year have succeeded in acquiring more than 100 new points of sale in France for our products. Together with additional dealers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, we are densifying the dealer network and now allow our fire products to be experienced live in over 1000 stationary shops.
A team that achieves this much in only 12 months is entitled to party hard. Among others, we celebrate a big summer party at our river, the Iller. The whole team is on fire and shows that we can even turn the police into fire fans.
2020
Come what may - höfats light a fire
What a crazy year lies behind us. There were moments when we asked ourselves - how much turnover do we need to just get by? We actually overestimated to be prepared for everything - but we never let ourselves get dragged down. We tried to think in terms of opportunities, and there were opportunities and we quickly identified them and took advantage of them consistently. We did what we do best: Fire passionately together as a team. We spurred each other on to top performance, stood up for each other and gave everything with our minds and hearts to keep the höfats fire burning more fiercely every day. It is insanely beautiful to experience how we have grown together even more as a team during this difficult and turbulent time. And we are humble enough to know that this is not a matter of course: Many thanks to the best team in the world, which, come what may, never forgets how to light a fire.
2019
SPIN breaks all records
After 2018, we thought: “It can hardly get any better.” But then came 2019. That year, we expanded the höfats portfolio with three new product groups: BOWL, CRATE, and SPIN. A hugely successful crowdfunding campaign in spring – the most successful German Kickstarter campaign of 2019 – catapulted the SPIN flame whirl into the spotlight and made it a bestseller from day one. SPIN also lit up the covers of the design catalogues Cairo and Pro Idee, fueling the momentum even further. In 2019, we doubled our revenue – achieving 100% growth. But what excites us even more is how our team has grown. To keep pace with this incredible dynamic and secure it for the future, we were once again able to welcome exceptional talents to join the young, passionate, and highly motivated höfats team.
2018
höfats – bestes Start-up in Bavaria
At the beginning of 2018, we presented our four new product groups TRIPLE, BEER BOX, ELLIPSE and GRAVITY CANDLE, thus doubling our assortment. The coup of the year, our fire basket CUBE, adorned the front page of the Cairo summer catalogue. In June, we were – to our utter surprise – awarded the steel innovation prize and won the Bavarian Founder Prize as best start-up in Bavaria shortly after. In parallel, we were present on fairs in Frankfurt, Munich, Cologne and Paris. And as we personally were bursting at all seams, we moved into our new home base in Kempten in October. At the end of the year, we received the message that we were winners of three Iconic Awards “Interior Innovation”, among them one “best of best” award for our fire basket CUBE.
2017
We triple our turnover
It felt as if CUBE won almost all design prizes. It hit the markets like a bomb and soon became our bestseller. From 2016 to 2017, we tripled our turnover. This was also due to the fact that we continuously extended our product range, in 2017 especially with our BBQ accessories. In parallel, also the höfats team grew, making us more professional, powerful and simply better.
2016
We launche the multi-talent CUBE
In 2016, we were still busy with optimizing production and supply chains. Nevertheless, our claim was to furthermore develop our product range. We wanted to launch a product which could close the gap between JOHNNY CATCH and CONE, a product that could bring us closer to a conclusive assortment. Thus, the idea for the fire basket CUBE was born: “Is the best fire basket in the world perhaps not only a mere fire basket?”
2015
An exciting start
At the beginning of 2015, we founded our company and immediately started with the production of the charcoal grill CONE. We bought the individual components from specialists all over Germany and assembled the grills ourselves in the Allgäu. The first release was 1.000 grills and the packaging material alone required 32 palettes which equals a full semitrailer. We slowly became aware of the fact what it really means to bring a product onto the market with our own force.
How it all began...
Our fire story began in 2015, but let us start a little bit earlier: We, Christian and Thomas, got to know each other during our studies in mechanical engineering. In the course of a semester project, Thomas had the idea of a BERGMÖNCH. The passion for being in the mountains – on foot as well as on a mountain bike – gave birth to the desire of creating a downhill vehicle which can be comfortably worn on one’s back when going uphill and then mutates into a cross-country downhill vehicle. Shortly afterwards we met. Christian – German Junior Vice Champion in motorbike trial – seemed to be the ideal partner in order to successfully pursue this project. Three months later, a fully functional prototype was ready. We won the Ispo Brand New Award and brought the product in cooperation with the Dutch bike manufacturer KOGA as well as the mountain sports gear manufacturer VAUDE onto the market. But we wanted to go on, we were triggered by the development of products, we became a strong and close unity and a deep friendship had begun, new ideas and product approaches arose. Already before his studies in mechanical engineering, Thomas had already fancied to study product design – so why not now, after the diploma in mechanical engineering. Wouldn’t a combination of technology and design in personal union be an unbeatable profile? We therefore moved from the Allgäu to Berlin right in the same year and registered at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee. Here, a mere number of 15 students per year began their studies, attended by seven professors and 15 lecturers. For sure, the time in Berlin was the most coining and influencing experience for us, above all due to the intensive one to one cooperation with very successful and experienced product designers such as Prof. Helmut Staubach and Prof. Carola Zwick. In every semester, we invented and developed a product, among others the electric bike BERLEEN which we sold to Germany’s biggest bike manufacturer Derby Cycle, a conglomerate of the brands Focus, Raleigh, Univega and Kalkhoff. Functional furniture design projects followed. In this time, our bivalent designer DNA of design and engineering came to light.
Towards the end of our product design studies and having licensed resp. sold some product developments, the desire to try to market products on our own arose. Wouldn’t it be even more fulfilling if we were able to ascertain the success of our products ourselves, if we did not have to give away our babies into strange hands? With our bottle opener JOHNNY CATCH, we launched our first “test balloon”. We tried to market JOHNNY CATCH on our own with all the work and efforts that goes with it… and it even went better than we had imagined. From now on, it was clear for us that we wanted to bring our product developments onto the market under our own flag – this was the birth of the höfats GmbH.
