Successful for 140 years

Keller & Kalmbach on its way from a supllier for craft businesses to an international player

Keller & Kalmbach was hardly 100 years old - I can still remember the celebration in Pasing - and we can already celebrate our 140th anniversary. How time flies!

When I rummage through old photos, documents and texts, I am always overcome with contradictory feelings. On the one hand, amazement and admiration at all that has been achieved over the past decades and centuries. How the world has changed! How much more prosperous we are! What technical means we have at our hands. We have realized some old dreams of mankind: we can fly, we can access almost the entire knowledge of mankind at any time, we can talk and see each other over long distances, we are able to recognize and influence patterns that earlier people were not aware of, we can see something realistically that is not real at all, we move in areas and depths and heights that earlier people populated only with fairy tale or legend characters.

Of course, there were also terrible decades in these 140 years, such as two terrible world wars that claimed over 100 million lives, many small conflicts and famines. But it is also striking that the overall development trend is positive. There are far fewer deaths from violence today, far fewer starving people, and far better living conditions than in earlier times. The other feeling that comes over me is one of modesty: despite all the technological advances, we are still the same old people we were tens of thousands of years ago. We are controlled not only by our minds but very much by our emotions, we often act impulsively, we inflict violence on each other, we still have a limited horizon of knowledge, we are not true gods but "prosthetic gods" (according to Freud) and we still remain mortals. Of course, there are not only winners, but there are still many losers, lonely, unhappy or unsuccessful people. And when I also see and read in the old documents that what we ourselves once thought was quite modern, the latest craze, today seems so touchingly old-fashioned to us, we can easily imagine that it will one day be the same with our latest craze, and later generations will laugh about it.

Man is an intermediate being, and he will remain so. Despite all progress, we will still never be completely satisfied, we will have to fight and sometimes lose. But the alternatives would also be terrible, e.g. a world of people manipulated by drugs or electronic means, or total surveillance. But for that, thank God, there is also the spirit of resistance of man, which hopefully never dies out. Keller & Kalmbach can be happy that it has successfully survived these 140 years without going bankrupt, despite complete destruction in World War 2 and difficult times. 40 years ago, Keller & Kalmbach was still a regional hardware store with many craft customers and a few large industrial customers; among its competitors in Germany, it was in about 8th place in terms of sales. Today Keller & Kalmbach is an international player focusing on logistic services with C-parts for industrial and large handicraft companies. With more than 300 million sales and 800 employees Keller & Kalmbach is one of the leading 3 companies in the industry in Germany.

We will do everything we can to continue to be successful and to satisfy you as our customers - our most important asset, along with our capable employees.

We would like to thank you very much for your trust in the past years and ask you to continue to trust us. If something should not be to your satisfaction, please let us know immediately, because we must continue to make constant efforts.

Your 

Dr. Florian Seidl