Hawos and LUBA: scoring with quality and service

The grain mill and domestic appliance wholesaler LUBA and the mill manufacturer hawos Kornmühlen GmbH have been under one roof and under the management of the Pigge family since 1997. Since then, the market has changed fundamentally: the boom in grain mills and flakers in the German wholefood and health food trade has been over for some time now, but Ralf and Jutta Pigge had been looking around in good time for new markets. With the development of new products, a high quality standard, good service and inventive campaigns they are equal to the competition. Hawos mills are found all over the world. (Picture: Ralf Pigge)
There’s a nice reminder of how Ralf Pigge became a manufacturer of mills. While at school, he was a paper boy, and he got to know the mill pioneer Ludwig Bartsch in Bad Homburg. The craftsman and environmental fundamentalist won over the young boy with his ideas and also with his mill-making skills. After his apprenticeship in the wholesale and retail trade, in 1977 Pigge started working in the mill manufacture and wholesale business LUBA that was founded by Ludwig Bartsch as long ago as 1953. After Bartsch died, Pigge took over the business in 1985 and in 1991 he moved the headquarters of the firm from the spa district of Bad Homburg to the Ober-Eschbach part of town. In the process of expanding the wholesale arm, he came across the little mill manufacturer hawo in the Odenwald region. He was highly impressed by their quality and design, and he included the brand in his product range. In 1997, he brought the two firms, LUBA and hawos Kornmühlen GmbH, together under one roof in a renovated half-timbered farmhouse in Ober-Eschbach, Bad Homburg, in the Taunus (picture).

Today, Jutta and Ralf Pigge and his mother Ursula work full-time in the company and their three sons part-time. Other employees take charge of orders, sales, development, service and accounting. The credo of the family firm is “quality, quality, quality”, says Jutta Pigge. Ralf Pigge adds: “We retain our customers’ loyalty because of the grinding precision of our mills, high-value parts and excellent service. If you give a ten-year guarantee, you can’t make something that wears out in no time.”

The hawos “little treasure hunt”, that was launched in the spring, is impressive proof: the oldest hawos mill that was sent by its owner to Ober-Eschbach was made in 1981 – its guarantee expired long ago. The winner of the competition was declared recently: “The response by customers was great - we got lots of positive messages and nice photos from happy customers,” explains Jutta Pigge. With the initiative “Old for new – pass on a mill to a good home”, the company wants to make a stand against the throw-away society and in favour of more sustainability. After being cleaned, checked over and, if necessary, repaired, the old mills that are sent in go to social institutions or families who can’t afford a new mill. The person sending in the mill is given a
20 % discount when buying a new mill. “That’s a measure of how we look after our customers,” says Jutta Pigge.

Customer care also means actively supporting the specialist trade who market their mills, because the demand situation has changed fundamentally. “In the 1980s, practically every wholefood shop sold mills, flakers and accessories. Today, this is the exception”, Ralf Pigge points out. In his view, the market for mills will remain a niche market. Market saturation is below 1 % and the boom in flour mills in Germany is a thing of the past.
Pigge sees the reason for this in the convenience-food movement: “Whole-grain isn’t as important as it used to be – now everything has to be quick and simple.” Retailers have now got different priorities too, moving away from product ranges that call for a lot of customer advice. “For those retailers who can’t afford to or don’t want to give advice, a metre of shelf space is simply too expensive for these appliances.” Pigge is nevertheless convinced that the retailer who wants to sell mills will interest his customers in them. He sees a lot of potential, because there are plenty of health-conscious people around.

Pigge is unequivocal regarding loyalty to the specialist trade. Pigge emphasizes the point: “True, we want to delight our end customers with our appliances, but the specialist trade is the right place to sell our equipment.” So the trade fairs they go to are BioFach, including BioFach abroad, and BioNord and BioSüd. Consumer fairs are taboo. From kitchen appliances to the wholefood cook book - their generous storage capacity means rapid delivery of both the hawos ranges and the extensive LUBA range supplied by around 80 companies.

For about ten years hawos has been doing more business abroad, the reason being that the market in Germany has collapsed. They first concentrated on neighbouring countries, but then more distant markets were listed. Their homepage, brochures and detailed operating instructions are now produced in English, Danish, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Brazilian Portuguese. LUBA now exports hawos mills to partners in a total of 26 countries. The Pigges see Russia in particular as a market with promising future prospects.

Pigge regards the development of special appliances as an interesting niche market for the company. Commercial customers sometimes come up with really exotic demands, but so far the company has always met the challenge. In Ober-Eschbach, mills have been developed for milling linseed marc, locust beans, saffron and fruit stones for example. This is the job of the workshop team Steffen Reuther and Stephan Schädel (picture). Of course, Ralf Pigge, with the experience of a trained mill maker, gets involved too when new appliances are being developed. As well as these “special request mills”, the hand-operated Rotare and the mill called Oktine have been added to the production programme in recent years. Rotare was designed principally for developing countries and now, operating with a cycle or car battery, it is very popular for commercial use in many countries. “Oktini is, so to speak, barrier-free,” says Jutta Pigge, “very easy to adjust and for right or left-handed as well as disabled people.” When they design new mills and flakers, they always take account of the ideas of their employees and customers.

Much of the production of the appliances – from making the cases to assembling the parts – is carried out by “Geschützte Werkstätten” a sheltered workshop for the disabled in Tyrol with which the company has a long-established partnership. The body of the mills is made from wood, mostly indigenous beech, bearing the Austrian PEFSC logo for sustainable forestry. After receiving the mills in Ober-Eschbach, they are thoroughly checked prior to dispatch. Some smaller production runs and the manufacture of special mills are kept in-house. As well as a repair hotline and repair service, the company also provides, for example, gluten-free running-in of new mills at no extra cost. Training at hawos and also in-house is available for retailers. “We don’t sell problems; we sell solutions,” says Ralf Pigge. They are proud of good test results: in a survey conducted by the consumer magazine Testmagazin in the spring of 2010, the winner was Oktagon 1.

The hawos story: The first mills were made in 1980 31.07.1986 the company became hawos kornmühlen GmbH Ralf Pigge, since 1992 a co-partner and since 1997 the sole managing partner, relocation of the firm to Bad Homburg/Ober-Eschbach. The wholesaler Ludwig Bartsch’s story: He founded his company in 1953 as a wholesale and retail business selling all kinds of health and diet food equipment plus flour mills, offering advice and customer service (construction of LuBa grain mills, manual and electrically operated). In 1984, the company was renamed LUBA GmbH, and since 1985 Ralf Pigge has been the sole managing partner. In 1991, relocation from the spa district of Bad Homburg to large premises in the suburb Ober-Eschbach. Ralf Pigge’s story: After his training in the wholesale and retail business, he joined the firm of Ludwig Bartsch (LuBa) in 1977 on the commercial side. Further details above.

Tip: www.hawos.de, www.luba.de