Lapp Family
A third generation of success
LAPP - A German family business that continues to grow
Germany has over three million family-owned businesses. LAPP generated a turnover of over 1.4 billion euros in 2021, making it one of the most successful family companies in Germany. A success story that began with a simple question from Oskar Lapp: “How can the time-consuming, manual insertion of cable cores and wires into hoses be optimised"? The engineer answered his question with an innovation. In 1957, he developed the first industrially manufactured, flexible and oil-resistant control cable with colour coding.
His wife Ursula Ida Lapp believed strongly in her husband’s invention, which later became known under the brand name ÖLFLEX®. In 1959, she registered U.I. Lapp KG with the Stuttgart District Court. The couple had worked on this name over the kitchen table together. With it, they wanted to emphasise that theirs was a family business. They took out a loan of 50,000 marks to finance their new enterprise. This investment quickly paid off. LAPP saw massive demand for its pre-assembled cables, and the company grew quickly.
With their ambition, vision, courage and dedication, Oskar and Ursula Ida Lapp became an example, including to their own sons Andreas and Siegbert. After Oskar Lapp died of a heart attack in 1987, they and their mother continued to lead the company as their father would have wanted.
Since 2017, the third generation of the Lapp family has also been responsible for the company and its employees: grandchildren Matthias and Alexander Lapp joined the family company. For founder Ursula Ida Lapp, who was born in 1930 and passed away in April 2021, the early and strategically planned arrival of the third generation of Lapp secured the growth and thus the future of the globally active family company.
In 2022, the family will take the next major step: the second generation, Andreas Lapp and Siegbert Lapp, will retire from the operational business of the LAPP Group and put managerial responsibility completely into the hands of the third generation. Matthias Lapp, the eldest grandson of the company founder and son of Siegbert E. Lapp, is now Chairman of the Board at LAPP Holding AG. Andreas Lapp’s daughter Katharina Lapp has been appointed to the Supervisory Board. This means that in the future, there will always be one member of the family on the Board of Directors and on the Supervisory Board: LAPP will remain a family company.