No, he didn't always know that the business would one day be so successful, says Dirk Roßmann.

The 75-year-old entrepreneur is sitting on the brown couch in his office at the company's headquarters in Burgwedel, with his son Raoul (37), who has been at the helm of Rossmann since last year, on the desk chair next to him.

Stefanie Diemand

Editor in Business.

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On the walls are the bestseller lists on which Roßmann Senior has made it with his novels.

Dirk Roßmann can talk about a lot, he is considered a popular talk show guest, also because he is unusually open for an entrepreneur, he does not even shy away from controversial topics.

But today it's about its entrepreneurial roots: On March 17, the drugstore business celebrates its fiftieth anniversary.

And the balance of five decades Rossmann is quite impressive: More than 56,000 employees, around 4,300 branches around the world and record sales of 11.1 billion euros last year.

One of the largest companies for hygiene products

Rossmann is now one of the largest drugstore companies in Europe.

"Success only works if all employees involved are well-being," says Dirk Roßmann.

And his son Raoul Roßmann adds: "True success is when we can share it with each other." For the Roßmanns, working together means with the family, but also with the employees in the head office and in the branches.

But it didn't always look like that: Roßmann was actually born into the drugstore business.

Because as early as 1909, Rudolf Roßmann, grandfather of Dirk Roßmann, opened a drugstore in Hanover.

After this was destroyed in World War II, his son Bernhard Roßmann and his wife opened a new branch on Podbielskistraße.

Dirk Roßmann had to lend a hand there together with his brother as a child.

When his father died and his mother took over the business, Dirk Roßman was just 12 years old.

Later, after his apprenticeship as a druggist, he also went into the family business.

But he knew that the company could do even more: When price maintenance for branded goods fell, he was able to prove it: In 1972 he opened the "Markt für Drogeriewaren" in the List district of Hanover, making it the first discounter for drugstore products in Germany.

A drugstore became a chain

On the first day, people queued up and the cash register sold 20,000 Deutschmarks, a complete success.

This was not only the birth of the drugstore Rossmann, but also the start of an entrepreneurial concept from which companies such as DM, Schlecker and Müller later benefited.

But things didn't just go uphill from there, in the 1990s the entrepreneur experienced a serious crisis, the business expanded too quickly, had many bank debts, and Roßmann speculated on the stock exchange.

It was not always clear whether he would still be able to pay his employees' salaries next month.

When Roßmann suffered a heart attack, he knew that things couldn't go on like this.

Only when he changed the business model, introduced his own brands and developed the so-called world of ideas did the business flourish again.

"The fact that we got through this crisis together, which lasted several years, was my greatest entrepreneurial success," he says in an interview at the company's headquarters.

And: "Everything that came after that was fun again."