In German industry, a company history is to be written in the style of Teamviewer: from a start-up under the aegis of private equity to a large company that wants to set an industry standard with a new technology product.

According to information from the FAZ, the financial investor Nordic Capital is acquiring the mini scanner manufacturer Proglove, the contract has just been signed.

Nordic Capital partner Rainer Lenhard confirmed this on request.

He did not want to comment on the value of the company - market experts put it at around half a billion euros.

Klaus Max Smolka

Editor in Business.

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The CEO is an old acquaintance of the industry: the former Teamviewer boss Andreas König.

He is planning a rise like that of the Göppingen company that is now listed on the M-Dax and is widely known for its remote maintenance for computers.

Asked whether a development like Teamviewer can be expected with Proglove, König answered in the FAZ interview: "That's the plan, yes.

The company really has the potential to become really big.” The second director is Thomas Nowak, who used to work as CFO for Teamviewer – both know each other very well from that time.

Hands free scanning in the warehouse

Proglove - founded as Workaround GmbH - manufactures barcode scanners worn on cuffs or gloves by employees in logistics and production.

They are as big as a matchbox and weigh as much as two two euro coins.

The devices keep people's hands free - in contrast to conventional scanner guns - and are intended to make barcode scanning easier and faster.

This plays a role in automobile production, for example, where employees document every single component that is installed.

An important customer – and one from the early days – is BMW.

Employees activate the scanner with a thumb movement.

According to König, they save around four seconds on each scan compared to a scanner gun - which adds up to a considerable amount with around one thousand scans per car in production.

In addition, the device is ergonomically more favorable and therefore health-friendly, so the argument goes.

According to the company website, other customers from the automotive industry include the Volkswagen Group with several brand subsidiaries, and they also come from traditional industry, such as Thyssenkrupp, trade such as Mediamarkt or from transport such as DHL and Schenker.

They use the products called “wearables” in industry jargon in their warehouses.

On the other hand, the devices have not yet been seen on the hands of parcel deliverers.

Proglove's competitors are the two American companies Honeywell and Zebra.

According to management, Proglove holds more than 50 patents;

the first gloves were sold in 2016.

At the moment there is a two-digit million amount as annual sales in the books,

Sometimes it works, sometimes not

Of course, the promotion fantasy can turn out to be a dream in hindsight.

The financial investor KKR and his partner Philipp Freise were planning “the second SAP” years ago when they took over the Frankfurt IT specialist Arago.

Nothing came of it.

On the other hand, Teamviewer, founded in 2005, is an example of a company that received little attention when a financial investor - in this case Permira - took it over in 2014, incidentally for a similar amount to the current deal, namely around 800 million euros.

König managed Teamviewer from 2015 to the end of 2017, Nowak joined in 2016.

In late 2018, König joined Proglove to replace co-founder Thomas Kirchner as CEO.

The most important shareholder is the US financial investor Summit Partners, others are Bayern Kapital and Deutsche Invest Capital Partners (DIVC).

Originally, the American chip manufacturer Intel was also involved.

The seller has reportedly mandated the investment bank Goldman Sachs for the transaction, while Nordic Capital is said to have acted without a consultant.

The investor is now involved in traditional industry in Germany for the first time.

In April he made his debut in another sector in this country, namely in the financial services sector.

He acquired three of the ten largest German credit brokers and merged them into one provider.