Sales increase from 40 to 100, calculated in millions.

This is what it says now under the annual balance sheet of the company The-OneGroup from Dreieich, which until a few weeks ago was still trading as Textile One.

In the second year of the pandemic, the company, which was founded in 2008, has changed and expanded in such a way that the two founders and managing directors, Sascha Fussmann and Christian Yaglioglu, also considered a name realignment to be sensible.

After all, the supplier of customized workwear has now become a supplier of medical products and a textile manufacturer with its own factory in Istanbul.

Inga Janovic

Editor in the regional section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and responsible editor of the business magazine Metropol.

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Fussmann and Yaglioglu had planned the latter; the production facility on the Bosporus had just opened with 40 employees initially when the start of the corona pandemic threw their business model upside down.

Originally, the southern Hessians wanted to have parts of the work clothing sewn in their own factory, which they offer in online shops customized for customers.

However, during the first lockdown in early 2020, companies canceled their orders for T-shirts, aprons, jackets and the like in large numbers.

A new opportunity opened up for Fussmann and Yaglioglu, caused by the delivery problems of Asian manufacturers: the 150 employees in Istanbul now sew jackets and anoraks for private labels such as Lacoste.

Because the supply chains are still disrupted and the demands of customers are changing, more and more customers are switching to Europe, reports Fussmann.

The sharp rise in transport costs has long since compensated for the higher labor costs in the local factories.

Delivery reliability and of course quality are more important to fashion companies than price.

That's why the establishment of our own production was much faster than expected: "In the meantime, our order books are fully booked well into 2022, which we didn't expect," says Fussmann.

From emergency nail to main business

According to Fussmann, the TheOneFashion division is not the division into which the most investments were made last year. The second sub-brand TheOneMedical, trading in medical products, has been expanded even more - which has thus turned from an emergency nail into a main business. When there was a shortage of masks and protective suits in Germany and its neighboring countries in 2020, the Hessian entrepreneurs used their good contacts with Chinese manufacturers and procured much of the much-coveted goods to supply clinics and administrations in Germany and Austria.

Shortly before Christmas 2020, the rather small company with around 30 employees even chartered five passenger planes, the seats of which were packed with boxes full of protective equipment for the vaccination centers currently being set up in Bavaria.

In 2020, annual sales doubled for the first time - from 20 to 40 million euros.

In addition, the connections were made, from which TheOne-Group now wants to make long-term business relationships, the Hessian range has grown to surgical, surgical and ward supplies, medical protective clothing and in-vitro diagnostics, i.e. medical tests.

Plans with workwear and medical supplies

The next goal is to bring new medical products developed by start-ups or own ones onto the market.

This is why Raphaël Murswieck joined the company as a specialist and head of the development department. He is a co-founder of the Heydelberg Institute, which has been dealing with science and innovation management in the field of medical technology for years.

"Of course, the pandemic also contributed to the fact that we had to reorient ourselves," says Fussmann in retrospect.

In the meantime, the warehouses of clinics and those of the state are well stocked, which is why he expects the order quantities to go down in the coming year.

In the medium term, however, they want to keep the hundred mark in sales.

The original mainstay, work clothing, will also contribute to this. TheOneGroup continues to offer T-shirts, aprons, pants and other items of clothing for restaurant chains, clinics or craft businesses, for example, which are individualized with imprints or embroidery and distributed via an online platform developed in-house. The company's initial idea a good ten years ago was that they not only offer their customers the clothing, but also set up their own online shops where the employees can then order their work clothing as required. Fussmann emphasizes that he and his partner Yaglioglu want to continue to do so. But in the field of workwear one will not only remain a trader,In the near future, the partners want to bring out a collection for the so-called workwear market - it should be jackets, made in the Istanbul factory, of course. It will be a while before the first ones are in the shop, says Fussmann, because: "It has to be fantastic."