What began in 1961 as a two-man company, has developed in over 60 years one of the leading companies in the hobby & craft sector. A brief review pinpoints a corporate history that everyone likes to hear about: a young man who had a business idea and rolled up his sleeves to fulfill his dream of running his own company.
Wolfgang Rayher was 20 years old when he founded a company for fashion jewellery on 1st April 1961 in Marbach am Neckar. It was essentially about a jewellery out of wooden beads. The jewellery was produced in a cottage industry and offered on the regional market. After a short time, the change in the fashion taste required additional designs and materials. Wolfgang Rayher extended his range with jewelleries out of glass, plastics and metal. Since some parts of jewellery creations exhibited signs of wear over the years, it raised in 1967 the issue of the need for spare parts. Hence the idea emerged of offering single parts for self-made necklaces.
Over the years more products followed from the craft sector - the product ranges and the company grow. In the 80s, many European countries are already being supplied, dealer trainings are carried out, and in 1988 the first in-house exhibition of the sector takes place. In 1992, the sole proprietorship Wolfgang Rayher is converted into Rayher Hobby GmbH.
Thanks to continuous growth, the company’s registered office located in Laupheim since 1978 is continuously expanding. In 1997, it has been invested in a new high-bay warehouse with a storage capacity of 4.500 pallets. Only four years later, the company’s registered office was split up within Laupheim - a new logistics center with the latest technology was created. In 2002, the son Stephan Rayher joined the management. A year later, Rayher founded his own production and packaging workshop in Serbia.
To be closer to the needs of the creativity enthusiasts and to feel the pulse of the market, our company operates currently three franchise branches, five shop-in-shop concepts and seven own stores in Germany with our subsidiary Rayher Retail.