Werner Otto (1909-2011) was the founder of what is now known as the Otto Group, a German conglomerate that brings together mail-order companies, physical stores, delivery logistics and even a bank, as well as one of the largest chains of e-commerce in the world.
After spending his childhood in Seelow in the 1900s, Werner traveled to the city of Schwedt, about 75 kilometers north of Germany, where he completed his primary studies. He later lived 43 kilometers further north, in Prenzlau, where he attended secondary school.
Werner Otto's mother Frieda died in 1910 after giving birth to a daughter when he was just one year old. His father, Wilhelm, was a retailer and it was probably from him that Werner inherited his taste for entrepreneurship.
Shortly after high school, Werner Otto took a commercial apprenticeship. Then he started his own retail business in the city of Szczecin, Poland. In 1934, believe me, the police jailed him for two years for distributing pamphlets.
After the Second World War, in 1948, Werner settled in Hamburg, which was under the control of the British, and founded a shoe factory there. A year later, in 1949, the factory went bankrupt and it was then that he founded the mail order company Otto Versand, which would later become the Otto Group.
WERNER OTTO AND HIS TRAJECTORY IN THE OTTO GROUP
To promote Otto Versand's products, Werner created a 14-page, hand-bound catalog that included only shoes. In the following years, he improved and expanded this business model, offering products via telephone.
Later, in 1969, the businessman founded ECE, a company that builds and manages shopping malls and personal finance. In addition, he created the Werner Otto Foundation, which supports medical research.
In the following decade, Otto created the Paramount Group to invest in real estate in the US. And already in 1995, at the beginning of the commercial internet, he launched the company's first e-commerce site. Today the Otto Group has dozens of subsidiary companies such as About You, Bonprix, FHG, Hermes and Systain, among others.
THE POWER OF THE OTTO GROUP TODAY
Today, the Otto Group is one of the largest companies in Germany and one of the largest e-commerce networks in the world. In the 2021/2022 season, it has so far achieved 16,1 billion euros in sales, of which 12,1 billion euros were sales in e-commerce (Otto Group data as of August 2022).
Since 1981, the group has been run by Werner's eldest son, executive Michael Otto, who with an $8,3 billion fortune, according to Forbes data, is one of the richest men on the planet.
Werner Otto was married three times and had five children. He finally died in 2011 at the age of 102. He had as his life motto the phrase “panta rhei”, which means “everything flows”, a concept of the pre-Socratic philosopher and “father of dialectics”, Heraclitus.
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