STORY – How we became what we are today.

We believe in passion – because only if you really love what you do,
will you be successful at what you do.

»„We were driven by implementing our own ideas with tremendous freedom, and constantly being able to invent corporate divisions in a customised organisational structure instead of being caught in handed-down structures“,, explains Michael Sander. „Of course, this also meant that we were willing to accept full responsibility for this. Our ideas could only be realised if we worked independently.“«

Our passion is the development of innovative products in the segments cosmetics, biocides and medical products.

Feel and experience our commitment and our associated instinct for trends. We stand specifically for individual, exclusive and thrilling products on the highest specialist and technical levels. And we regularly present new records in „speed to market“.

Because the shorter the time between the idea and the shelf, the sooner you will be successful with your product.

The two businessmen Michael Sander and Rene Strothmann, who met as students in Münster, first spent a few years gaining professional and industry experience in the chemical, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industry before founding SanderStrothmann GmbH in the spring of 2000.

The original founding principle was quickly complemented by other services.

Michael Sander

Their main activity now was to provide a full cosmetics service, that is the idea of customising a product from start to finish for a customer and reflecting all the areas of competence within the whole in order to reveal all the complicated interfaces between development, production technology, law, marketing and design in a way that made what can be a complex process as easy for the customer as buying an item off the peg.

Shortly after launching the idea, the company successfully carried out its first full-service projects for customers from the fields of pharmacy distribution and TV shopping, and other branded companies from a wide range of distribution channels soon became aware of SanderStrothmann.

Demand increased for the development and production of customised care series for our customers' existing brands – as did the requirements for documentation and quality assurance processes at the same time. This soon called for structures to be extended and for the vertical integration of services that had previously been obtained externally.

The classic industry organisation, always considered too slow and dull and far from the customer, was therefore replaced from the outset by a fractal organisation in which project teams consisting of a maximum of 10 people looked after customers' issues from start to finish, which enabled them to implement these customers' wishes directly with suppliers.

Rene Strothmann

»Fortunately, our customers quickly realised that this previously unconventional form of project management enables us to implement high quality products and creative ideas in an astonishingly short period of time. And our staff not only literally work on nuts and bolts of things, but are constantly experiencing the fascinating route from the initial idea to what then often becomes a product that is distributed internationally.«
Rene Strothmann

Over time, specialists from a wide range of fields were integrated in the teams and new markets developed; cosmetics were followed by biocides (in particular repellents) and medical products. Milestones include the construction and expansion of the development laboratory in 2004 and 2012, the integration of our own design department and various other extensions that would enable us to provide the spatial frame to go with our pleasing level of growth.

What started with the idea of distributing a third-party brand is now, 15 years after its foundation, a specialised innovation hub for the development and manufacture of brand products that are used on the skin.

The cosmetics, medical products and biocides ,that SanderStrothmann produces for its own distribution or for its customers' brands can now be found in the most diverse distribution channels all over the world. SanderStrothmann's expertise is found in almost every country on the planet – on the shelves in pharmacies or dermatologists’ surgeries, in drugstores, supermarkets, mail order catalogues or Internet shops, and of course on the many successful TV shopping programs.

And the biggest driving force for the founders and the entire team is still their enthusiasm for being able to shape their own ideas with a tremendous amount of freedom and under their own responsibility.

• Founded in 2000
• Owner-run
• Privately owned

Expertise

• Chemists & biologists
• Biotechnological engineers
• Graphic designers
• Packaging engineers
• Product managers
• Project managers
• Commercial staff

Fittings

• Own development laboratory
• State-of-the-art laboratory equipment:
  Becomix, Binder, Brookfield, Hettich, IKA, Krüss, Mettler Toledo, Julabo, WTW, Zeiss
• Storage tests in various climate zones
• GMP-certified manufacture & filling
• Audited development process

What makes us special

• Speed
• Transparency
• Discretion
• Exclusivity

In figures

• Number of products currently on the market: > 900
• More than 200 new products a year
• Every 2 seconds, one of our products is sold somewhere in the world

Other commitments