A colourful family
How a small paint and decorating supplies shop in Treptow grew into Farben-Frikell
The company CEO takes off his glasses and points to the tiny lettering on the inside of the arm. “Everything has some kind of lettering on it,” says Henrik Frikell. His glasses were just one example. The range extends from light switches to vehicle fleets, from ballpoint pens to table tennis tables, from T-shirts to construction site signs. Almost everything gets printed on these days, indoors and out, in the tiniest detail or on a huge scale.
Visitors of the company premises soon get a good idea of the extent of Farben-Frikell’s involvement. The specialist wholesaler for sign-making, digital printing and screen printing supplies its customers with everything they need to print on their products. It sells large-format printers, roll-fed and flatbed plotters, and milling machines, complete with delivery, installation and on-site training. Maintenance and servicing are also part of the package, as is a wide range of self-adhesive films, plastic sheets, aluminium composite panels, paper honeycomb-core boards, inks and screen-printing materials. The company also supports customers with post-processing: plastic sheets, for example, can be cut or milled to individual specifications.
Farben-Frikell helps make the world a little more colourful. “We have a whole range of tools for adding colour to white surfaces,” says Bianca Frikell, the CEO’s daughter, who is responsible for marketing at the company, pointing to the annual Technology Days held on the premises. Manufacturers and suppliers meet their customers there, with demonstration equipment available for visitors to try out different printing processes and materials. “It gives people a chance to experience the materials first-hand and see what they could mean for their own production,” she says. Customers can compare technologies and work with specialists to find the technical solution best suited to their ideas. “It’s about finding the best possible way to turn a creative idea into reality,” says Henrik Frikell.
The company’s broad portfolio today is the result of a long process of development.
Frikell’s father founded a small business in Treptow in 1963, selling paints and varnishes. Even during the GDR era, the range expanded to include sign-making as well as specialist industrial paints and coatings. The business grew gradually, with no more than a dozen employees. Frikell’s father wanted to take it further, so he moved to Friedrichshagen and focused on sign-making, artists’ supplies, and specialist products for use in the construction and industrial sectors. Then the Berlin Wall came down.
Henrik Frikell, who completed his university degree in 1990, joined the company. Together with his father and his brother, who was already working there, he faced the question of how an East German specialist supplier could best survive in an open market. “From 9 November 1989 onwards, people could travel to West Berlin and go to a DIY store,” Frikell recalls. The family saw no future in competing with the new rivals in conventional retail and decided instead to specialise.
The sign-making business, sign materials and films were expanded, as was screen printing. A few years later, however, the family gave up the artists’ supplies side of the business and focused instead on wholesale trade with commercial customers.
The company’s expansion also took it beyond Berlin. In 1993, Frikell’s brother took over a specialist screen-printing business in Braunschweig. Later, they added a branch in Dresden.
Eventually, the Berlin premises became too small. After spells in Friedrichshagen and Britz, Henrik Frikell built a new headquarters in Adlershof in 2012, on a plot of land provided by WISTA Management GmbH. The location could hardly be more fitting for the Frikell family history. “My father’s brother used to work in television here in Adlershof,” says Frikell. “And right where our business stands today was once the staff entrance to East German television.”
Heike Gläser for Adlershof Journal