Deumer 1863 has been making cufflinks, lapel-pins and hallmarks out of metal for almost 150 years. The precious items that are manufactured using the best know-how and most modern methods in all Germany are advertising messengers for companies that want to convey the highest level of esteem.

When visiting Lüdenscheid the visitors don’t exactly associate it with a “Global captial city“. And yet the quiet little German city can look back on a period of time when it was a global capital city: namely for metal buttons. In the 19th Century countless small and micro businesses manufactured metal buttons there, which were in turn dispatched all over the globe. The townscape is still characterised by many small brick chimneys today, which are evidence of the city’s long tradition in the metal processing industry. A tradition that Deumer 1863 is carrying on, a fact that is also indicated by the company’s own name. The business was founded in the year 1863 by Wilhelm Deumer as a “factory for the production of buttons and lapel pins” and which has been manufacturing at the same location for over 140 years. “Wilhelm Deumer‘s successor, Wilhelm Conze, expanded the range of products offered, introduced mass production and ran the company during the first half of the very successful 20th Century. The lapel pins, medals, award jewellery and silver accessories from Lüdenscheid had a high sales rate,“ explained Johan Conze, who manages the company together with his brother Fritz Assmann. After the halt in production during the 2nd World War, Deumer was soon able to start up its operations again and expand its product portfolio – for instance with the Mercedes emblem and plates for Bosch refrigerators. Deumer was also one of the pioneers on the promotional products market, which was experiencing slow growth; in 1960 the company was a founding member of the PSI. After the import market evolved in the 1970s the climate became changeable and the company underwent diverse reorganisations – including the relocation of parts of the production to the Far East and the modernisation of the business and production techniques. “I joined the company at the beginning of the 1990s, which was in the meantime run by my father, Gottfried Conze; in 1996 my brother joined me,“ reported Conze. After ultimately taking the company over in the year 2000, the brothers had to overcome a severe blow a few years later: Huge losses resulted from the acquisition of the FIFA World Cup 2006 licensing contract, the same was true for nearly all of the license-holders.