Your textile wholesaler for promotion, leisure & profession in Europe!

HISTORY

 1981 

Acting more or less on a whim, Armin Emmerich and Holger Jolitz begin printing and producing car stickers and pin-back buttons in their basement at home in a suburb of Dortmund. With the aid of many friends and a large circle of acquaintances, a great deal of personal hard work and effort and a bit of good luck, their spontaneous idea turns into a good business.

 1985

The basement has become too small. The firm therefore relocates for the first time - to premises in Dortmund-Eichlinghofen. Here, the business really takes off. With an automatic screen printing machine, several badge-making machines, a balloon printing machine, a dark room, automatic punching presses and also a pad printing machine, L-SHOP-TEAM moves increasingly towards the production and sale of promotional products.

 1986

After only one year, the premises in Eichlinghofen have also become too small. The business therefore moves to a bigger building in the Dortmund canal port area. The expansion continues unchecked.

 1988

Time for the next move to bigger industrial premises, again in the Dortmund canal port area. The company takes its first textile printing machine into operation.

 2000

The company adds the wholesale trade in unprinted textiles to its other activities; this quickly becomes the dominant part of the business.

 2002

The workforce exceeds 100 people.

 2003

L-SHOP-TEAM is the first firm in the trade to set up an online shop on the internet. Textiles now vastly outweigh all other parts of the business.

 2004

Discontinuation of the general promotional products business and concentration on textiles. Textile printing is now simply a service department. The core business is the wholesale trade in unprinted goods. To handle this, an additional warehouse is taken into operation.

 2006

25th anniversary - celebrated with 120 employees in Paris.

 2007

Construction of a logistics centre for the textile trading business. First phase taken into operation in January 2008, followed by the second phase in January 2009.

 2009

At year’s end, Holger Jolitz is the first of the “founding fathers” to retire from the operating business. Maintains his ties with the business as a shareholder.

 2010

The workforce has grown to 160 people. For the first time in the firm’s history, the management now includes salaried directors. The L-SHOP-TEAM textile wholesaler is the winner of the 2010 Dortmund Business Prize. In the cathedral-like space of the U-Tower, Lord Mayor Ullrich Sierau presents the award, donated by Sparkasse Dortmund.

2011 The concentration on wholesale trading in unprinted textiles reaches its culmination in closure of the in-house printing activities. The new web shop goes online. A new building is erected for the administration on the site of the logistics centre. The staff move in in 2012. In October 2011, a subsidiary is founded in Krakow, Poland, under the name L-SHOP-TEAM Polska Sp.z o.o.
2012 In July, the offices and warehouse are merged at Weissenburger Straße 71, 44143 Dortmund. The acquisition of Gabler Druck- und Werbetechnikbedarf GmbH marks a move into another area of wholesale trading. A new company, L-SHOP-TEAM Schweiz AG, is founded in Switzerland. In the Czech Republic, the company Tiger Team s.r.o, domiciled in Prague, becomes part of the L-SHOP-Team family. The management and all the staff are retained in place as contact partners for our customers in the Czech Republic. September 2012 sees the market launch of the subsidiary L-SHOP-TEAM Austria GmbH & Co. KG, which has resulted from a merger with the well-known Austrian wholesale firm of Krassler (Imprint).
2014 In line with the agreed business succession arrangements, the capital shares of the two founding members, Armin Emmerich and Holger Jolitz, are passed on to the next generation. With Björn Emmerich and Andrea Herrmann, two of the new shareholders also work in the company.
2015

Since 1 May 2015, the L-SHOP-TEAM has also been represented in Belgium, with the Belgian textile wholesaler WIC NV in Deinze now also part of the L-SHOP-TEAM family.
 

2016 At the start of the new year 2017, Tiger Team s.r.o. and WIC NV will be renamed L-SHOP-TEAM Tschechien and L-SHOP-TEAM Belgien.

In March 2016, the Webshop will be relaunched. This will consist of a changeover to a new shop system, as well as a redesigned website.

On 12- 14 April 2016, Gabler will be holding the famed industry event, Printcocktail, in the historic industrial atmosphere of the Kokerei Hansa coking plant for the first time.

35th company anniversary
2017 L-SHOP-TEAM GmbH and Gabler Druck- und Werbetechnikbedarf GmbH will be holding their first in-house exhibition, INHOUSE², on 20-22 March 2017 in the Jahrhunderthalle in Bochum, with exclusive fabrics and finishes all under one roof. The exhibition will then be held every two years.

In order to better accommodate customer requirements and meet the challenges of the market, L-SHOP-TEAM will be changing over to a new IT system at of the start of the new year 2018.

The number of employees has risen to 170.

Great investments are being made to allow us to operate the latest warehouse logistics and maintain our high service level.