Josef Seibel

Josef Seibel was founded in 1886 in Hauenstein, in Germany's Rhineland-Palatinate region, when Carl August Seibel opened one of the area's first shoe factories — a district that developed into one of Germany's principal shoemaking centers. The company took the name of Carl August's son, Josef, and stayed under family control through repeated generational transitions: after Carl August's death, his sons Karl August and Josef ran the business together; Josef Seibel later led the company alone through both world wars; and a third-generation Josef Seibel subsequently took charge. Today the company is run by the fifth generation, Franziska Seibel and her husband Michael Fischer, alongside Franziska's father Carl August Seibel. Josef Seibel now produces more than 2.5 million pairs of shoes a year across factories in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, distributed through specialist retailers, marketplaces and its own online stores in more than 40 countries. The company markets its shoes around comfort-focused construction rather than fashion-forward design, building on a manufacturing base that dates back more than 135 years and has stayed in continuous family ownership across five generations.