Why it belongs in ORBIS
German mail-order-turned-retail chain founded 1987-89 by Thomas Hoof to sell durable, traditionally made goods; its Hamburg store, opened 2001, occupies the landmark 1920s Chilehaus in the Kontorviertel district.
Manufactum was founded by Thomas Hoof, born 1948 in Munsterland, in the late 1980s as a mail-order business built around selling only goods judged durable, well-made, and built to last. The company grew from a one-person operation to roughly 300 employees before Hoof sold it to the Otto Group at the end of 2007. Its Hamburg location, opened in 2001, occupies part of the Chilehaus at Fischertwiete 2 - an early-1920s expressionist brick landmark - in the Kontorviertel, which sits within the city's official Altstadt quarter.