'Pleite klingt anders' — Schiesser filed for bankruptcy while its sales rose 20%

Schiesser was founded in 1875 in Radolfzell by Jacques and Malwine Schiesser; its Feinripp undershirt, launched in 1923, became a German staple, and at its mid-1990s peak the company employed some 7,000 people worldwide. The decline began with borrowed prestige: licence manufacturing for bigger brands — Ralph Lauren, Puma and Tommy Hilfiger from 2003 to 2008 — which the administrator called a flop that led to heavy losses. At the end of 2005 a Movex software rollout collapsed into information-technical chaos, losing orders and deliveries. Legacy debts grew to 65 million euros of bank loans.

The autumn 2008 demand shock, the administrator said, broke the company's neck. In 2008 the group lost 17.9 million euros. To survive it needed 9 million — majority owner Hesta refused: the chances and risks of the structure and balance sheet did not justify it. On 9 February 2009 Schiesser filed at the Konstanz district court, and administrator Volker Grub moved in. The paradox became the story: January sales were 20 percent up on the year, pre-orders up eight. Tagesspiegel wrote Schlüpfer mit Zukunft — underpants with a future — and noted: Pleite klingt anders, bankruptcy sounds different.

Grub cut the loss-making licences and kept the brand. About 500 jobs went, but the core turned profitable — a 1.5-million-euro profit from January to May 2009. The insolvency plan passed in December 2010, 247 creditors to one. An IPO with designer Wolfgang Joop collapsed — his label was in financing trouble, cotton prices exploded, Fukushima closed the markets. Instead, in July 2012, Delta Galil — the Israeli group once Schiesser's own licence partner — bought it for 68 million euros. On 13 August 2012 creditors were paid at one hundred percent — 86 million euros of debt settled.

The telling is the administrator's own: Die Insolvenz hat Schiesser geholfen — insolvency helped Schiesser — Grub said a year in. The brand took no damage; customers bought more underwear after the filing than before — perhaps out of sympathy, perhaps out of self-interest: they did not want Schiesser to disappear from the shelves. His metaphor travelled: with underwear, a burst seam can be mended at home. The company's own history page says it was profitable in its core business throughout, and calls the filing a historic chance. In 2025 Radolfzell celebrated Schiesser's 150th birthday.