100 years of Oscar Lapp

Stuttgart (Germany), March 18, 2021

Oskar Lapp was a great inventor and passionate entrepreneur. Together with his wife Ursula Ida Lapp, he created a company with a worldwide reputation. The founder of the LAPP Group would have turned 100 years old on March 20, 2021. His inventions continue to shape communications technology around the world to this day. Lapp’s family and employees around the world paid tribute to this outstanding entrepreneurial figure by laying a wreath at the old cemetery in Stuttgart-Vaihingen and holding various memorial events.

“Our father is still our main role model. LAPP would not exist without Oscar Lapp. We continue his life’s work with deepest gratitude. The fact that the third generation has now taken over the management of LAPP will definitely make him very proud”, says Andreas Lapp, Chairman of the Board of Management of LAPP Holding AG.

“My husband was brave. God gave him many talents”, says Ursula Ida Lapp (90) about her husband, who died on April 25, 1987. He was born on March 20, 1921 in Benshausen in eastern Germany, becoming the fourth child in the family of an ordinary artisan. From an early age he showed impressive technical talent and an inventive spirit. After being a prisoner of war and subsequently escaping the Green Border to escape the former communist GDR, he started a new life with his family in West Germany in the mid-1950s.

It was difficult to start from scratch, as he left everything he had behind when he fled to the west. Oskar Lapp initially worked at Harting, where he was responsible for the Southern Germany region, and his innovative ideas already began to attract attention. For example, he developed the company’s first industrial rectangular connector. Thanks to numerous meetings with clients, Oskar Lapp knew exactly what they needed. In particular, to make electrical connection was very labor intensive: all the wires were black or gray, and electrical engineers had difficulty assigning the wires to the correct ends when making connections. This required a complex process known as integrity verification. Oskar Lapp invented a flexible cable made of colored cores. This is how ÖLFLEX® was born. It was the first industrial power and control cable, an invention that revolutionized connection technology. It was innovative in another sense: Oskar Lapp was the first entrepreneur to give an industrial product a trademark. Today, the ÖLFLEX® brand still stands for exclusively oil-resistant and flexible control cables throughout the world.

In 1959, the Lapps founded their company getting a bank loan of 50,000 marks. Since Oskar Lapp was still working at Harting, Ursula Ida Lapp was entered into the commercial register as the founder of the company. The company name emerged at the kitchen table: U.I. LAPP KG - U.I. Designated Ursula Ida. Like many startups today, their business started from the home garage in Stuttgart-Vaihingen. Oskar Lapp handled sales, and Ursula Ida Lapp looked after accounts, orders and logistics from home while caring for their young children.

With ÖLFLEX®, Oskar Lapp set quality standards that are still used throughout the world in cable production. He even offered pre-fabricated cable bundles containing up to 130 colored cores. The demand was huge. LAPP was also one of the first suppliers to offer and reduce cable harness lengths to suit client requirements. ÖLFLEX® was the right product at the right time, and sales grew rapidly. Later, UNITRONIC® data transmission systems, HITRONIC® fiber optic cables, SKINTOP® cable glands, SILVYN® cable protection and management systems, EPIC® industrial connectors, ETHERLINE® data transmission systems for ETHERNET technology and FLEXIMARK® marking systems were added.

In 1963, the company opened its first own plant for the production of ÖLFLEX® cables. In 1965 the company moved from the family home to Stuttgart-Vaihingen on Schulze-Delitzsch Strasse, where it is still located today. Because of his painful experiences as a Soviet prisoner of war, Oskar Lapp always sought to establish international business relationships and friendships in the West. He found his first trading partners in Switzerland and Israel back in 1960. Oscar Lapp founded the first international subsidiary in the US in 1976, which he no doubt saw as a significant counterweight to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

At the same time, he positioned his company as the one stop shop for connectivity technologies, a principle that remains a successful formula to this day. “Our father led our company to success with hard work and ambition and a clear vision of what is truly important. He showed persistence, entrepreneurial spirit and innovation, and today they are still part of LAPP’s DNA”, says Siegbert Lapp, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of LAPP Holding AG.

When Oskar Lapp died in 1987, his wife Ursula Ida Lapp and his two sons Siegbert and Andreas Lapp took over the management of the company. In the late 1990s, Oscar Lapp’s widow handed over day-to-day operations to her sons. Under their aegis there has been greater internationalization and a focus on solutions. Today LAPP is one of the leading suppliers of integrated solutions and branded products in the field of cable and connection products. LAPP currently employs approximately 4,575 people worldwide, has 20 manufacturing plants and approximately 43 sales companies. It also works in collaboration with about 100 international representatives.

Andreas Lapp is currently the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the global holding company LAPP Holding AG, and his brother Siegbert E. Lapp is the Chairman of the Supervisory Board. Ursula Ida Lapp is the honorary chairman of the supervisory board and attends important company events. Two grandchildren have also already taken on responsibilities within the company. In 2017, Matthias Lapp assumed the position of the CEO for Europe, including South America, Africa and the Middle East. Alexander Lapp is responsible for digitization and e-business at the holding company.

In memory of Oskar Lapp, the founding family established the Oskar Lapp Foundation in 1992. This provides incentives for young scientists to effectively engage them in cardiovascular research. The Oscar Lapp Research Prize of €12,000 is awarded annually, and the Oscar Lapp Grant, which provides up to 20,000 euro for equipment, is awarded every two years.