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Adolf Würth GmbH & Co. KG
Würth sells the small parts and supplies that keep workshops, factories, and construction sites running — screws, anchors, tools, and fasteners — along with the logistics to deliver them.
Würth is the world's biggest seller of assembly and fastening materials — the screws, bolts, anchors, and small parts that hold things together — plus the tools and supplies that go with them. Its main customers are tradespeople and small businesses: auto repair shops, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, metalworkers, and construction crews. If you run a workshop and need five thousand screws, a box of drill bits, and a tube of sealant by tomorrow morning, Würth wants to be the company you call.
The business runs on a simple but powerful idea: sell a huge catalog of small, boring items that customers need constantly, and deliver them fast. Würth's sales force visits workshops directly, and its logistics network ships orders overnight, so a mechanic never runs out of the parts that stall the job. That convenience — one supplier, one catalog, one delivery — is why customers stick around. The company was founded in 1945 by Adolf Würth in the small German town of Künzelsau, where it is still headquartered today. It started with screws and grew into a global operation selling tens of thousands of products across dozens of countries. Würth is not just a parts catalog, though. It has two other important strands: its electronics and electrical division, which sells components to industrial manufacturers, and its industrial division, which supplies fasteners and parts directly to big factories. These industrial arms matter because they lock Würth into the supply chains of large manufacturers, not just independent tradespeople. On the money side, Würth is a private, family-owned company, and it has grown steadily — group sales reached roughly €17 billion in recent years. The family also owns stakes in other businesses, including a stake in the German insurer Württembergische Versicherung — although that has no listed ticker — and the family's fortune is one of Germany's largest.
What makes Würth strong is also what makes it a little old-fashioned: it still relies heavily on human salespeople visiting customers in person, which is expensive but builds fierce loyalty. Its main competitors are big industrial distributors like Fastenal and W.W. Grainger, which sell similar everyday supplies through branches and online. Würth's edge is its sheer breadth of catalog and its overnight logistics, especially in Europe, where it dominates. The risk is that online ordering and price-shopping slowly erode the value of the sales visit — a channel shift that could pressure a business built on knocking on doors. For now, though, Würth remains a quiet giant: it sells the tiny, unglamorous things that hold the world together, one screw at a time.
Saved answer · last researched 10 Nov 2026
BIG PICTURE
Würth now books a quarter of its sales online, not through its famous sales reps
- 25.3% Sales made through e-business
- 74.7% Sales through other channels, mainly sales reps and branches
Würth is known for salespeople who visit workshops in person, yet 25.3 percent of group sales now come through e-business. That matters because the company sells screws, anchors and tools to 4.5 million customers worldwide, and many of them clearly prefer to order online. The personal visit still opens the relationship, but the reorder often happens on a screen. Source: wirtschaftszeit.de, data from 2026
Timeline
A Wholesaler in the Ruins
After the war, Adolf Würth had spent twenty years in the screw trade and wanted to work for himself. He opened a small wholesale business for screws and nuts in Künzelsau, and it became the seed of everything that followed. His push for independence after the war started a company that would one day sell all over the world.
A Teenager Takes Over
The founder died at just 45, leaving the business to his 19-year-old son Reinhold. Sales were tiny at the time, around 80,000 euros a year. Putting a teenager in charge set the company on a course of decades of growth.
The First Step Abroad
Reinhold Würth opened the first foreign subsidiary in the Netherlands, with Swiss and Austrian companies following the same year. This was the moment the company stopped being just a German business and began to think of itself as international.
Reaching Every Continent
Würth entered Asia by buying a company in Japan and founding its own in Malaysia. With that, the company had a presence on all five continents.
Owner Steps Back From the Day Job
Reinhold Würth retired from running the business day to day and became chairman of the advisory board. Walter Jaeger was named spokesperson of the management conference. The point was to separate long-term ownership oversight from everyday operations.
Vision 2000 Comes True
The Group passed five billion euros in sales in a record year, hitting the "Vision 2000" target Reinhold Würth had set back when sales were only around 700 million euros. The plan from 1987 had actually worked.
A New Operational Chief
Robert Friedmann, who had started at Würth in 1992, was appointed chairman of the Central Managing Board. It brought in a new generation to run the company's operations.
A Daughter Takes the Board Chair
Bettina Würth took over as chair of the Group's advisory board from her father. Reinhold Würth became honorary chairman and kept his role on the Foundation Supervisory Board. The family kept its hand on the company's governance.
Profits Fall, Investment Doesn't
Net profit dropped more than 40 percent, from over a billion euros to about 673 million, on sales of around 20 billion. Weak construction, industrial decline, higher raw-material and energy costs, and geopolitical tensions all hit the business. Even in the crisis, Würth kept investing more than a billion euros in IT, warehouses and production, going against the cycle.
A Grandson Takes the Foundation Chair
The Group reshuffled its management, expanding to seven members, and Reinhold Würth stepped back at the turn of the year. He handed the chair of the Foundation Supervisory Board to his grandson Benjamin Würth. It was a generational shift happening while the company worked through its profit crisis.