Birth of a brand: How KION became KION

A start-up atmosphere, a spirit of optimism, and a brand name from the Maasai language: what was it like when KION was first founded? We look back at the beginnings of our company, which posted billions in revenue in its first annual financial statement.

How long has he been working at KION? René Glock has to think about it – and first asks a counter-question: "At KION or for KION?" He is one of very few colleagues worldwide for whom this makes a difference.

René, now Senior Manager Group Communications in the Channel & Change Management team, was actually already working for KION before the brand – and the company – even existed. How is that possible? Quite simply, in the summer of 2006, René was part of a small team of people who developed our brand. Together, the group came up with suggestions for the company name, logo, color scheme, and corporate identity.

At the time, René was employed as a project manager for brand management at Linde AG, based in Wiesbaden, where he had started in 2001 as a consultant for new media. In 2006, the group took over the British industrial gas company 'The BOC Group'. This deal was financed by the sale of Linde AG's material handling division to financial investors. This was the very business area that was then bundled and spun off into the KION Group.

"It was an intense time," recalls René. He had to do two jobs at once, so to speak. "During the day, I worked on the merger of Linde and BOC – and in the evenings and at night, I helped create the KION brand," says René. Back then, his working day sometimes started at seven in the morning and didn't end until two or three in the morning.

In the beginning, things were chaotic, says René: “At first, no one knew which company they would belong to.” That only became clear gradually. Some kept their jobs at the old Linde AG headquarters in Wiesbaden – and thus moved to the KION Group. Others moved with Linde AG to the new company headquarters in Munich. “There were deadlines when entire departments moved out,” says René. The empty corridors looked eerie.

Until, at some point, all remaining colleagues were moved into one part of the building. "From that moment on, there was suddenly a spirit of optimism," recalls René: "Everything was new, everything was different. At first, we only had one coffee machine. All the colleagues knew each other. It was like the atmosphere in a start-up!"

A start-up that generated more than four billion euros in revenue in its first financial year. From the outset, KION included profitable subsidiaries: Linde Material Handling GmbH in Aschaffenburg, STILL GmbH in Hamburg, and OM Carrelli Elevatori in Milan (Italy) – three forklift truck brands, each with thousands of employees, decades of tradition, and an excellent reputation.

Only the new umbrella brand did not yet have a name. "Until then, the division at Linde AG had been known internally as the 'Industrial Trucks Group,'" says René. Clearly, this was not a suitable name for the new company. An agency was asked to come up with suggestions for the new company name. “Three suggestions made it to the final selection,” says René, who of course still remembers the two potential company names that didn’t make the cut in the end. However, he doesn’t want to reveal them.

In the end, KION prevailed – a word from the language of the Maasai in East Africa. "'Kiongozi' translates as 'taking the lead'," says René. He no longer remembers whether this meaning was the deciding factor in the decision or whether the new management team simply liked the sound of the word at the time. "My first thought was that KION sounded somehow Asian," says René.

And for a company striving for international success, that’s a pretty good combination: an Asian-sounding name from an African language for a company headquartered in Europe. The only market missing from the list is America, which of course also plays an important role for KION, at least since the acquisition of Dematic in 2016.

Finally, René reveals a secret to us: KION’s corporate color could have been a different color instead of the striking KION Red. He even kept a color sample from back then in a file folder. “I’m glad they opted for the more unique version at the time,” he says with a smile as he puts the folder back.