tesafilm® originally arose based on a failure to produce another item. When the pharmacist Dr. Oscar Troplowitz took over the lab of his colleague Beiersdorf, at the end of the 19th century, Troplowitz was working on an adhesive bandage that was supposed to both adhere firmly in place and be gentle to skin.
The result of his development was an adhesive that adhered excellently but irritated the skin and was therefore not suitable for wound care. Troplowitz made the most of his misfortune, dubbing the product “Citoplast” and launching it as the first technical adhesive tape available on the German market – for patching damaged bicycle tires.
The tape was the precursor of Beiersdorf’s rubber tape, which later became tesafilm®.
The name tesa®
The name tesa® traces back to the secretary Elsa Tesmer, who worked at Beiersdorf in Hamburg from April 1903 through the end of October 1908, first as an office clerk and then as the office manager. She thought up the term from the first two letters of her last name and the last two letters of her first name. For a long time, the only source indicating the origin of the name was a letter written by Tesmer to the company Beiersdorf in 1960. New details of her story came to light recently.
From tube to tape
A customer asking for tesa® at a shop counter in 1908 would not have received any tape. Initially, tesa® was the brand name of the patented tube used for Pebeco toothpaste. But the tube business fared poorly. In 1926, the name was therefore transferred to another Beiersdorf product: an innovative substance into which sausages were plunged to form an outer casing. But tesa was unsuccessful as a sausage casing as well. The transparent rubber tape developed in 1935 was the last to be given the catchy name tesa. And because the third time is well known to be the charm, this attempt led to success in the end: The tape was a big hit with customers.
tesafilm® dispenser 1955
A man’s name also comes up in connection with the success of tesafilm®. The year is 1934, and the unemployed in Germany number seven million, when 25-year-old Hugo Kirchberg, from Eisenach, applies for a job at Beiersdorf in Hamburg.
The busy commercial management assistant, who came to Beiersdorf from an office supply company with six employees took it upon himself to lead the Beiersdorf rubber tape, which had previously been insignificant, to success. Kirchberg believed in the product, or at least in its future in the office. His first ingenious idea: He gave the tape the short, but sweet name tesa® – first, in 1936, as tesa® adhesive tape and later as tesafilm®.
Hugo Kirchberg in front of a poster from 1949
To give consumers an additional practical tool for using the tape, Kirchberg also developed the tesa® roll dispenser, which is still found, with some design changes, on nearly every desk to this day. With advertising slogans that were right on target, Kirchberg led the product to breakout hit status in the end.
One of the slogans Kirchberg used to advertise during the nineteen-thirties was “for gluing, patching, and arts and crafts,” which took precise aim at consumers’ needs and desires: During the Great Depression and the accompanying world economic crisis, and later, during the Second World War, consumers welcomed anything that made improvising and surviving from day to day any easier.
The slogan of the nineteen-sixties, “Mit tesa® (k)lebt sich’s leichter” (tesa® makes gluing and living easier) was perfect for its era, which was characterized by a mood of upheaval and pure joie de vivre.
tesa® Masking Tapes
The product palette
Today, there are about 6,500 different tesa products for industrial clients and consumers.
The fields in which special products are used are widely varied. They include solutions for the automotive sector, the printing and paper industry, manufacturers of mobile telephones, digital cameras, and screens, and for professional painters and varnishers.
In the office, the home, and in the do-it-yourself field as well, the tesa® brand palette offers professional tools enabling users to arrange their environments deliberately and creatively. About 300 products, across ten segments, are available to consumers.
tesa AG
tesa AG was founded in 2001, marking an important step for tesa, which had originally been a division of the Beiersdorf group.
Worldwide, the tesa group, with its more than 50 subsidiaries, currently has about 3,700 employees, who ensure that customers in over 100 countries can use tesa products.
The future: new lines of business
With its own research department at the Hamburg headquarters, supported by labs in the United States, Japan, China and Singapore, tesa concentrates on developing special adhesives, new coating techniques, and innovative product solutions.
In this way, tesa solutions are continuously adjusted to the needs of industry and the end consumer, and increasingly specific problem-solving systems are developed. One example of this process is the tesa® Holospot system.
tesa® Holospot
In 1998, scientists discovered that tesafilm® is suitable for use as an efficient medium for storage of large quantities of data in a very small space.
The tesa Holospot® technology that developed from this discovery forms the basis of a new line of business for tesa. The digital holograms generated using the Holospot® process protect name-brand items from counterfeiting and secure original products against theft on their way along the supply chain.
For the further development and marketing of the new processes, tesa joined with the Heidelberg-based inventors in 2001 to form a subsidiary: tesa scribos GmbH 
Contact us
