This year, the HOF company celebrates its 25th anniversary.
What began in 1997 with 5 employees has grown over the past 25 years into a team of over 50 people.
The areas of special construction made of aluminium and steel as well as trusses for event technology still represent HOF’s core business.
In parallel, HOF has established itself over the past two and a half decades as a reliable partner for industry clients from the food, automotive and agricultural sectors when it comes to special constructions and contract welding work.
From day one, the motto of company founder Hans-Wilhelm Flegel has been: “The crazier the idea, the better. There is no idea that cannot be implemented.”
HOF has remained true to this motto over all these years and still lives by it: “We don’t do things by halves. What we do, we do it right!”
So it is not too surprising that the German company is regularly entrusted with projects and developments that are technically extremely demanding and challenging.
One of HOF’s first major projects was the tour of the famous German musician Marius Müller- Westernhagen in 1999, which relied on an extremely sophisticated stage design – by the standards of that time.
HOF gradually developed into a full-service provider and, in addition to sales, covers the areas of construction, structural engineering and production with a complete in-house team, which guarantees customers fast development and execution of projects and great flexibility. At the customer’s request, HOF also carries out the assembly work on a turnkey basis.
In the field of special constructions, HOF developed, designed, manufactured and installed, for example, the substructures for a new video wall in the stadium of Bayern Munich and for Europe’s largest video cube in the Schalke Stadium.
With the MLT² (Moving Light Truss²), HOF has set a new standard in event technology in the pre-rig truss category. The MLT² is now a standard on many major tours, and this year toured
Europe with, for example, Judas Priest, 50 Cent, Michel Kiwanuka, Karpe, David Gray, Dermot Kennedy, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Duran Duran, Lewis Capaldi and the Chemical Brothers.
When it comes to product development, HOF relies on very close cooperation with their customers in order to develop as closely as possible to the market and to achieve the highest possible customer satisfaction.
Thus, more than 90% of customer requests were implemented with regard to the MLT²: important elements such as the shock-absorbing wheels were developed to protect the sensitive lighting technology, the Lowering Set for smaller lighting or the Raincover to protect the expensive lighting technology from rain and during transportation.
It was not without reason that the MLT² won the 2021 Innovation Award for Crafts from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
At the beginning of 2022, HOF launched another new truss, the BBT (Big Boys Toy Truss). The BBT is a heavy-duty truss; it can take 20 tons of distributed load over a span of 30 metres. This means up to 60% more weight capacity than other aluminium trusses in its class.
The BBT is completely boltable and can thus be transported in a space- and CO2-saving way: up to 150 metres of BBT fit into a truck, which corresponds to halve the size of the transport volume compared to conventional trusses.
For 2022, HOF was able to enjoy a large number of applicants and fill all 5 apprenticeship positions in the areas of metal construction as well as commercial positions in a short time. HOF will again offer new apprenticeship positions for 2023.
For HOF, standing still means taking a step backwards, and so the next product innovations are already in the making. It remains exciting. Here’s to the next 25 years!
