Brand DNA
Find out how STIHL has been making it easier for people to work in and with nature for over 98 years.
10.10.2024
STIHL BRIEF PORTRAIT
STIHL Group develops, manufactures and distributes power tools for professional forestry and agriculture, landscape maintenance, the construction sector, and private garden owners. Digital solutions and services complement our wide product range. STIHL products are generally sold through specialist servicing dealers – with 42 of our own sales and marketing companies, around 120 importers and more than 55,000 dealers in over 160 countries. STIHL also has its own online shops, which will be expanded internationally over the next few years.
STIHL manufactures in seven countries around the world – Germany, USA, Brazil, Switzerland, Austria, China and the Philippines.
From 1971, STIHL is the best-selling chainsaw brand in the world. The company was founded in 1926 and is headquartered in Waiblingen near Stuttgart.
"Making it easier for people to work in and with nature."
Andreas Stihl, company founder
Pioneering spirit for more than 98 years
It began in 1926: Andreas Stihl founded his company and developed his first chainsaw. This invention revolutionised forestry work and made STIHL a global market and technology leader. The secret of success to this day? Developing revolutionary innovations time and again with the pioneering spirit of our company founder. For example, with battery technology, digital solutions, robotics and artificial intelligence. We are passionate about this and aim to constantly develop. Everything to make it easier for our customers to work in and with nature.
Our connecting values worldwide
STIHL employs people from all over the world and STIHL is at home in global markets. That is why it’s important for us to have values that connect us across national borders and determine our actions. Sustainable success is the reward for continuous development and operating companies based on long-term principles and binding guidelines. As a family business, we are convinced of this. And this aspiration is reflected in our corporate culture and values. Like the company, our values have grown and are relived and developed day after day.
We want to keep impressing our customers with the top quality of our devices and services. Our objective is that people who buy STIHL products should not just be satisfied by STIHL, but inspired. Together with dealerships, we build sustainable relationships with customers. In this process, our activities are aimed at creating a close, personal and emotional relationship between the end customer and the brand. Each tool is only as good as the service that comes with it. That is why we offer comprehensive and outstanding service solutions for the market via dealerships.
Global markets offer potential for growth, but also room for more competition. Both of these require a high degree of agility from STIHL. We want to be the leading brand for our industry worldwide, and to further expand our global market position. To achieve this, we create global standards and synergies at all stages in the value chain, while also being close to the local needs of our markets. The global sales network and the international production network are the basis for STIHL’s success. We pursue a balanced location policy and manufacture products all over the world to the highest production and quality standards.
As a family-owned company, STIHL has a particular responsibility for both people and nature. For this reason, ensuring the highest degree of health and safety both for our employees and in our products is one of our basic principles. We take care of natural resources through the use of efficient and sustainable processes and products. We maintain a long-term and partnership-based collaboration with dealers, suppliers and business partners. We base everything we do on the basic values of honesty, compliance with the law, and fairness. We stand for an open and trusting corporate culture, and promote both entrepreneurial thinking and autonomous action.
We want to set standards in the areas of technology and innovation. To achieve this, we drive forward the development of innovative products and services. Our inner drive is a strong cultural innovation, which makes use of the latest technologies, processes, and market knowledge in all areas of the company. When using digital technologies, we want to be in a leading position with our devices and services and in our contact with customers, as well as opening up new business models and turnover potential. The same applies for the digital networking between people, machines and products.
STIHL stands for top quality, and will continue to do so in future. This forms the basis for market success and profitable growth, and safeguards our entrepreneurial autonomy in the long term. A high degree of service-orientation along the entire value chain is essential to this. Through ideal conditions and partnership-based leadership, we enable our employees to unlock their full potential so that they can fulfil the quality promise for customers in every area of the company. We are an attractive employer that identifies and supports talented individuals.
STIHL'S SUCCESS IN NUMBERS
The STIHL Group achieved record sales of 5.5 billion euros in 2022. This corresponds to growth of 8.6 percent compared to the previous year. 90 percent of sales were generated outside of Germany. The trend towards cordless power tools continued. The STIHL Group recorded a slight decline in the petrol segment.
GROWING WITH YOUR OWN POWER
With a high equity ratio of 60 percent, the Group’s capital structure remains very solid. This means that STIHL can continue to finance investments from its own liquid funds. As in previous years, investments were significantly above depreciation. The positive business development led to a 2.3 percent growth in the workforce to 20,552 employees worldwide (effective date: 31 December 2022). More information on the 2022 financial year can be found in the STIHL Annual Report and in the online Annual Report.
WOMEN IN MANAGEMENT POSITIONS
We live equal opportunities and actively encourage women to pursue a career at STIHL. Only performance, skill and potential are important to us. Four out of the twelve Supervisory Board members are female, meaning that the proportion of women on the Supervisory Board of STIHL AG is above the required proportion of 30 percent. Two of the Five members of the STIHL AG Executive Board are now women. At its meeting on 29 June 2022, the target figure of “at least one woman” will be set for the future appointment of the STIHL AG Executive Board.
