Billionaire Michael Otto turns 80
“Today I would be at Fridays for Future”
By Marko Schlichting
04/12/2023, 06:05 am
One of the best-known German billionaires is celebrating his 80th birthday: Michael Otto, the owner of the Otto Group. With Markus Lanz he tells how it all began. And he takes a look at the industry standards of tomorrow.
They call him a “sustainability evangelist”. But he doesn’t like that. This term is too abstract for him, says multi-billionaire Michael Otto on Markus Lanz on ZDF. “I’m someone who likes to think about what we have to do and then act.” This Wednesday, Otto, one of the best-known entrepreneurs in Germany and owner of Otto Versand, turns eighty.
It all started on August 17, 1949. Michael Otto was six years old and his father Werner was founding a company. With a capital of 6,000 marks, the former shoe dealer starts a mail order business in a shack in the Schnelsen district of Hamburg. He has four employees. The first Otto catalog was published just one year later. It is just 16 pages long, the employees stick the pictures one or two pieces per page themselves. You bind the catalog yourself and take it to the post office. Werner Otto has 300 customers there.
Years later, the Otto catalog has become an integral part of everyday life for many families. It’s a few inches thick and gets to customers sometime during the week. For many families, Saturday becomes Otto Day. It is usually the women who pick up the catalog first and leaf through it. Then the husbands can also take a look. Finally, you can order from the comfort of your own home. That was the principle back in 1950, when the Otto range consisted exclusively of shoes – 28 pairs. Anyone who ordered a pair of shoes was initially given the left one to try on. If the customers were satisfied, they could reorder the right shoe. The first bestseller in post-war Germany was the “California” women’s shoe.
And then it goes uphill. Textiles are soon added to the shoes, Otto sells aprons and sets the first fashion trend in Germany’s economic miracle with a pair of navy folding trousers. In 1960, the mail order company moved to its current headquarters in Hamburg-Bramfeld, and in 1971 Michael Otto joined the group as a member of the board.
He must have been a wild student. At Markus Lanz’s, Otto talks about the demonstrations in which he took part. “I protested against all sorts of things: against the encrusted structures at the universities, for the right to vote at 18 – at that time you had to join the armed forces at 18, but you weren’t allowed to vote – and sometimes I just ran along because friends were there , and I only found out during the demo what we were actually demonstrating against,” says Otto. Climate protection didn’t count back then. But: “Today I would be at Fridays for Future,” says the 80-year-old. “They brought about a rethink through peaceful actions.”
When Michael Otto joins the family business, he is just 28 years old – and thus Germany’s youngest board member. He had previously studied in Munich and worked as a real estate agent. In 1981 he became CEO, today he is the owner and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Otto Group. The Otto catalogs are also discontinued under his leadership, and online trading is now big business.
Corporate goal of environmental protection
Michael Otto was an early advocate of environmental protection and sustainability, he tells Markus Lanz. “For me, the wake-up call in 1972 was the Club of Rome’s first report, ‘The Limits to Growth’. I said at the time that this is a book that creates awareness. But it is even more important to act on it. It is important that everyone starts with yourself. That also applies to me as an entrepreneur.”
In 1986 he declared environmental protection to be a company goal and was thus a pioneer in Germany. So Otto stops selling fur coats. From 1996 he offered skin-friendly and non-toxic textiles, one year later he began to focus on ecologically produced cotton. “In Turkey we switched to organic cotton cultivation, and we used biodegradable dyes in the dye works,” reports Otto. With his Cotton made in Africa foundation, he now promotes cotton production on the continent. Cotton is grown there in an environmentally friendly way, and above all, according to Otto, water consumption is reduced. “Normally, you need 1,800 liters of water for one kilo of conventional cotton. We need two liters.”
Growth through quality
“We want to have qualitative growth by offering better and better products,” is Michael Otto’s goal. In his view, this should apply to the entire industry. So it should be possible to repair defective products. For Otto, this means, for example, that mobile phones or electric toothbrushes should not have built-in batteries.
In addition, Otto relies on the circular economy, for example second-hand shops. “And we have committed to be absolutely carbon neutral by 2045 – from production to parcel delivery.” According to Otto, production should not be at the expense of child and environmental protection. “And I am convinced that in a few years only companies that work and offer their products in this way will be able to be successful in the long term.”