Template:Did you know nominations/Freudenberg Group

Freudenberg Group

 * ... that among the holdings of the family-owned international conglomerate Freudenberg Group are private vineyards?
 * Reviewed: Ritz Ballroom
 * Comment: Article is at AfD; if it survives as I expect, I intend to move it to Freudenberg Group, the name used on the company's own English-language website. Article was kept and I have moved it to Freudenberg Group. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:29, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Created/expanded by Yngvadottir (talk). Self nom at 02:57, 26 December 2011 (UTC)


 * ALT1 ... that the Freudenberg Group placed Vileda-brand cleaning cloths on the market after noticing that their cleaning ladies were using scraps of their experimental fabrics?
 * ALT2 ... that the highly diversified international conglomerate Freudenberg Group developed from a company that sold only leather goods for its first 80 years? Yngvadottir (talk) 03:04, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Symbol question.svg 5x expansion verified. Age, length OK. Foreign-language hook refs AGF. I think ALT1 is the best. Since the sources are in German, could you please verify that this tweaking of the hook is correct?
 * ALT3 ... that Freudenberg Group placed Vileda-brand cleaning cloths on the market after company heads noticed that factory cleaners were using discarded scraps of the fabrics it was producing? Yoninah (talk) 21:25, 7 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for reviewing it! As regards the ALT3 wording, here is the passage from the Die Zeit article: "Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg etwa stellten die Vliesstofftüftler im Versuchslabor erstaunt fest, dass die Putzfrauen Abfälle und Reste des Stoffes zum Aufwischen der Böden benutzten. Daraus wurde ein Ersatzmaterial für Fensterleder und Bodentücher entwickelt: Das »Vileda«-Tuch (»wie Leder«) war geboren, die Keimzelle der heutigen Sparte für Haushaltsprodukte." -"For example after the Second World War, the nonwovens people in the research lab realized with astonishment that the cleaning ladies were using thrown-away and scrap pieces of the fabric for mopping the floors. From this was developed a replacement material for chamois window cloths and floor cleaning cloths: the "Vileda" ("like leather") cloth was born, the seed of today's division of household products." The other article (Manager magazin) just says Vileda developed out of the backing material of the artificial leather: "Weil im Zweiten Weltkrieg die Lederproduktion einbrach, entwickelte Freudenberg das Kunstleder, aus dessen Trägermaterial das breite Angebot an Vliesstoffen entstand. Bald wurde das Vileda-Haushaltstuch in den Kolonialwarenläden feilgeboten." - "Because leather production collapsed in the Second World War, Freudenberg developed artificial leather, out of whose backing material [its] broad offerings in nonwovens developed. Soon the Vileda household [wiping] cloth was on sale in grocery stores." You'll see there that it was the lab rather than the factory, and that management is not actually mentioned - hence the vaguer wording in my ALT2. I'll defer to your judgment. Yngvadottir (talk) 05:33, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I had a feeling there was more in the German than you were summarizing. I'm wondering if you can give a sentence to each development, rather than running them all together in the first paragraph of the History section. Would this be accurate? (Feel free to make changes):
 * "The company was founded in 1849 by Carl Johann Freudenberg, the son of a wine merchant, and his partner, Heinrich Christoph Heintze, when the two took over a tannery at Weinheim. For the next 80 years, the company produced leather products exclusively. Hurt by the worldwide economic depression that began in 1929, and by shortages during World War II, the company began diversifying into seals for motors made first of leather and later of artificial rubber (the Simmerring, named for an engineer called Walther Simmer). It also developed artificial leather (for what purpose?). When researchers noticed that the cleaning crew was using discarded scraps of the backing material for the artificial leather to mop the floors, it developed that material into the 'Vileda' (from wie Leder, 'leather-like') floor-cleaning cloths, which were first marketed in 1948."
 * I still think the idea in ALT3 is most interesting. How about:
 * ALT4: ... that the Freudenberg Group developed its "Vileda" ("like leather") cleaning cloths after company researchers noticed the cleaning crew mopping the floors with discarded scraps of the backing material it was producing for (what was the original use of the artificial leather, above?}? Yoninah (talk) 21:25, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I just thought of another approach for the hook:
 * ALT5: ... that the Freudenberg Group, which produced leather goods for its first 80 years, is now Europe's leading marketer of artificial leather products? Yoninah (talk) 12:43, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Those are actually deliberately close translations of the two passages - compare what Google Translate gives you. Hence the brevity of my wording in the article; the two sources are focusing on different aspects of the story, and while one mentions specifically backing material, the other talks of experimental non-wovens. The artificial leather was created in response to the disruption of the leather industry caused by the Depression (and German inflation, I infer) and also as part of a search for more temperature-resistant materials for the new engine-seals application. (The company diversified for its life.) I think of the hooks now on the table I prefer my ALT1 for accuracy and interest; you might want to put in the slightly sexist specific of "cleaning ladies" that I left out, and/or the "experimental" from the one source; and personally I think the "Oh btw they also have a private vineyard" of the original hook is more interesting than the switch from leather goods to fake leather of ALT5 (which is just what's happened to the market), but I don't have humongously strong feelings about it. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:55, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Pictogram voting keep.svg Fine, we'll go with ALT1. I added "cleaning ladies" and "experimental fabrics". Foreign-language hook ref AGF. I'll leave the wording in the first paragraph of the History section as is, although you should not sacrifice clarity and information-giving in favor of ambiguity for fear of close paraphrasing. Yoninah (talk) 16:24, 8 January 2012 (UTC)