COR was founded in 1954 by the very same family that manages our company to this day. We are still headquartered at our original location in Rheda-Wiedenbrück. And all of the shares in our company are in family hands. What does this mean? That we can plan and act with the long term in mind – just like the responsible family-owned company that we are.
Corporate structure
COR Sitzmöbel Helmut Lübke GmbH & Co. KG is a private limited company (‘GmbH’) whose shares are 100% owned by the Lübke family. Founded in 1954 by Helmut Lübke, our company has been headed by his son, Leo Lübke, as Managing Partner since 1994. A management team made up of senior executives is at his side.
One member of this team, as of January 2023, is Tobias Janorschke, who heads the new Digitalisation and Process Management division. Tobias Janorschke is an MBA for Sales and Marketing and has been working for COR since 2007. His work focuses on the design and implementation of digital applications.
Economic results
After the pandemic-related drop in demand for upholstered furniture in 2020 and 2021, we achieved record sales of €48.3 million in 2022 – to date, the highest sales figures in our company history. Our 2023 sales decreased from this record high to €46.4 million.
At the same time, we once again invested heavily in our company in the past two years. Our biggest project was the construction of a new material warehouse while we were thankfully able to repurpose the existing one, which dates back to 1974. A neighbouring farmer from Rheda-Wiedenbrück demolished the hall and will rebuild it on his land, where it will continue to be used.
Our new, 3,000 m2 material warehouse was constructed in accordance with the KfW (German econstruction loan corporation) ‘40’ energy-efficiency standard for new-builds. It is heated via underfloor heating with 12 heat pumps, which are partially powered by the PV system on the warehouse roof. It is illuminated with high-efficiency, LED lights connected to motion sensors. The new material warehouse is directly linked to the machine shop, which means all materials can be kept dry while they are transported for manufacturing. In the warehouse itself, they are well protected thanks to excellent insulation and underfloor heating.
Our new material warehouse will be completed in early 2024 and integrated into our operations.
Our second major construction project saw us install PV modules on the roof of our foam hall in 2023. The panels have a capacity of 38 kWp, which means our PV systems have a total capacity of 494 kWp. In 023, our PV systems generated 92,878 kWh of renewable energy, which we partly fed back into the grid and partly used ourselves. Around 6.6% of our total electricity requirements were covered by our own renewable energy sources in 2023.
Location
We are one of the few German furniture companies to combine every phase of the production process at a single location – in Rheda-Wiedenbrück in East Westphalia. Here, in the heart of Germany’s furniture-making region, we manufacture our furniture in accordance with strict German rules governing occupational safety, emissions and environmental protection, and high social standards.
For our workforce, this means short journeys to work and low transport emissions: most COR employees live nearby, and many of them bike to work. Our headquarter on Nonenstraße features four electric charging stations for visitors and employees, with another four at our COR Haus showroom.
Our portfolio of products comprises high-quality sofas, easy chairs, chairs and tables that we sell in 41 countries via high-end specialist and contract retailers. We are happy to advise customers at our own exhibition space: the COR Haus showroom in Rheda-Wiedenbrück. In Berlin, Munich, Nuremberg and Vienna, we do this with our franchise partners at the COR Studios, while we have launched concessions known as the COR Space in other cities.
This sustainability report solely covers our site in Rheda-Wiedenbrück.
Suppliers
We’ve been working with many of our suppliers for years – sometimes even decades. Fourteen of our top twenty suppliers (by purchasing volume) have been COR partners for over a decade.
In terms of sales, two thirds of our suppliers are based in Germany, with one third headquartered in other European countries.
Since 2008, we have been rating all of our suppliers using our own supplier assessment system. We look at sustainability-related criteria such as:
• Geographic proximity (short delivery and transport journeys to reduce CO2 emissions);
• Environmental credentials (e.g. using materials conforming with the criteria of the “Blue Angel” environmental label and REACH Regulation);
• Use of high-quality materials that ensure a long life for furniture.
We replaced several suppliers in the years prior to the reporting period because they were unable to meet “Blue Angel” criteria. During the reporting period, one supplier was delisted for quality reasons. At the start of 2022, we assigned sustainability a higher weighting (13%) in our upplier assessment criteria. As a result, it now appears as a separate factor in our assessment matrix for the first time.
Each year we also carry out random checks on suppliers to see if they comply with risk criteria in the following areas:
• Logistics/supply chain
• Sustainability
• Competition/market conditions
• Staffing
• Certificates
We turn the components provided by our suppliers into furniture in Rheda-Wiedenbrück. It’s only in the rarest of cases that we subcontract individual production stages to companies in the region to cope with capacity constraints. So no matter where in the world its owners live, almost every piece of COR furniture can be traced back to Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany.
