Back to the roots: 10 years of Made in Office

Back in 2004, Stephan Kuhnert and Fabian Willebrand meet at Accenture. The two become friends and colleagues, together they have a vision: The use of Office should be made easier with the help of macros and add-ins.

10 year anniversary

In addition to full-time jobs and studying, they program the first macros. Again and again they receive smaller orders, so that they decide to turn their passion into their profession. The two of them start a company. It is difficult for them to find a name for the company, one should be able to tell from the name what it is all about. When jogging the decisive idea finally comes, analogous to “Made in Germany” the name idea “Made in Office” is born. Everything they want to do should be done in Office. Thus the company name expresses the origin in a certain way, not geographically, but out of the product context.

In 2008, the two-man company gets its first major contract by the Boston Consulting Group. This awakens the ambition: the small start-up should become something bigger. 2009 will be THE YEAR for the history of the newbie. The two managing directors decide to quit their highly remunerated consulting jobs and devote themselves full-time to their company, so that they transform Made in Office into a GmbH. Growth is also provided, the first employee becomes Robin Noack. With Beiersdorf, they are gaining another major Group customer in 2009. This sense of achievement ensures that the three of them decide not only to work on a project-by-project basis. The aim is to create a product for Office that not only helps one, but all companies to use it more efficiently and easily. 2010 will be the year of birth of “empower^®”.

With this software, they manage to develop a product that can be used universally. Users worldwide are now able to work more easily, uniformly and efficiently with Office. empower^® is causing a boom, not only the number of enthusiastic empower^® users is increasing, new employees are also finding their way to Made in Office. The company grows and grows. In 2013 the old office becomes too little, so a move is inevitable. The KölnTurm in the Mediapark in Cologne will be the new home of Made in Office. The move was followed by expansion into the USA in 2015, followed two years later by France. The 2018 success story continues unabated: DAX companies like Bayer opt for the market leader.

Today, Made in Office is no longer a small start-up, but a medium-sized company. With 50 full-time employees, more than 1,500 customers and 3,000 realized projects and over 1.2 million empower^® users, Made in Office has become the No. 1 for Microsoft Office solutions.