C.A. Seydel Söhne GmbH Klingenthal celebrated 170 years of company history with a benefit gala concert in November 2017. It is almost a miracle that it was possible to mark this anniversary at all. When the long-standing company was forced into bankruptcy in 2004, there were only very few people who believed that it had a future.

One of them was Lars Seifert. He was 28 years old at the time and viewed it as what he called an “exciting task” when the new owners, who acted with a great deal of commitment and energy, made an offer to him to continue the company as a going concern. The graduate in business management gave up a relatively secure job at the Sparkasse savings bank and ignored some job offers from outside too.

“It was all about maintaining part of my home region,” says the man who is now the managing director of the world’s oldest mouth organ manufacturer. The company only had nine employees at that time. But they stood by their company centred on the firm legend Karl Pucholdt and made use of their knowledge and skills that would have been irrecoverably lost otherwise.

“We were convinced that we’d make it if we relied on our strengths – the hand production of mouth organs,” Lars Seifert explains. He does not hide the fact that this also caused him sleepless nights.

They succeeded. The hand-made mouth organs were and still are sold via the newly design sales system – hardly any of them through wholesalers, but directly to customers; an online shop was set up and the company makes use of new media, including social networks. The team developed innovations like stainless steel reeds and demand is increasing all the time. 

C.A. Seydel Söhne GmbH now has 33 employees with a “healthy mix in terms of their age structure,” says Lars Seifert. Long-serving employees, who are old enough to retire, provide their experience by working on a reduced part-time basis; trainees are taken on and others are enquiring whether they can return.

The company manufactures about 20 different basic models with numerous configurations and it copes with the production of special items in line with customer wishes on a daily basis. They are sold in more than 100 different countries. A subsidiary in the USA is the mainstay in the most important market. Top artists from all over the world swear by the instruments made in Klingenthal. “That forces us to not be half-hearted about doing our job,” says the managing director.

C.A. Seydel Söhne GmbH is now, however, not just a manufacturer of mouth organs that carry with them the reputation of Klingenthal into the wide world, but is also the main sponsor of “Mundharmonika live”. The festival, which is organised by committed people in the association bearing the same name, has helped Klingenthal to be viewed as the “Mecca of mouth organs around the world – a place that people absolutely have to visit,” says Lars Seifert with a smile on his face. Employees also get involved in training young mouth organ players.

“I always describe Klingenthal as a centre of musical instrument making and winter sports,” he says, referring to his conversations with customers and artists. They are the two things that he personally likes about the Vogtland region. He plays football for FSV 90, rides through the region on his mountain bike and accompanies his 11-year-old son, who is training as a Nordic combined skier at VSC (Vogtland Ski Club).

“I had a good education and I have financial security, so that I can enjoy all this. It’s simply my home region; this is where I want to see my parents grow old and my children grow up,” says Lars Seifert, citing other reasons why he lives in the Vogtland region.