{"id":7785,"date":"2023-06-01T13:40:09","date_gmt":"2023-06-01T11:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/?p=7785"},"modified":"2023-05-23T15:09:50","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T13:09:50","slug":"shoemaker-willi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/en\/blog\/2023\/06\/01\/shoemaker-willi\/","title":{"rendered":"Two master shoemakers, one wonderful friendship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Willi K\u00fcmpel is one of the veterans at HAIX. The master shoemaker is not only connected to the company by years of work. Even before his time in Mainburg, he had a deep friendship with the late Ewald Haimerl. Their paths had parted in the meantime – time brought the two shoemakers together again.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

“Impossible never existed”<\/h3>\n

\u201eWhen we both started out, back in the day, Willi\u2019s business was just about bigger than mine.\u201d This is how Ewald Haimerl<\/a> once started to tell me his and Willi\u2019s story with the trademark twinkle in his eye. Willi K\u00fcmpel has run the repairs department at Mainburg for many years. He met the grand seigneur of HAIX in 1984, when both attended the shoemakers\u2019 school in Munich.<\/p>\n

Hailing from the Upper Palatinate, K\u00fcmpel was rarely seen without a cigarette in those days, and he vividly remembers that Haimel, a native of Lower Bavaria, was sporting a swollen nose from a mystery accident. They shared a room for six months. One was a passionate tinkerer, the other a strategic developer. Both were predestined for shoemaking and obtained the title of master craftsman with ease. Their shared time in Munich was the beginning of a wonderful friendship.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

\"Willi<\/div>
2023-03-17_HX-Service_\u00a9HMe-2136<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/div>
Willi and Ewald: You couldn\u2019t name a more iconic duo. They were cut from the same cloth (namely, leather) and rooted in the same craft. The Haimerl family had worked with shoes for generations. In 1948, Ewald\u2019s father, Xaver Haimerl, combined the initial of his forename with the first three letters of his surname, giving his newly founded shoe company in Mainburg its name: HAIX. <\/span><\/div>\n

Early success as a shoemaker<\/h3>\n

Willi K\u00fcmpel\u2019s grandfather and his wife had earned their living by manufacturing handmade shoes in the 1930s. In 1962, Willi\u2019s father continued the family\u2019s entrepreneurial tradition of shoemaking in Tirschenreuth in the Upper Palatinate. Willi himself followed in his ancestors\u2019 footsteps in the mid-1970s, when he qualified as an orthopedic shoemaker. At the age of 21, he took over the management of a shoe repair shop with three employees. He couldn\u2019t help but laugh when his roommate in Munich prophesied, \u201cWilli, you\u2019ll be working for me one day.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

\"\"<\/div>
2023-03-17_HX-Service_\u00a9HMe-2137<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/div>

Upon becoming a master craftsman, Wilhelm K\u00fcmpel started his own business, a repair shop back home. As an independent orthopedic shoemaker, he had several employees. \u201cWe made everything: Shoes, bags, tractor covers\u2026 and we fixed anything that was even remotely fixable,\u201d he recalled. Today, we met at his current workplace: The HAIX headquarters in Mainburg. The service and repairs department is a stone\u2019s throw away from the production facilities. K\u00fcmpel picks up a restored boot and, with the other hand, holds up its tattered counterpart, still awaiting restoration. \u201cAnything is possible,\u201d he says. This has been the master shoemaker\u2019s motto since the beginning of his career.<\/p>\n

Two friends follow different paths<\/h3>\n

After successfully passing his master craftsman\u2019s examination, Ewald Haimerl initially returned to his father\u2019s shoemaking business in Mainburg. In 1992, he took over the company and its 15 employees, who were making cross-country ski boots, hiking boots and sandals to order at the time. The HAIX brand was yet to be born when Ewald developed his first legendary leather firefighter boot. \u201cHe visited me at home and proudly presented this boot to me,\u201d recalled Willi. \u201cHe was looking for someone with a lot of experience to help him get his idea of a HAIX repair service off the ground. And I was who he\u2019d had in mind.\u201d From Tirschenreuth to Mainburg? Nearly 200 kilometers each way? How was that ever going to pay off for a small business like HAIX? To this day, Willi shakes his head in disbelief when he remembers his friend\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

\"Seit<\/div>
HX22-07_Service_\u00a9HMe-0644<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/div>

And yet HAIX kept on growing. Twelve months later, Willi finally agreed to carry out repairs for HAIX. When the company struggled to keep up with large orders due to production issues, it was he who spotted the problem. Willi, a quiet man, helped his ambitious friend overcome many a teething problem. \u201cJust let me do my thing, and it will all work out,\u201d he said with his signature calm demeanor.<\/p>\n

What eventually led HAIX out of its crisis was none other than the Fire Fighter boot<\/a>. K\u00fcmpel soon found himself taking the minibus from Tirschenreuth to Mainburg twice a week. In 2006, he finally accepted a full-time employment contract and built up the HAIX service department with Haimerl. \u201cIn the beginning, the senior manager still got his hands dirty himself.\u201d He still remembers the prophecy Ewald Haimerl had made back in Munich.<\/p>\n

Two shoemakers, one friendship<\/h3>\n

Their friendship remained strong through the years, giving rise to plenty of anecdotes and memorable stories. When K\u00fcmpel became seriously ill and kept postponing an important surgical procedure because he was determined to get the service department of HAIX North America off the ground first, Haimerl helped\u2014but with a condition attached: K\u00fcmpel\u2019s wife had to accompany them at all times, just to be on the safe side. In Vancouver, he booked a hotel right next to a renowned clinic\u2014 again, just in case\u2014and when they returned to Germany, Haimerl was one of the first visitors to see his friend in hospital.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

\"Willi<\/div>
HX22-07_Service_\u00a9HMe-0616<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/div>

Ewald Haimerl passed away in 2019, far too young. Once every year, Willi K\u00fcmpel takes a new shoe from the latest collection, places it on his friend\u2019s grave, and plants flowers in it. \u201cSo he can have a look at the sole from underneath and see that we\u2019re still going strong,\u201d he joked, but with deep sadness in his voice.<\/p>\n

The service and repairs department that K\u00fcmpel helped build has long become an important part of HAIX\u2019s company philosophy and its approach to sustainability. \u201cQuality shoes deserve quality repairs.\u201d To Willi K\u00fcmpel and everyone else at HAIX, this is what the brand is all about. The 62-year-old makes sure to remind his designated successors, Lisa Steiger and Ahmed Wahhab, of this principle, who, like their boss, are on fire when there is something to fix.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Willi K\u00fcmpel is one of the veterans at HAIX. The master shoemaker is not only connected to the company by years of work. Even before his time in Mainburg, he had a deep friendship with the late Ewald Haimerl.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":5901,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[202,195],"class_list":["post-7785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-work","tag-handwerk-en","tag-lesen-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA wonderful friendship- HEROES WORLD<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Two master shoemakers and a wonderful friendship at HAIX: Willi K\u00fcmpel shares an emotional story with Ewald Haimerl.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/en\/blog\/2023\/06\/01\/shoemaker-willi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Two master shoemakers, one wonderful friendship\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Two master shoemakers and a wonderful friendship at HAIX: Willi K\u00fcmpel shares an emotional story with Ewald Haimerl.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/en\/blog\/2023\/06\/01\/shoemaker-willi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"HEROES WORLD\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-06-01T11:40:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/HX22-07_Service_\u00a9HMe-0624-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1707\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"hanne\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"hanne\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/en\/blog\/2023\/06\/01\/shoemaker-willi\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/en\/blog\/2023\/06\/01\/shoemaker-willi\/\",\"name\":\"A wonderful friendship- HEROES WORLD\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/en\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/en\/blog\/2023\/06\/01\/shoemaker-willi\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/en\/blog\/2023\/06\/01\/shoemaker-willi\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/HX22-07_Service_\u00a9HMe-0624-scaled.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-06-01T11:40:09+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/6fc27da8ac6353eee29b73141233d786\"},\"description\":\"Two master shoemakers and a wonderful friendship at HAIX: Willi K\u00fcmpel shares an emotional story with Ewald Haimerl.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/en\/blog\/2023\/06\/01\/shoemaker-willi\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/en\/blog\/2023\/06\/01\/shoemaker-willi\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/en\/blog\/2023\/06\/01\/shoemaker-willi\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/HX22-07_Service_\u00a9HMe-0624-scaled.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.heroes-world.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/HX22-07_Service_\u00a9HMe-0624-scaled.jpg\",\"width\":2560,\"height\":1707,\"caption\":\"Vorher und nachher: Willi K\u00fcmpel zeigt, was die Reparatur ausmacht. 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