Podcast „Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“

With the credo “If I can’t eat it, I won’t put it on my skin”, Annemarie Lindner founded a natural cosmetics company in 1959 together with her husband Walter and pharmaceutical manufacturer Hermann Börner in Calw in the Black Forest: Börlind.

Today, her grandchildren Alicia and Nicolas Lindner run the company in its third generation. Börlind employs 280 people, generates around 60 million euros in revenue, and exports to over 30 countries, including China and the USA. Under the label “Made in the Black Forest”, the family business still produces its masks, creams, and peels exclusively in the Black Forest.

Alicia Lindner remains true to the philosophy of her grandmother, the company’s founder: “Conventional cosmetics can never be as good as natural cosmetics,” she says in the podcast. At the same time, she criticizes the lack of scientific standards among some competitors, which repeatedly harm the natural cosmetics industry: “We are not witches, we are scientists,” she states clearly in the interview.

Instead of relying solely on brick-and-mortar retail or its health food store roots, the brand now positions itself deliberately on social media, with influencer campaigns and celebrity faces like Matthias Schweighöfer. At the same time, Alicia Lindner warns against problematic industry trends often emerging on social media: “The cosmetics industry is too shameless and too profit-driven. Telling little girls they need anti-aging products,” she says, referring to the phenomenon of so-called “Sephora Kids” who spend their pocket money on expensive skincare.

How the Black Forest’s traditional Bollenhut became Alicia Lindner’s trademark, how she claims to recognize her customers from 15 meters away, and what the handover of a ballpoint pen has to do with her company succession – she talks about all this in the podcast “Alles Neu…? Aus dem Maschinenraum” with Tobias Rappers, Managing Director of Maschinenraum, and Capital editor Katja Michel.

How can the origin and future of Mittelstand companies be courageously united? What are the challenges facing family businesses and what experiences do they gather in digital transformation? These questions are answered by “Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“, the interview podcast for German Mittelstand*. Once a month, Tobias Rappers, Managing Director of Maschinenraum, and Nils Kreimeier, Senior Editor of the business magazine Capital, talk to thought leaders and makers from the heart of the German economy and focus on the personalities and their motivation. *The podcast is in German.

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