The beginnings of Apple took place in a garage. At that time, efcom had already moved on from that taking their first entrepreneurial steps in an apartment. To be exact, in the former apartment of co-founder Arnulf Romann. They met on only 60 sq m in order to develop strategies, to confer with each other and to use the available resources as purposefully as possible. Nowadays, Google & Co. are trying to make a living room out of their work spaces to provide their employees with a sense of cosiness and an additional feelgood factor. In the beginning, efcom already had that included!

 

And since apartments are not offices, there were some on-site circumstances that had to be dealt with: Coffee tables became conference tables, the couch became the executive chair and the hallway turned into the reception area. As the situation would have it, one of the apartment rooms being used for meetings included a washing machine. What wasn’t a problem at the beginning developed into a rather loud and shaky disruption during important efcom meetings. Bodo F. Reinecke, one of the co-founders, finally found a method to tame the washing machine successfully by simply sitting on it so the meeting could proceed. The washing machine became a defining element of efcom’s beginnings. Later on, the couch was replaced with real office chairs and today, you may be searching for a washing machine on our office floor in vain. The symbol of the maching machine still stands today: Whenever the day-to-day business gets shaky or loud, efcom’s employees are very good at restoring order and slowing things down.