Dekozell® ABOUT US
And here is the whole story.
I am Thomas Neubauer, born and raised in north-west Mecklenburg. I have always been fascinated by technology and entrepreneurship. For me as a 14-year-old at the time, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 came at just the right moment. So many new things, so many upheavals. I also wanted to become self-employed very early on, preferably as a business successor and of course with the relevant professional experience. After leaving school, I did my civilian service and worked for local newspapers at the same time. But instead of training to be an editor, I decided to study engineering – environmental and process engineering.
Shortly before graduating, I met my wife Vivian right on my doorstep. As a trained screen printer, she wanted to go on to become an engineer in printing technology. So, we moved overnight from Wismar to Stuttgart, into a nice one-room flat. Vivian took the underground to the lecture theatre in the morning. As a young engineer, I went to the Stuttgart branch of an American fuel cell company to develop powertrains for Ford and Daimler cars. Everything was fine, but we wanted more.
Going for it. On a whole new level.
At the weekends, we regularly travelled around Germany to explore possible company successions. After many thousands of kilometres by train, the company DEKOZELL emerged as a possible candidate within cycling distance of Stuttgart. Originally invented in 1989 in Deggendorf in Lower Bavaria as a cellulose spray plaster, half of the East was sprayed with it. Even dozens of stairwells in Wismar. At the end of the 1990s, a young painting company bought the DEKOZELL formulas and mixing machines. For ten years, the owner had cross-financed the steadily shrinking DEKOZELL from his constantly growing painting business. At the end of 2006, he pulled the ripcord and put the product division up for sale. The deal with us was finalised within two weeks. Suddenly Vivian and I were actually entrepreneurs.
So far. So good. So insane.
At the time, we firmly believed that all we had to do was make enough contacts to wake the sleeping giant. With our youngest daughter in our arms, flyers were glued, patterns were sprayed and cut. We sent out hundreds of these flyers to architects and painters month after month. By 2007, we already had a powerful CRM database, which was filled with life with tens of thousands of phone calls from our loyal Ina Böwe. The success? Well. We were able to make a reasonable living from it, from hand to mouth. It would be many years before we even came close to our much more easily earned engineering salaries again.
In 2009, however, we took the plunge and pulled up stakes in Stuttgart. After 10 years in Stuttgart, we moved back to Wismar with all our belongings and production equipment. But it was often exasperating apart from the niche area of acoustic plasters, we couldn’t get a leg on the ground. It was like a race between the hare and the hedgehog: we were up against hundreds of salespeople from full-range building material suppliers. For them, the topic of acoustic plaster was only a niche, but they had simply always been “all there” with their other building material systems.
The giant leap forward.
In September 2012, someone emerged who was extremely dissatisfied with the trickling, crumbling acoustic plasters on the market that could neither be repaired nor renovated. It was the architect and acoustic planner Peter Willensdorfer, who was desperately looking for an acoustic plaster for the sound studios at ORF in Vienna. An acoustic plaster that he could colour freely, that would not trickle and that could be easily and cleanly reworked if necessary.
Peter Willensdorfer immediately recognised in DEKOZELL the missing piece of the puzzle for the implementation of seamless acoustic surfaces in the studios. However, he wanted a smooth acoustic coating, not rough plaster. So, we developed a smooth coating. One that could be realised on site. Without surface scaffolding, with easy one-man application, invisible to touch up and can be renovated practically indefinitely, without any loss of acoustic performance.
Acoustic plaster systems that rewrite the rules.
Our biggest horror has always been to launch something onto the market that is then difficult to work with. We wanted to make an inherently complex application as simple as possible. And that really took time. The construction of the Elbphilharmonie concert hall presented an opportunity for a project that all other acoustic plaster manufacturers thankfully turned down – and brought the small company DEKOZELL onto the small but incredibly exciting stage of acoustic plaster systems. It was the first project we took to the building site with our new acoustic spray plaster, the acid test for the start of our quiet success story.
Every project we have done since then has led to new projects. We deliver what the market really wants: smooth white acoustic surfaces, seamless, safe to produce, invisibly repairable, renovable.
We are still often ridiculed. However, the advantages of DEKOZELL acoustic plaster systems are so overwhelming that in the end the stage increasingly belongs to us – to the benefit of everyone involved. If you want a seamless acoustic ceiling, only a DEKOZELL acoustic plaster system really makes sense. Word is increasingly getting around and we are passionate about this. We have the European patent for the use of natural fibres as a filler for acoustic plasters. Our reputation is based quite simply on recommendations, not on hundreds of sales representatives. We now operate a three-storey large-scale mixing plant with a mixing accuracy of 1:100,000 – and a possible production capacity of up to 5,000m² per day.
We are looking ahead. We are excited about what is to come. And are looking forward to it. With you at our side.
Let us convince you
and inspire you.
Let us advise you
Talk to our Dekozell specialists. We “only” make seamless acoustic plaster systems, but we do it uniquely well and with enthusiasm. And we go the extra mile for you to find the best solution for your project.
Request a free sample
Only your professional judgement decides. So request your product sample from us and take the Dekozell quality check into your own hands. We will ensure that you receive your sample as quickly as possible.