Heroldsberg, November 2025. For Schwan-STABILO, the 2024/25 fiscal year was marked by a weak economy and a challenging economic environment. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), global growth in 2024 was only around three percent, the lowest it has been in years. Global trade slowed because of increased tariffs, geopolitical tensions, and noticeable consumer restraint. This was also the case in Germany where consumer spending remained subdued,
especially in the non-food sector.
These difficult conditions affected all three of Schwan-STABILO's consumer-oriented business areas: Pens, Cosmetics, and Outdoor. The Group yet again recorded a decline in sales in the past fiscal year. As of June 30, 2025, Group sales were around EUR 758 million, approximately five percent below the previous year's figure (EUR 797.2 million). Adjusted for currency effects, this was around four percent lower than in the previous year.
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„Staying on course and providing a new impetus“
Heroldsberg/May 2025. A significant leadership change is underway at the globally active family-owned business Schwan-STABILO. With operations spanning Writing Instruments, Cosmetics, Outdoor, and revenues of approximately €800 million, the Group employs more than 5,200 people in 38 locations worldwide. After nearly three decades in various leadership roles, Sebastian Schwanhäußer (61) will step down from his operational responsibilities at the end of the current fiscal year and assume the position of Chairman of the Advisory Board on July 1, 2025.
As of October 1, 2025, Michele Molon (48) will take over as Group CEO of Schwan-STABILO. During the transition period, CFO Anke Buttler will lead the Group’s operations. This generational shift has been deliberately prepared to ensure stability while welcoming new momentum and perspectives. As a sixth-generation family-owned company, Schwan-STABILO continues to believe that early, well-planned transitions are a sign of strength — especially in an increasingly volatile business environment.
„We don't think in years, we think in generations“
Heroldsberg/April 2025. When 25-year-old Gustav Adam Schwanhäußer took over a pencil factory founded ten years earlier in 1865, nobody could have imagined that it would grow into a globally successful company. Today, the Schwan-STABILO group of companies is managed by the sixth generation - and generates an annual turnover of around 800 million euros with around 5,300 employees worldwide. (As of 30.06.2024). This makes Schwan-STABILO one of Germany's leading family businesses, which together secure around 60 percent of private sector jobs.
"We are and will remain a family business," emphasizes Sebastian Schwanhäußer, CEO and executive shareholder of Schwan-STABILO. "No matter what challenges we face - we think in terms of generations, not years."
Heroldsberg, October 2024: Sebastian Schwanhäußer, CEO of the Schwan-STABILO Group, has been presented with the award at a ceremony held at the Haus der Wirtschaft in Nuremberg on October 15, 2024. The award is bestowed annually on individuals who, according to the IHK statutes, “have shown exemplary, extraordinary and outstanding commitment to the interests of the social market economy and to the economic development of Middle Franconia”. More than 150 guests from the worlds of business and politics were invited. His family and long-standing colleagues from the company also shared this special moment with him and congratulated him on this honor.
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Heroldsberg, Germany, 4 January 2023. Anke Buttler (51) started in her new role as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for Schwan-STABILO on January 1st this year. She joins CEO Sebastian Schwanhäußer as part of the
group’s management board. With a master’s degree in business administration, Buttler can draw on a career spanning over 20 years working for international corporations, including consumer goods manufacturer Proctor & Gamble, where she worked for many years, and more recently as CFO for beauty brand COTY, where she was responsible for the Germany, Austria and Switzerland markets. Having grown up in Franconia, Buttler, who has two daughters in their late teens, has come back to her home province in her new role for Schwan-STABILO. In addition to the professional challenges the position brings with it, she is particularly looking forward to “the people, the company culture and the Schwan-STABILO brands.” In contrast to a listed company, “a family business like Schwan-STABILO offers the 2 opportunity for more long-term planning, decision-making and strategies. This provides wonderful scope for creativity!”
Heroldsberg, Germany, 16.3.2022. For three weeks now we have been witnessing images of despair, destruction and people fleeing for their lives at the heart of Europe. This suffering, and the fears of families and friends, including colleagues from both nations who work at our company, are affecting us deeply.
This is why we have initiated our own donation campaign across all divisions of Schwan-STABILO to help people in their time of need.
Our outdoor division deuter, for example, has donated hundreds of sleeping bags for refugees. And all our other companies are providing individual help.
At STABILO we are donating pens, pencils and markers to the value of around €200,000. Most of them are going directly to children in refugee camps via our STABILO subsidiaries in Hungary, Slovakia and Poland. For regional projects, our two German facilities in Heroldsberg and Weißenburg have opted to donate to the Bavarian Red Cross as a major aid organisation and we are donating products to the value of around €40,000 to the organisation’s Nuremberg address. In addition, packets of pens, pencils and markers are being sent to some schools in Heroldsberg, Nuremberg, Fürth and Weißenburg.
We are aware of the very many meaningful projects that are worth supporting! But we are concentrating our support through the decision to set up our own donation initiative within the Schwan-STABILO Group. We therefore trust that you will appreciate that over and beyond this we are not able to support any other projects with free products.
Thank you very much – and please do what you can to help!
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