WÜSTHOF Fills Position of Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

WÜSTHOF fills the position of Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the WÜSTHOF Group Management Board 

Personnel:          Viola Wüsthof and Harald Wüsthof announce the appointment of Jan-Patrick Schmitz as the CEO of the WÜSTHOF group in a personal letter to their employees.

Excerpt from the letter:

“We are delighted that Jan-Patrick Schmitz accepted the position of Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Management Board of the WÜSTHOF Group, effective January 1, 2021. We have been working closely together for more than a year and during this time we have come to appreciate him as a person and a manager. We share the same values, which are reflected in our strategic growth plan, Projekt 8. Together, we have further refined our vision for WÜSTHOF’S future.”

Several years ago, we successfully initiated the evolution from a Solingen-based knife manufacturer to a global premium consumer brand. With Jan-Patrick at the helm for the WÜSTHOF Group, we will continue to pursue this strategic growth path.

Jan-Patrick Schmitz has the knowledge and experience to lead our company into the future. He grew up in Kleve on the Lower Rhine, studied in Germany and the United States, and spent many years in Japan. Today, he lives with his family in New Jersey, not far from our North American headquarters. He still has strong ties with Germany. For more than two decades, he worked for the Montblanc Group, headquartered in Hamburg. For several years, he has been Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Steiff Group, the world-renown German family-owned consumer goods and automotive technology company. As a board member of the German-American Chamber of Commerce in New York, Jan-Patrick built bridges across the Atlantic for many German and American companies.

His special skills and international expertise are valuable for our brand. He will continue to develop our corporate culture and, together with our organizations in Europe and North America, expand our presence globally.

We will focus on our role as shareholders. We will continue to be ambassadors of the brand and will represent WÜSTHOF in public. In addition, Jan-Patrick Schmitz will receive the best possible support from us in managing the company. 

WÜSTHOF will remain a Solingen based family-owned company. We will continue to offer consumers around the world the finest tools to make their culinary experiments, discoveries, and special moments with family and friends possible.

WÜSTHOF USA, Inc.

333 Wilson Ave.

Norwalk, CT 06896

T 203-852-8000