Glory of a Decade

Gustav Wolf Suzhou celebrates the 10th anniversary of its founding.

Preparations for the event appear satisfactory as Ernst Wolf walks about to take a personal look at the settings inside and outside the great tent of white canvas, where the celebration of Gustav Wolf Suzhou’s 10th anniversary will soon begin. Guests are arriving and placing their signatures on the wall of honor in front of the newly painted Gustav Wolf office building, designed in the same style as the one at the mother company in Gütersloh, Germany. The celebration opens with a drum performance. In his welcome speech, Wolf gives hearty thanks to everyone present, especially to VIPs of shareholders (Shenwang and Mak Kee), honored customers, business partners and media, like ELEVATOR WORLD.

Gustav Wolf Suzhou has supplied high-performance elevator wire ropes for the ever-growing Chinese market over the past decade. Those for traction machines in high-speed elevators accomplished a record of 20.5 mps. Wolf is proud of the successes Gustav Wolf has achieved by supporting the economic growth and the fast and vast development of local infrastructure in China, providing elevator wire ropes for projects such as Shanghai Center (632 m tall) and Ping An International Finance Centre (660 m tall) in Shenzhen. In addition, the company is exporting its products to many Southeast Asian countries, Australia and the U.S. from its Suzhou factory.

Thomas Scholz, the new general manager based in Suzhou, has begun the second leg of the Gustav Wolf relay in China with what he calls his “sunshine team.” Decorations in the office building look impressive, including industrial artworks in the showroom and hanging from the ceiling of the hall. On the inside wall, three famous idioms in Chinese caught your author’s eye, to which he added a fourth:

• 固若金汤     (strong and solid like gold, of the wire ropes)
•     (made with finest workmanship at work)
• 德才兼备     (by people of both great merits and talents)
• 夫唱妇随    (wife follows and helps husband in business)

Your author added the fourth line to render the Chinese idioms perfect both in poetic form and in meaning, showing the name of Gustav in Chinese when reading the first column vertically. This was for an exceptional wife/husband harmony noticed at the evening party when Ernst Wolf handed the shareholder’s award to his wife. These Chinese idioms are also well in line with Scholz’s managing philosophy — family, sunshine and learning. A sand-drawing performance in honor of the 130-year founding of the group and the decade of glory of Gustav Wolf Suzhou impressed all.