Successor wanted

Dr.-Ing. Jakob Höß

SCHICO Seed Sampler M2000

SCHICO Seed Sampler M2000

SCHICO Seed Sampler M2000

SCHICO has had a good reputation in the cleanroom industry for decades, even though the company is relatively small and the product range is very limited. The quality and ingenuity of the offerings, combined with the resilience and character strength of the company owner, have kept the company alive even in difficult times. Now, the elderly owner is looking for a successor.

When Dr.-Ing. Jakob Hoiß (81) casually and without drama talks about his nearly 50-year company history, one cannot help but notice: The man has backbone. In fact, he has experienced quite a lot both privately and professionally. But Jakob Hoiß does not complain, he does not lament his fate, but is rather proud of what has been achieved. Even about the difficult time when a contractual partner "took" his patents in an almost eight-year legal process, he reports today with complete calmness.

The brave inventor invested almost his entire fortune in the exhausting court process from 2002 to 2010. In the end, he had no choice but to accept a settlement proposed by a "weary" judge and to give up all rights to the ZYCLODEST system he invented and everything bearing the name "ZYCLODEST System Dr. Hoiss." This water distillation system for producing pure water for the pharmaceutical, biomedical industry, and hospitals had proven itself for years and was sold many times. After the end of the lawsuit, however, no such systems were ever built or sold by the new rights holder. They simply disappeared from the market, even though some of the earlier built systems are still reliably in operation today.

What doesn't kill us…

After this bitter disappointment, which cost not only a lot of money and effort but also forced Schico to lay off all employees, Dr. Hoiß soon turned to new projects again. The mental strength for this had he first developed during his military service, later through parachuting, paragliding, and flying his own airplane during thousands of takeoffs and landings. Thus, the trained mechanical engineer and process technician, already well into his sixties at the time, once again set to work in his workshop, which was now housed in his private residence. By then, he had already filed 43 utility models, patents, and trademarks.

Inspired by a customer inquiry, he developed a device to test the microbiological quality of a gaseous medium, now known as the SCHICO microbial sampler M2000. This product, built and marketed solely by Schico to this day, is specifically used to detect microorganisms in compressed gases and has earned a good reputation in the pharmaceutical industry due to its ideal design and ease of operation. Unlike other methods, the established method of collecting microbes on a filter means no nutrient medium such as agar is introduced into the testing environment for the compressed gas. Since no pressure reduction is necessary during sampling within the measurement range of approximately 0.5 to 9 bar overpressure, nearly all microbes can be captured alive. This is important because the subsequent counting of microorganisms on nutrient media can only detect living microbes through colony formation.

Good prospects in the growing cleanroom market

This unique product, according to the company owner, has significant potential in the steadily expanding cleanroom industry. However, in his now advanced age, he no longer dares to undertake a market offensive into international territories or to expand his production capacity. To not give up his "baby," Dr. Hoiß would like to transfer his company and the associated know-how to younger hands in the near future.

The tireless senior envisions an engaged entrepreneur who understands the matter and is willing to invest his energy and creativity into this company and its further development. It is also important to him that the good customer relationships built over the years are maintained. The man not only has expertise and backbone but also high values such as reliability, trustworthiness, and honesty.