He and his wife quickly expanded the company’s retail division. Both – shoemaking and sales – proved to be important and valuable during the war years: shoes were needed. And if there weren’t any new ones to buy, then the ones you had were repaired. During the war years, when her father was a soldier in France, Milly Mengedoht ran the company alone and quite successfully. After his return from the war, Adolf Mengedoht began renovating and expanding the sales area again. Son Horst, born in 1935, graduated from high school and completed an apprenticeship at the shoe retailer Sievert in Bielefeld. He then moved to Prange in Düsseldorf, where he managed the men’s department, to Bally in Switzerland and to England, where he gained a lot of experience and knowledge about high-quality shoes. In 1959, he joined the family business as the third generation and expanded: He took over the Sievert company, where he had trained, and opened additional locations. Mengedoht soon had two locations not only in Lemgo, but also in Bielefeld, Detmold, Herford, Hameln, Hildesheim and Minden.
In addition to expanding his company, Horst Mengedoht was on the supervisory board of Garant Schuh AG in Düsseldorf. He took over the office of Vice President of the Lippe Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Detmold, was a commercial judge at the Detmold Regional Court and co-founder of the first advertising group in Lippe, as well as a member of the DIHK Trade Committee in Berlin.
125 years after the company was founded, Horst Mengedoht looks at the market with mixed feelings: “Everything has changed.” Corona was also a turning point for him. The best time, says the entrepreneur, was when fashion came from Italy: trade fairs and shoe shopping in Bologna, Milan and Riva del Garda were the shopping highlights every year.
Today the company runs specialty shoe stores in Detmold, Hameln, Hildesheim, Bielefeld, Herford and two stores in Lemgo. Branches in Kassel, Gütersloh and Minden had to be closed due to excessive rent demands. On the occasion of the anniversary, shoe retailer Mengedoht would like to thank its customers for their many years of loyalty.
