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Press Release

December 09, 2013

10 Years, 1000 Laser Systems

Stuller Inc. and ROFIN Celebrate Successful Partnership

It has been 10 years since jewelry manufacturer Stuller and laser specialist ROFIN-Baasel met for the first time. The two companies, both pioneers in their particular industries teamed up to introduce laser material processing to the retail jeweler. It turned out to be the starting point for an outstanding, successful partnership.

Stuller - facing the challenge of change
Back in 1970, Matt Stuller started his jewelry business selling from the back of his Winnebago. Today, Stuller Inc. is one of the world’s leading suppliers of quality, value-added products for the global jewelry industry, offering more than 200.000 jewelry and jewelry-related items. And Mr. Stuller made it this far by constantly asking himself what he could do differently - and better - than the competition? Shortly after starting his own business, he pitched the idea of overnight jewelry shipments to FedEx CEO Fred Smith in the delivery company's early days. In 1997, Stuller launched its first user-friendly website and 2003 the company introduced laser welding to the jeweler's bench.

ROFIN - the manual laser welding pioneer
ROFIN-Baasel started pioneering manual laser welding in 1992. Founded by Carl F. Baasel in the mid 70s, the company started as an OEM, manufacturing laser systems for specialized markets. But soon ROFIN-Baasel began to develop its own laser sources. In 1992, time was right for StarWeld, the first all-in-one system, which soon became the manual laser welding industry standard. A success, which is very much liked to the company's customer-driven development approach. Soon, the first jewelers were amongst the early customers and got involved with their individual needs.

Cooperative product development
Stuller knows that it is not just about selling lasers to jewelers. The company's staff in Lafayette, LA rapidly acquired profound expertise in laser material processing of precious metals. Today, their know-how and the aggregated feedback of Stuller's customers is an important building block for ROFIN's future laser system development. Even more than that, some years ago Stuller passed the idea of a desktop laser welding system to ROFIN. The result can be seen in the new StarWeld Desktop, which complements the manual laser welding product line-up with a compact table-top system.

Innovation excellence and long-term partnership
As Wolfgang Illich, Business Unit Manager at ROFIN says: "Innovation excellence, long-term partnerships and sustainable business models are part and parcel of Stuller's and ROFIN's philosophy. Solid business relationships as well as personal friendships are based on sharing the same values. We are proud of having Stuller as our partner and we look forward to the next decade of our successful cooperation." Matt Stuller the founder of Stuller, Inc. comments the partnership with ROFIN as follows: "Here at Stuller, our philosophy has always been not just to sell products, but to offer optimum solutions to our customers. ROFIN shares this same philosophy. Their systems have been, and still are the best available laser welding solutions for jewelers. Our customers can work faster and more accurately. They can even perform completely new tasks with the welders, such as eyeglass frame repair or repair of stone settings without removing the stone. These easy-to-use lasers generate additional business for our customers, which makes them profitable. We are happy to name ROFIN with its high quality products and its highly committed staff our partner."