Bruno Storp Sr. founded Bruno Storp Chemical, Pharmaceutical and Cosmetic Products in Munich in 1911, seeking to serve regional customers with toilet waters, hair tonics and a popular soap product known as Storp’s Floating Soap. These products provided an entrée into the world of fragrance, which eventually became the company’s focus, first locally, then internationally and today globally.
By the time Storp’s son, also named Bruno, joined the company in 1946, the company had been renamed drom—an acronym of one-time partner Dr. O. Martens. The highlighting of a doctorate within the company was crucial because of the company’s historical focus on serving the cosmetics sector, note Ferdinand Storp and Andreas Storp, Bruno Storp Sr.’s grandsons and the current heads of the company. (Both, incidentally, hold doctorates.)
With each generation, a new expansion ensued for drom. First, Bruno Storp Sr. internationalized the company by marketing to England in 1931, and Switzerland, Austria, France, and Scandinavia in 1956. The company secured its fi rst US production facility in 1977, founded drom Asia/Australia and drom Japan in the 1980s, and opened a subsidiary in Paris in 1992. In more recent years, the present generation of Storps has globalized the company, establishing a plant in Guangzhou, China in 2004, opening a fragrance studio in Manhattan in 2005, and establishing a plant in Brazil in 2007. Today, the company operates with representatives in 43 countries.
