HARIBO

What they do

HARIBO makes fruit gums, liquorice and other sweets, sold under its own brand around the world. Hans Riegel founded the company in Bonn on 13 December 1920; the name combines the first letters of HAns RIegel BOnn. Production started in a small kitchen. Since May 2018 the group's headquarters and the head office of HARIBO Germany have been in Grafschaft, a short drive south of Bonn in Rhineland-Palatinate.

Why it matters

In 1922 Riegel created the Dancing Bear, a fruit gum shaped like the performing bears then seen at fairs. It was the ancestor of the Goldbear, which HARIBO launched in 1960 and registered as a trademark in 1967. The idea of a soft, chewy, shaped fruit gum has since been copied by confectioners everywhere, but the HARIBO bear remains the reference. Long-running advertising helped make the brand a household name across Europe.

Products to know

• Goldbears: the flagship gummy bears in assorted fruit flavours.
• Fruit gums and liquorice: a wide range of shapes and mixes sold worldwide.

The German angle

HARIBO is a classic German family company: privately held, discreet about its numbers and focused on a narrow product range made at scale. Leadership passed to Hans Riegel's sons Hans and Paul in 1946, and the firm remains in family hands in its third generation. Its move from Bonn to Grafschaft after almost a century shows how even the most rooted Mittelstand names rebuild their facilities to grow, while keeping the founding city in the brand name.