The enterprising offshoot of a merchant family
The Hackman story begins in 1790, when the émigré Johan Friedrich Hackman from Bremen was awarded the right to establish a trading house in the Hanseatic city of Vyborg. He soon had a successful timber goods business on his hand, but was driven to seek new opportunities to the west in the territory that is now Finland.
In the early 1800s Hackman bought Sorsakoski a small factory community in eastern Finland. The purchase included a sawmill, a flourmill and a brick factory. Hackmans cutlery business began in the neighboring district of Vyborg in 1876, when Johan Friedrich Hackman the younger was at the helm of the company.
Specialization in metal industry with design as a success factor
Hackman moved its entire cutlery manufacturing business to Sorsakoski in the early 1890s. The factory community was a microcosmos of Finnish society at the turn of the twentieth century. Companies like Hackman took full responsibility for providing basic services to their employees. When the Sorsakoski sawmill was completely destroyed by fire in 1897, Hackman focused on the metal industry exclusively.
In 1902 Hackman began manufacturing new low-cost cutlery items forged from a single workpiece. The introduction of stainless steel in the 1920s revolutionized the entire cutlery business. Designers could now explore new form factors, while manufacturers benefited from unmatched durability and functionality.
In the 1950s the Sorsakoski factory began manufacturing coffee pots, saucepans and other kitchen accessories, as well as making pipes and containers. By the 1960s design legends like Kaj Franck and Bertel Gardberg had designed iconic cutlery collections for Hackman. In fact, it was the Savonia collection by Adolf Babel that made Sorsakoski the flagship of Nordic cutlery design.
Hackman, now a trademark of the Fiskars Group, continues to be the leading Nordic specialist in cutlery.
