The history of these Mittelstand are always like this too: some guy invented a very complicated product, so he found a firma to make that product, sometimes later his children took over and turned it to a global business. Their head office is always located in a village in a middle of nowhere but they have offices in a dozen countries.

As an Asian I'm always perplexed by these stories since in my country the cities are where all the people concentrated and all the business takes places, so it's a mystery how a company in such a remote area can have bigger outreach than most of the companies in my country. And still manage to create world-class products.