From scythe to embroidery machine

With business sense to the first company

The Rauchs were mountain farmers from Dünserberg-Bassig, a small hamlet high above Walgau at 1270m above sea level. In the 1880s Franz Josef Rauch moved together with a sister and three brothers first to Götzis-Spalla, and later to Rankweil. In 1894 they bought a house with stable and barn in Lange Gasse for 3,800 guilders.

The five siblings were hard-working people. They were engaged in a smallholding with a few head of cattle and next to it an embroidery workshop with hand embroidery machines. The two brothers Franz Josef and Johann-Baptist obviously had a good head for business. They sold their embroideries with growing success at home and abroad. Soon they built a separate workshop next to the house, first with two, then with three hand embroidery machines. They also had other embroiderers working for them. At the beginning of 1909 they founded the embroidery company "Gebr. Rauch", which flourished until the beginning of the 1930s. In the '50s the building was sold to the neighbouring company König.

Founded in 1909 by Franz Josef and Johann Baptist Rauch, the "Gebr. Rauch" embroidery company developed into a remarkable business with ten 15-yard embroidery machines by the beginning of the 1930s. But the world economic crisis of 1929 hit this industry particularly hard: a few years later, all machines were scrapped and the embroidery was liquidated. Fortunately, the Rauch family already had a second foothold there.