Reinhold Würth

Germany, fasteners. Würth took over his father's two-person screw wholesaler in Künzelsau in 1954, aged 19, and built the Würth Group into the world's leading seller of screws, fixings and assembly materials to tradespeople. The specialism was distribution rather than invention: a huge direct sales force visiting workshops and building sites, opening subsidiaries country by country from the 1960s.