Back in 2011, we – Jürgen Wohleser & Marion Glanz – were still perfectly “normal” employees. This is the story of how a dream became Brenners Altholz®.
There was really no reason to change anything: working conditions were good, the income was fine. And yet the wish kept growing to build a company of our own and run it by our own values.
In July 2011, Jürgen once again told his colleague and friend Manfred about that dream. The next day, Manfred mentioned his uncle, who was selling old timber from his cowshed. We drove out that very day – and came home with our first reclaimed wood!
At the time, we didn’t really know much about reclaimed wood – or wood in general. But we liked it, it appealed to us, and we loved the smell of old timber. What more do you need?
Right after the purchase came the first hurdle: we had no storage. To the astonishment of our neighbours, the wood ended up in our garden.
We spent most of our free time over the following months searching for storage space, building a website and researching everything about reclaimed wood.
Shortly after the wood had left our garden, we rented our first “real” storage space at a nearby sawmill – a proud 6 × 6 metres!
Working on our own company was only possible in the evenings and on weekends – which is why most photos from that time were taken after sunset. We learned, paid for wrong decisions and tried not to repeat them.
Bit by bit, things moved uphill. We made no great leaps, sometimes we slipped a few steps back – and more than once, giving up was dangerously close. But we refused to be beaten. Not even by sleet.
Marion cut her job down to part-time – and for the first time was able to answer calls during the day, receive deliveries, welcome customers, and sort, pack and ship reclaimed wood.
The 36 m² quickly became too small. In 2015 we moved to our current site: a 500 m² hall and 2,500 m² of open yard. We invested our first earnings – without any outside capital – in machinery and infrastructure. From then on, we could process reclaimed wood ourselves.
That same year, our first employee joined us: Michi! The responsibility grew – but we were no longer on our own.
In 2016, Marion quit her job; after much back and forth, Jürgen followed in 2017. From then on there was no safety net – Brenners Altholz® was our profession.
By the end of 2017, there were already six of us.
One question we still hear all the time: “Do you only trade, or do you manufacture yourselves?” We answered it for ourselves over these years, step by step – with every machine that arrived in the hall: a thickness planer, a band saw and our own 10-metre drying kiln, plus an edger, a four-side planer and more.
Since then, no piece of wood leaves our yard that we cannot sort, cut, dry and – on request – heat-treat ourselves. To see what we do with all of it, have a look at what we do.
In 2018 we launched our first product line developed in-house: the NextBeams – BoxedBeam®, HalfBeams, ElbowBeams, T-Beams and EndBeams. Genuine reclaimed beams, rethought: lighter, easier to install and perfect wherever a solid beam would be too heavy or too deep.
The reclaimed-wood trader had definitively become a manufacturer with products of its own.
In 2019, our first order went to the USA. Today, reclaimed wood from the Innviertel hangs on walls in Vail and Aspen, on Mallorca, in Switzerland, in the Netherlands and in Luxembourg – made possible not least by our authorisation for heat treatment according to IPPC/ISPM 15 and the USDA requirements for export to the USA.
In 2021 came the next formal step: Brenners Altholz® became Brenners Altholz GmbH.
Today, our employees give their best every day so that you can enjoy our old timbers – from the Innviertel to the whole world.
