Holding it altogether: a century of the snap fastener

By Elke Silberer Sep 8, 2011, 4:06 GMT

Stolberg, Germany - The German company Prym has been making snap fasteners for more than 100 years, which proves that an invention doesn't have to be complex to have staying power.

The world changes and products come and go, but the basic design of the snap fastener hasn't changed. But given that it's been around for so long and enjoyed such success, it's allowed to dress itself up every now and then.

The relatively simple object essential to the fashion industry began as a means to hold together the fly in men's pants. These days it is part of a larger company that also makes sewing supplies and other clothing accessories such as needles, thread and zippers.

Prym in the town of Stolberg near Aachen in western Germany is known worldwide, providing snap fasteners, zippers, metal buttons used in blue jeans, rivets, eyelets and washers for generations.

'Its function is unmatched,' Andreas Engelhardt, chief executive of Prym, said of the snap fastener. While he likes to change the subject to Inovan, another successful division of the company making sensors and contact elements for electronics, he recognizes that for the consumer, Prym is synonymous with snap fasteners.

The likelihood of a garment having a Prym snap is relatively high. The factory's noisy machines churn out a 15 million press snaps a day. The family-run company considers itself the world leader in the industry, but this can't be stated definitively because the Japanese company YKK, which focuses on zippers, doesn't release figures about its snap production.

Heribert Bauer of Stuttgart is credited with inventing the first press snap in 1885 and the reason was practicality. He wanted to make it easier to open and close men's pants, according to his patent application. The first prototypes failed. Years later in 1903 Hans Prym improved the snap, making it more reliable and user-friendly, which was the key to its worldwide acceptance and fame.

The snap fastener belongs to the Prym Group's fashion division, which also produces zippers. About one-third of the company's annual revenue of 360 million euros (522 million dollars) comes from the division.

Prym started in 1642 as a producer of metal goods and claims to be the oldest family-owned industrial enterprise. Today it employs 3,900 people, nearly 1,400 in Germany where all Prym snap fasteners are made.

The snaps remain practical today, but the market demands a certain standard: They must be strong enough to hold children's clothing together, rugged enough for outdoor clothing, resilient enough for use in closing purses and wallets, and chic enough for brand name garments. The giants of the fashion world know the little town of Stolberg because of Prym.

Engelhardt won't name specific clients but he tells the story of a maker of blue jeans that wanted buttons that looked like they had been found on jeans buried 150 years ago. The goal was a nostalgic look and feel with a rustic appearance.

Achieving such a coating is a job for an expert. The same is true for the other extreme when top designers want buttons polished to a brilliant finish for their most beautiful pieces.

The company's baroque administrative building in Stolberg is a witness to a bygone era in which brass metalworking was the norm. Business these days moves much faster.

Only about four weeks pass from the day an idea is sketched out to the day it reaches the customer. The rapid changes in clothing collections and the variety of manufacturing systems place huge demands on Prym in terms of material, logistics and speed.

But the snap fastener will endure, Engelhardt said, because in whatever garment or accessory it is used, it makes closing or fastening quick and reliable especially compared with other fasteners such as the belt. The snap fastener, he said, is 'indispensable.'