Paffen Sport is another well-known German brand in competitive fighting sports. Founder Peter Paffen turned his passion for boxing into a highly successful business. The former German amateur boxing champion, official and coach was involved in the sport alongside his engineering business. The physicist and former teacher had both, the technical skills to develop good equipment and the social skills to navigate the slopes of human relationships in politics and business.
Amateur boxing World Championships 1995 in Berlin: Regina Halmich during a press pictorial with German national coach Helmut Ranze. Halmich became a professional boxing champion. Source: T. Drews/Kicksider.
In 1988, he started his own sporting goods distribution company, Paffen Sport, in Cologne. In addition to selling high-quality brands such as Adidas and Top Ten, his business expanded over the years to include producing its own branded equipment. Paffen became a household name in German gyms and soon expanded to other European countries when the Berlin Wall fell, opening up Eastern European countries to free market and causing a boom in professional boxing.
Beside supporting Olympic amateur boxing as an official supplier and sponsor, Paffen has supported a wide range of professional boxers, promoters, and stables. The first icons included the Klitschko brothers, Wladimir and Vitali, Regina Halmich, and Dariusz Michalczewski.
Around 20 years after establishing his company, Peter Paffen sold the international brand to Walter Knieps, who still runs the company today from Cologne with his strong team. Paffen Sport remains a very strong brand in the boxing business. It is expanding into kickboxing and Muay Thai as well as fitness boxing in commercial wellness gyms.
Shopping: Paffen Sport Goods