The story - How everything started

ORION’s roots stretch back to the 1940s, when the Rotermunds, a married couple, established a successful condom mail order company in Flensburg. Additional product lines were added piece by piece to this business: already in the 1950s ATELIER COTTELLI emerged for erotic underwear and the innovative proprietary condom brand SECURA came into being.

The founding of CARL STEPHENSON Publishing followed in the 1960s and Super8 film production in the 1970s, which later evolved into video production that today includes over one thousand proprietary titles.

During the 1970s the Flensburg-based mail order firm grew on the basis of extensive and successful acquisition of new customers. Dirk Rotermund took over leadership of the firm in the beginning of the 1980s. The subsidiaries ORION Austria and ORION Switzerland were founded and ORION wholesale was launched.

Now only a powerful chain of ORION stores was missing. For its creation in 1986, Werner Susemichel, who already had 16 of his own stores, was brought on board as partner. Today ORION is the largest erotic specialty chain in Germany.

With the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989, sales figures doubled. Additional ORION mail order businesses were founded throughout Europe.

Since the year 2000, ORION has followed the changing markets with its own chains of stores in Austria, Spain, and Scandinavia.

ORION traditionally faces the competition in an independent way, out of its own power with an ever highly motivated young staff.

The story - How everything started