From the beginning, the mission has been: "igus® solves customer problems!".

igus® was founded in 1964 in a two-car garage in Cologne-Mülheim. By asking the question: "Give me your worst problem part, I will solve this for you! " Günter Blase was able to win his first customer, Schlafhorst Corporation.
 
Today, igus® supplies more than 175,000 customers around the globe; on average, 4,200 packages are on their way to end customers from 13 distribution centers each day. And we continue to ask ourselves: How can we improve technology and reduce costs at the same time? The collaboration with our customers is particular important for us. In the North America alone, more than 30 sales engineers are at customer locations daily to solve tribology problems using polymer bearings.
 
In doing so, a variety of tasks can frequently be solved by one dry-tech® product. The properties of tribopolymers are able to address various tasks. The injection molding process permits complex designs to be produced cost-effectively. Products can be produced to meet requirements for almost any application. This applies to standard products and customer-specific custom produced parts.
 
A good example of this is the tolerance compensation of clearance-free pre-tensioned iglide® JVFM bearings:

Solutions result in new ideas and new products.

Due to steadily declining friction values, a growing number of applications could be solved with iglide® plain bearings. But igus® customers were also looking for ways to leverage the benefits of maintenance-free, corrosion-resistant and light dry-tech® bearings on classic ball bearing applications. In response, igus® engineers developed the xiros® polymer ball bearing product range.

Customers can also send their product requests directly to igus®. We then put these on the igus® list of future innovations.
 
An example for this is the iglide® Q2 plain bearing: Customers who also wanted to leverage lubricant-free technology on hydraulic drive applications with extreme loads needed yet another heavy-duty bearing. After two years of difficult development work, igus® rolled out the iglide® Q2 material and was able to solve a wide range of heavy-duty applications using this material.

145 new products were developed this way throughout 2012.

Many new products were added to the igus® product range in the Spring of 2013. One example is the request by an igus® customer for an installation-space optimized sliding door guide. Within a few weeks, the initial sketch for the solution to the customer's problem was converted into a first drylin® W linear guide. Today, the modular drylin® W linear guide product range is one of the most requested standard products among drylin® linear technology.