The industrial engineering graduate and Doctor of Mechanical Engineering’s lightning career, however, began almost by chance. As a doctoral student at the Hamburg University of Technology, he was involved in various industrial research projects. This resulted in a well-established connection with Lars Reeder, CEO of Hein & Oetting Precision Mechanics. “At the end of my doctorate, I already knew that I wanted to work within northern Germany’s SME environment and asked him if he knew of an exciting company within his network,” says Froemming.

Without realising, he had asked this question at just the right time: Reeder and two other partners had just decided to take over a test laboratory in Stade that was about to close down, and to launch a new venture with the infrastructure already in place. They wanted to be silent partners though and remain in the background, so they needed a CEO. “I had originally envisioned myself taking on a CEO role in my mid-40s, not my early 30s,” admits Froemming with a grin. “But then I thought I should just give it a try.” The Treo brand and the facilities in Stade were maintained, as were the laboratory’s two existing employees.

But the face of Treo has changed significantly since then – and not just through the move to Hamburg and the additional EMC laboratory in Kiel. “These days, only five to ten percent of our revenue comes from the client base we had at the beginning,” says Froemming. The rest is the company’s own achievement, via the website, trade fairs, and events such as the Hamburg Aviation Forum. Froemming greatly appreciates the opportunity which the aviation cluster provides to establish personal contact within the local industry time and again. It is this regular communication with suppliers in the cabin sector, in particular, that has allowed the laboratory to continually advance its differentiation efforts within the market, so that it now also conducts tests for Boeing and Bombardier. Airbus suppliers, however, continue to make up the majority of the client base.