John Sharp Douglas had a good nose for fine soaps. His breakthrough, however, was thanks to Anna and Maria Carstens. The sisters opened the first Douglas perfumery in Hamburg. Heinrich Eklöh and his descendants turned it into a successful chain.

The moon makes the brick buildings in Hamburg's Speicherstadt shine brightly, the Elbe is calm. Scottish immigrant John Sharp Douglas is standing at the railing of the three-masted ship. In his pocket, the 29-year-old has everything he owns: a little money and a certificate as a soap boiler. In his head he carries a dream: his own small factory. In Scotland, taxes put a spoke in his wheel - too expensive. America would have been nice, but the crossing - too expensive. In the "Free Hanseatic City" things are different. It is the year 1820, so why not?

The first months are arduous, but the timing is good. Prominent physicians such as Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, whose patients include Goethe, Schiller and Herder, promote personal hygiene and regular washing with soap. On January 5, 1821, Douglas founded Hamburg's first soap factory. He manages to shorten the saponification process to just a few hours using a mixture of coconut oil and soda ash. This enables him to sell his high-quality packaged soaps at unrivaled prices. And he invents the most fantastic names and stories around his "Egyptian Toilet Soap" or "Chinese Heaven Soap." Douglas becomes an affordable luxury name, and Hamburg's sophisticated high society loves the fragrant pieces with their adventurous legends.

His sons Thomas and Alexander learn to be soap boilers and merchants. After their father's death in 1847, they take over the company. But Douglas' sons both remain childless, and so Alexander sells the soap factory in 1878 to Gustav Adolph Hinrich Runge and Johann Adolph Kolbe.

Ten years later, Kolbe's son Gustav took over the company. The chemist tinkered, his wife Berta managed the business. Production went well, but the factory store in Hamburg flopped. In 1908, customers no longer wanted to shop between smokes and craftsmen. The idea of the sisters Anna and Maria Carstens from Schleswig-Holstein came at just the right time. The women knocked on Kolbe's door in the soap factory's office without an appointment. Their "business proposition": How about selling Douglas soaps exclusively, in their own perfumery, but under the Douglas name? Berta Kolbe is fascinated by the idea. The risk for the soap factory is low, because the sisters can invest their father's inheritance as start-up capital. On May 24, 1910, the "Fräulein Carstens" undertake to purchase all the products that Douglas can supply from the company and to supplement the range with other high-quality products. In return, they are allowed to advertise with the Douglas name above their door. Shortly afterwards, the first Douglas perfumery opens at Hamburg's fine Neuer Wall 5, on the corner of Jungfernstieg. The location is perfect: not too far from the soap factory, right in the heart of the city center, just a stone's throw from the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten and other posh addresses on the Binnenalster. The perfumery benefits from Douglas's network of general agents and suppliers, which - unlike its competitors - gives it immediate access to the best products. Not a matter of course at the time. Berta Kolbe and the Carstens sisters are now among the first rank of the new successful women in the beauty business: they are later mentioned in the same breath as Elizabeth Arden, Coco Chanel and Helena Rubinstein.

Perfumery is a gold mine. In 1969, the six Douglas perfumeries in Hamburg are bought by the confectionery manufacturer Hussel. Now the phase of expansion begins. At the time, Hussel was owned by the Gummersbach grocer Herbert Eklöh. His grandson, Henning Kreke, now heads the listed Douglas Holding AG with a market value of more than one billion euros.

But that is not the end of the Douglas story. The Kreke family currently holds 12.61 percent of the shares. Together with the friendly Oetker family and a number of financial investors, Kreke is rumored to be seeking a majority stake. In order to take the company off the stock exchange again in the long term? Perhaps Douglas will once again become a flawless family business 200 years after it was founded.

Text: Jennifer Bligh