Faber celebrates his 75th birthday

Faber celebrates his 75th birthday

In 1948, in the midst of the turmoil of post-war Vienna, a young man - his name was Josef Faber - showed pioneering spirit and entrepreneurial courage. By taking over the Austrian general agency of the Czechoslovakian motorcycle brand Jawa, he laid the foundation for a company that today plays a key role in shaping the two-wheeler industry as a successful market leader. The contribution of the family business to the mobility behavior of Austrians over the last 75 years was and is significant. In total, Faber has imported around a quarter of a million Vespas over the course of history and brought them onto Austria's roads.

In 1963, Josef Faber became an importer for the Czechoslovakian bicycle industry, and in 1964 he achieved what, from today's perspective, was probably the most important coup of his life by taking over the general agency for the Italian two-wheeler brands Piaggio, Vespa and Gilera. Just a few years later, in the 1970s, a huge two-wheeler boom developed in Austria, to which Faber GmbH made a significant contribution. To date, the company has imported over 300,000 two-wheelers from Piaggio brands. The connections to Japan also became more intensive, and from 1979 Josef Faber was also the importer of Honda brand automobiles to Austria. In 1982, together with his Japanese business partners, he founded Honda Austria GmbH, which has served the Austrian market ever since. Faber will remain a Honda contract partner until 2007. After 44 years of work, Josef Faber finally handed the company over to his two sons Josef and Peter and supported them in an advisory capacity until his death in 2004.

From now on, son Josef Faber heads Faber's wholesale division and son Peter Faber takes over the retail division, which today includes two locations in Vienna. In addition to the Piaggio brands Derbi (2006) and Moto Guzzi (2008), Faber GmbH also becomes an importer of the Commercial Vehicles division and dares to undertake an ambitious, but ultimately only short-lived, revival of the traditional Austrian bicycle brand Puch (2012-2017). In 2011, Josef Faber received an award as the world's most successful Piaggio importer. In 2015, Josef Faber received the Republic of Italy's highest award for non-Italians, the "Ordine della stella d'Italia", which was awarded by the then Italian ambassador Giorgio Marrapodi on behalf of the President of the Republic of Italy. Faber GmbH will finally become the general importer for Piaggio, Vespa, Aprilia and Moto Guzzi in the Czech Republic in 2017 and will continue the company's cross-border expansion with the same brand portfolio in Slovakia in 2021. Faber is also very successful today in the brand cosmos relating to two-wheeler accessories and acts as the Austrian partner of Arai Helmets, Acrapovic, Helmo Milano, Remus, Tucano Urbano and, with Fabioni, also sells lifestyle products relating to two-wheelers. With the LV8 brand, the company also offers technical equipment for car and bicycle workshops. The company is now the Austrian market leader in the two-wheeler industry with a share of almost 20 percent of the overall two-wheeler market. Faber delivers around 8,500 Vespas every year. This makes Vespa by far the most popular scooter in this country, with around 45 percent market share in the scooter segment.