tesa Brand Turns 75

Innovations to the adhesive tape line continued for several years, and in 1906, the Beiersdorf Company, located in Hamburg, Germany, held a contest among its employees to suggest brand names for the adhesive tape line. Elsa Tesmer, a secretary at the company, submitted the word “tesa,” which represented a combination of letters within her name. The brand name became legalized, and the first tesa-branded product—tesa®-Klebefilm—a transparent film-backed tape designed for general-purpose holding applications, hit the market in 1936.