Discovering the IMCO lighter brand

BIC and Zippo may look like the best-known lighter makers, but that is without counting IMCO. Since 1907 the company has been making lighters that are as practical as they are neatly finished, and some of them are now collected. Here is a closer look at the brand and its products.

IMCO: from a button workshop to the lighter

It was in Austria, before the First World War, in 1907, that Julius Meister set up his business making buttons and metal accessories. He named it Julius Meister & Co, but ended up calling it IMCO. Success came quickly, since his main customer was the army. After the war, demand fell sharply and the range had to be diversified.

So it was that in 1918 Julius Meister decided to make lighters, and not just any lighters. Although environmental thinking and the art of recycling were far less widespread than they are today, IMCO recovered used cartridges and salvaged the metal from shell cases to make its products. The patents came in 1922. As a point of detail, Austria is also the birthplace of the flint, since it was the Austrian Auer von Welsbach who devised it.

Buoyed by its success, the European brand decided to make a new stainless steel range from 1930 onwards. The best known model remains the IMCO Triplex Super, which was a hit in the mid-1930s and was improved in 1950. It is a semi-automatic lighter that lights on its own when the cap is opened. That novelty found its public in the 1930s, and the brand grew rapidly as tobacco use expanded worldwide.

IMCO, the phoenix rising from its ashes

IMCO soon became a competitor to Zippo, and the two brands, although based on different continents, fought a fierce commercial battle. Much later, in 1988, the company, then owned by the Haas family, was sold and took the name IFA, for IMCO Feuerzeuge Austria. Tobacco control policies eventually got the better of the brand, which closed its doors in 2012.

The Japanese are said to have an eye for quality and for straight dealing in business. A year later, in 2013, the pipe maker Tsuge bought the brand and all the IMCO machinery. In the meantime, the machines had been left with the Austrian company Cl-Clip, a specialist in office supplies.

IMCO has sold 500 million lighters around the world to date. It continues to produce inexpensive lighters with new features.