The actual beginning - what's in a name?

In the midst of a seemingly never-ending crisis, the battle-weary Catalan inventors and Ieper company Vansteenkiste started negotiations over a possible cooperation. Knowing that his brother was far more familiar with the weaving process, Baldewijn Steverlynck asked Karel to take charge of the discussions. For the Steverlynck family, the Picañol invention implied a unique possibility to start producing their own weaving machines. Immediately recognising the opportunities, Karel Steverlynck made sure to patent the unparalleled process for the modernisation of weaving machines together with Juan Picañol. Negotiations finally resulted in the incorporation on 22 September 1936 of the “NV Weefautomaten Picañol” – Picañol Automatic Weaving Machines. The Picañol company was born! However, Picañol the Spaniard never became a priority shareholder - Karel kept that right for himself. The Steverlynck family expressed their thanks by naming the company in Ieper after the Spanish inventor. Until the early 1980s, Picanol would be pronounced as ‘Picanyol’. With the rise of the computer and in view of the fact that many people thought that we were a Spanish or South American company, the ‘tilde’ was removed from the company name in 1987.