Our history

The paint from the roll

It all began with a seemingly simple but revolutionary idea for the (re)design of surfaces: in 1975, our company founder Gottfried A. F. Militzer developed a self-adhesive film with low-reflection embossing and gave it the name Milament film. Until then, it was common practice to paint, paint or wallpaper walls at great expense, which led to delays and high costs when furnishing temporary rooms such as in museums, at trade fairs or other presentation formats. Thanks to our film, which was already available in a good 30 colour shades at the beginning, it was now possible to design wall surfaces easily, cleanly and individually over and over again.

Thanks to the high-quality material and scratch resistance, an even and expressive look was created that could hardly be achieved by painting or varnishing. In order to guarantee the flexible application possibilities in their entirety, carrier plates were offered parallel to the films, which were compatible with the trade fair systems on the market and were later developed into honeycomb elements.

MBA team at a tug-of-war in a meadow

The idea hit the mark!

Only five years later, more than one million square meters of Milament films were sold worldwide from Sonnebühl, where MBA's headquarters were located until 1988. This international success is not only visible in the company name, MBA Worldwide, but led to the foundation of our American subsidiary in 1987 in Exton, Pennsylvania. Until today, MBA-USA successfully serves a large number of customers in museums as well as in the trade fair and exhibition construction industry in the USA.

Only one year later the company moved to Reutlingen, where the company headquarters is still located today. In 1991 the next generation joined the family business: Markus Militzer, son of the company founder, took over more and more of the business and still runs it successfully today!

From the film to the system

After the great success of the films and the panels and honeycomb elements coated with them, the idea of developing a wall system of its own that would clearly stand out from the previous systems was obvious: No disturbing system technology should be visible from the outside and it can be installed and removed in a very short time.

Thus, in 1990, we developed and patented the Mila-wall Series 100. Not only its functional, constructive characteristics, but also the combination of flexibility and aesthetics convinced ART Frankfurt in the same year, and so we were able to celebrate the introduction of the series with a first major order for 6,000 wall modules.

To this day, we continue to work on expanding and optimizing the modular wall system with all-round aluminum frames and to extend the range of accessories - including, of course, the range of foils, which has now grown to more than 176!

Audible development

The constant expansion of our product range has earned us many national and international (design) awards in recent years. But that's not all: The further development and research of new ideas opens up new application possibilities in temporary interior design.

In 2014, for example, we developed Mila-wall Acoustic together with the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics. Thanks to its micro-fine perforations, it can reliably absorb sound and is therefore perfect not only for acoustic screening in temporary rooms, but also in office solutions implemented over the long term.

Today and in the future

Today we are successful developers, manufacturers and distributors of sustainable, modular wall systems worldwide, with the aim of creating valuable spaces. For more than 45 years, we have seen ourselves as competent partners whose individual solutions are at home wherever high-quality design meets flexible solutions - in other words, in all areas of spatial staging from museums to trade fair construction and events to office furnishings.

Our goal is still to design high-quality emotional spaces that fascinate and inspire people. At the same time, we want to conserve resources for future generations through modern and long-term reusable products. True to our philosophy: The Art of Space Design - fascinating and transforming.

MBA team in meditative pose on a meadow