Christian's son, Paul Lechler, expanded the business and in 1878 sold it to his main collaborators to focus on other undertakings in the chemical field and spraying technology.
In the early years customers were small-sized non-specialist retailers, professional private users and businesses that employed Lechler products largely on iron and wood, e.g. coaches, railway wagons and carriages, tramway cars and furnishings.
In 1910, as the German parent had decided to shut down the Italian subsidiary, three employees, Messrs. Brizzolara, La Regina and Rizzi asked a local bank Banco Edoardo Clerici, later renamed Banca Amadeo, to bring together a pool of financiers willing to invest in the business in which they too would buy a stake and also manage.
[citation needed] Under the new management the industrialisation of the production process got started: electricity and the first machines began to be used, a specialised graduate was hired at the lab.
Lechler was the first in Italy to develop, make and sell a product based on such a raw material, i.e. Lechleroid which dried fast, could be sprayed and came in a broad range of colours.
In these years the company began to expand abroad: first into Europe with the opening of offices in the UK, France, Spain and Germany, then into the rest of the world with the establishment of a distributors’ network.
Lechler also works with artists Fabrizio Musa,[2] Mariko Mori,[3] Marco Della Torre[4] and Raymundo Sesma to find paint solutions that meet their needs.