Storz & Bickel

The Storz & Bickel Story

Storz & Bickel is the most well-known name in the vaporizer industry as manufacturers of the world-famous Volcano desk-top medical vaporizer. It is a German company based in the town of Tuttlingen, Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany, a centre of medical equipment manufacturing with about 500 such businesses located there ranging from one-man enterprises to multi-national businesses.

Storz & Bickel's story began in 1996 when Marcus Storz began to develop the world's first desk-top herbal vaporizer unit. In January 1998 he filed for his first patent for the detachable valve balloon, granted in 1999, followed by one for the heating block acting as a heat exchanger for "hot air extraction inhalers" in August, 2000. Vapormed Inhalatoren was formed that year to produce the Volcano. A certain Jürgen Bickel was one of its first customers.

The Volcano had a big impact, not least amongst the medical research community for whom it quickly became, and remains to this day, the "gold standard" of medical vaporizer technology. In December 2002 Bickel became a partner in the new company STORZ & BICKEL GmbH & Co. KG.

Developments continued with the Easy Valve patent filed in August 2006 and production beginning in May, 2007, along with the Volcano Digital vaporizer. In this same month total sales of both the Volcano Classic and the Easy Valve exceeded 50,000 units each. In 2009 Storz & Bickel was fully certified for its quality management system according to ISO 9001 and 13485 - necessary for qualification as a medical equipment manufacturer.

In the very next year, 2010, the Volcano received medical certification and this was followed in 2014 by the development of two portable vaporizers - the Mighty and the smaller Crafty. In 2015 the Mighty received medical certification for portable herbal vaporizers. Storz & Bickel remains the only company in the world to produce medically certified herbal vaporizers.

In 2016 the company moved into new, purpose built premises in Tuttlingen where all research & development, quality control, production, sales and shipping is based. In 2019 the new Volcano Hybrid model was launched with the option of filling the usual balloons with vapour or using a tube or whip to inhale through.

All Storz & Bickel customers are guaranteed vaporizer products made to the highest standards with an excellent price/performance relationship coupled to a long product life and first class customer service. All Storz & Bickel vaporizers have a 3 year limited warranty.