The name Tesa is an artificial word created from the name of the former secretary Elsa Tesmer (..sa te..), who worked at Beiersdorf until 1908. The company first manufactured toothpaste tubes and the brand name was therefore used for the patent tube of Pebeco toothpaste, developed at Beiersdorf. The tube business was unsuccessful and for that reason, the brand name was assigned to a newly developed product in 1926. The company gave the name to an innovative coating wax into which sausages were plunged to form an outer casing, but it was unsuccessful on this product, as well.
In 1935, Beiersdorf AG developed a transparent adhesive film that first made it into stores with the name "Beiersdorf Rubber Adhesive Film," and only made a few sales. The Beiersdorf employee Hugo Kirchberg then came up with the idea of calling the product TESA. Kirchberg spoke of tesa-adhesive film for the first time in a letter from 1936. In addition to this idea, the salesman had other marketing ideas. He developed a tabletop dispenser that the consumer could use for working with the adhesive tape. With advertising slogans that reflected the spirit of the times, he led the product and name to success.
The introduction of tesa as an umbrella name for all of Beiersdorf's adhesive tapes increased the importance of the brand enormously after 1941. Today, there are about 6,500 different tesa products for industrial customers and end consumers. In 2001, tesa SE was formed out of Beiersdorf AG as an independent company (at that time as Aktiengesellschaft tesa AG). Annual sales in 2008 totaled 860 mil. Euros, 78% coming from specialized self-adhesive system solutions for the printing, paper, electronics and automobile industries. The end consumer can choose from a wide variety of products for creative design, repairs and renovations in supermarkets, drugstores and building centers, as well as office and stationery supply stores.