About goki

Made for play. Made to last.

It started in 1981 in the Hamburg free port, where Gerhard Gollnest and Fritz-Rüdiger Kiesel met. Their first warehouse was a bricked-up passageway in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, and their first catalog was a single sheet of paper listing 34 items.

For more than four decades, Gerhard Gollnest and Fritz-Rüdiger Kiesel built the company side by side. Fritz-Rüdiger Kiesel passed away in March 2024. The company they founded together continues in their spirit.

From those beginnings grew Gollnest & Kiesel — today one of the largest toy manufacturers in northern Germany, based in Güster near Hamburg.

Four brands, one idea

Everything we make follows one principle: toys should invite children to explore, build and imagine — and they should last long enough to be passed on.

• HOLZTIGER — hand-painted wooden animals and figures
• goki evolution — open-ended toys in a translucent glaze that lets the wood grain shine through
• goki baby — first toys for tiny hands
• goki — classic wooden toys for children from one to eight

Discover our brands

Safety you can trust

With more than 40 years of experience in making toys, safety is our starting point. We run our own testing laboratories, chemical testing is carried out by independent, accredited institutes, and every toy is checked intensively before it leaves our warehouse. Every toy we sell in the US is tested to ASTM F963, the US toy safety standard, and our water-based paints are also tested to the European standard EN 71-3.

Recognized for good play — and for doing good

• More than 150 of our toys carry the German “spiel gut” seal, awarded only after independent review including real play testing with children.
• Golden Rocking Horse (“Goldenes Schaukelpferd”) 2020, category “Play and Technology”.
• German Sustainability Award 2024 — the first toy company ever to receive it, recognized as a pioneer of transformation in the toys and leisure industry.

goki in America

After many years of working with US distributors, we founded our own company, goki America, Inc., to bring our toys directly to American families and retailers. Our team is based in Morehead City, North Carolina, and your orders ship from our warehouse in Selbyville, Delaware.