Alter Heideschäfer

Alter Heideschäfer is a German body-care brand of ointments, gels and massage fluids built around traditional plant ingredients such as arnica, calendula and mountain pine. It is one of three own brands of ASAM Betriebs-GmbH, a cosmetics manufacturer that sits within the BHI Beauty & Health Investment Group Management GmbH holding [2]. The range is small: eight products, from an arnica ointment and two Melkfett ointments to a pharmacopoeia-grade Vaseline and a pair of foot-care products.

The brand has no website of its own and no published founding story. Most public information about it is product copy on its parent company's website, supplemented by retail and wholesale listings. The German name translates roughly as "old heath shepherd", and at least one wholesale listing renders it in English as "Old Heath Shepherd" [8]. The brand is active, with its full range presented by its owner and offered by online retailers.

The year Alter Heideschäfer was introduced, and the people who created it, have not been made public. The brand is therefore best understood through the company that owns it.

That company traces its roots to 1963, when Ingrid and Erich Asam started a family cosmetics business in Berlin, where its first drugstore products were made and filled [2]. The date belongs to the parent business, not to the brand. No public statement links the Alter Heideschäfer name to the company's earliest years, and nothing indicates who first developed the range or when it reached the market.

Because the brand has no published history of its own, its timeline is effectively that of its owner. Toward the end of the 1960s the business left Berlin for Beilngries, and from 1969 the new site produced a wide spread of skin- and hair-care products: creams, gels, lotions, serums, peels, shampoos and conditioners.

In the 1970s, according to the company's own account, Erich Asam's work with scientists, dermatologists and chemists drew his attention to OPC, an active ingredient obtained from grapes. In 1983 he invested in a plant for preparing and processing grape seeds in the Palatinate, one of Germany's wine regions. The grape theme carried into the next generation. In 2002 Marcus and Mirjam Asam founded the skincare brand M. Asam, based on research into grape-derived anti-ageing ingredients, and the company's headquarters and product development moved to Unterföhring near Munich.

Later steps built out the group around these businesses. In 2013 the separate companies that had grown up around the family were brought together under the BHI holding. A consumer webshop, asambeauty.com, has offered the group's range since 2016. In spring 2019 the group took over a further production site in Steinach and expanded into decorative cosmetics. The company describes the overall path as one from a 1960s family firm to an international cosmetics business that handles the whole chain from product idea to finished product.

None of these milestones concerns Alter Heideschäfer directly. They describe the setting in which its ointments and gels are developed and sold.

Alter Heideschäfer belongs to ASAM Betriebs-GmbH, which names it alongside Kräuterhof and Almisan as its own brands. ASAM in turn sits under BHI Beauty & Health Investment Group Management GmbH. According to the group, the holding employs 510 people and also contains the brand companies M. Asam GmbH, ahuhu GmbH, 4EVERYOUNG GmbH and InnoBeauty GmbH, together with the online beauty platform ASAMBEAUTY GmbH. BHI describes itself as a leading cosmetics company in European teleshopping and also sells through e-commerce and more than 5,500 stores of large European retailers; in 2021, it says, its eight own brands sold around 33 million products in more than 50 countries. No acquisition history is documented for Alter Heideschäfer itself.

ASAM Betriebs-GmbH makes care products both for its own brands and for private-label customers. By its own figures, 230 employees produce around 650 different cosmetic products on roughly 16,000 square metres of production and storage space at its sites in Beilngries-Aschbuch and Steinach. A further branch, Biovin Naturprodukte in Landau in der Pfalz, specialises in processing grape pomace, the skins and seeds left over from winemaking. The company says it sells its creations in more than 40 countries [1], a figure that covers its whole output rather than this brand alone.

The closest relative in the portfolio is Kräuterhof, which works in similar territory. Its range includes warming and cooling "Pferdebalsam" massage gels and other body gels built on herbal extracts such as horse chestnut, arnica and rosemary.

Where the company is based depends on which page of its website is consulted. Its locations page names Unterföhring as the company headquarters and the centre of its research and development [6]. The contact block on its "about" page, by contrast, gives the ASAM Betriebs-GmbH address in Beilngries-Aschbuch, home to its production of face, body and hair care [2]. Both are locations of the parent; Alter Heideschäfer does not state a headquarters of its own.

Alter Heideschäfer publishes no mission statement, tagline or brand philosophy. Its positioning has to be read from its product descriptions, which lean on folk-remedy plant ingredients and on protecting the skin against the elements. The company writes, for example, that calendula has been known to folk medicine for more than 100 years, and it presents its calendula ointment as protection against environmental and weather influences.

Outside descriptions follow the same line. The wholesale marketplace Qogita calls Alter Heideschäfer a health brand specialising in plant-based topical care, with a range that centres on traditional herbal and plant-extract formulations [8]. The products come in 100, 250 and 500 ml formats and cover everyday needs: protecting rough skin, massaging tired muscles and caring for feet.

Broader statements on the parent's website are made at company level. ASAM says it has developed and produced its products in Germany since its founding [5], and it publishes group-wide positions on sustainability and formulation. These are not stated specifically for Alter Heideschäfer.

The arnica ointment, Arnika Salbe, is the product most often associated with the name. ASAM explains that arnica flowers contain essential oil, flavonoids and sesquiterpene lactones, plant compounds it says have anti-inflammatory, decongestant and antiseptic effects; no study is cited for the claim [3].

Two ointments are based on Melkfett, rendered in English as milking fat. The plain Melkfett-Salbe is presented by the company as a tried-and-tested protective ointment that keeps rough skin supple. Melkfett mit Ringelblume adds calendula and is aimed at skin under heavy strain. The Vaseline is described as pure and white and as meeting the requirements of the German Pharmacopoeia, the Deutsches Arzneibuch (DAB) [3]. According to Qogita, it contains no preservatives or fragrance [8].

The rest of the range is built around refreshing the body and massage. Latschenkiefer Massage-Fluid carries the scent of mountain pine and is meant for arms, legs and back. The company claims it helps prevent the muscles from tiring quickly during physical exertion, again without citing a study. Eis-Gel is a refreshing massage gel that, in the brand's words, revives body and mind. For one of these refreshing products, ASAM credits the fresh feel to plant extracts of eucalyptus, chamomile, sage, lemon balm, horsetail, rosemary, marshmallow and restharrow. Fuß-Balsam and Fuß-Gel complete the line-up; both are described as refreshing and reviving tired feet.

No proprietary technologies, patents or research partnerships are documented for Alter Heideschäfer. No third-party certifications are documented for the brand's products either.

Alter Heideschäfer is active. As of October 2026 its eight-product range is listed on its owner's website, and the products are offered through online marketplaces including eBay and Amazon. On the product-comparison site testberichte.de, the 250 ml arnica ointment has gathered 339 user opinions, with an average of 4.6 out of 5 stars [7]. That listing names the manufacturer as ASAM Kosmetik. The range is also traded wholesale through Qogita, which presents it to pharmacies, health retailers and resellers of health products.

No dated launches, brand news or press coverage are on record, so the brand's activity shows mainly in its continued availability rather than in new products. It has no social-media accounts of its own; the social channels linked from its owner's website belong to the wider asambeauty platform.