Richard Morszeck, the son of Rimowa's founder Paul Morszeck, joined the family luggage business in Cologne in the 1920s. In 1931 he registered the trademark RIMOWA, an abbreviation of "Richard Morszeck Warenzeichen" (Richard Morszeck trademark), with the Reich patent office in Berlin.
Through the 1930s he experimented with materials to make cases lighter and stronger, and in 1937 he developed an aluminium steamer trunk. When the factory on Aachener Straße was destroyed in the Second World War, every flammable material was lost and, according to the company's history as told on German Wikipedia, only the aluminium was left, and from then on Rimowa made cases exclusively from light metal. The buildings were rebuilt in 1946. In 1950 the company introduced the parallel grooves that are still its signature; the ribbed construction stiffens thin aluminium sheet, recalling the corrugated skin of Junkers aircraft, and is protected as a trademark. His son Dieter joined the firm in 1972 and took over its management in 1981.