Hugo Boss AG, often styled as BOSS, is a luxury fashion house headquartered in Metzingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The company sells clothing, accessories, footwear, and fragrances. Hugo Boss is one of the largest German clothing companies, with global sales of €2.9 billion in 2019. Its stock is a component of the MDAX.[citation needed] The company was founded in 1924 by Hugo Boss and originally produced general-purpose clothing. With the onset of the Great Depression and the rise of Nazism in the early 1930s, Boss began to produce uniforms for the Nazi Party. Boss would eventually supply the wartime German government with military uniforms, resulting in a large boost in sales. After World War II and the founder's death in 1948, Hugo Boss started to turn its focus from uniforms to men's suits. The company went public in 1988 and introduced a fragrance line that same year, adding men's and women's wear diffusion lines in 1997, a full women's collection in 2000, and children's clothing in 2006–2007. The company has since evolved into a major global fashion house. As of 2018, it owned more than 1,113 retail stores worldwide.