Leica Builds A Future On Its Past
Dr Kaufmann is late. To be honest, I’m surprised he’s finding time to do this interview at all, given how tight his schedule must be just now. Yesterday he hosted around 1000 guests and media at the formal opening of Stage III of Leitz Park, the grand vision for Leica Camera AG he initiated back in 2007 after the Kaufmann family took over ownership of the company.
While we wait for the good doctor to arrive, I’m entertained by Stefan Daniel who is the global director of Leica’s Business Unit Photo. He joined the company at the age of 18 as an apprentice, so he’s well into his fourth decade with the famous ‘red dot’ logo.
“There have been a few changes over that time,” I comment. He smiles, and nods. “It’s a very different company today,” he observes, adding, “… and there were a few times when I thought it might not survive”. We lapse into a short contemplative silence because I know as well as he does that the future for Leica looked very bleak on at least a couple of occasions before the rescue party arrived in 2004 in the form of Dr Andreas Kaufmann.
Although he was born in southern Germany, the Kaufmann family made its fortune in Austria – he still lives in Salzburg – in the paper and packaging industry. Andreas trained as and then worked for 15 years as a teacher at a Rudolf Steiner school, but his career path changed abruptly when he and his two brothers inherited… let’s just say, a amount of money. He started looking around for possible investments and,
