Ain’t no mountain high enough…
Oldie but Goldie: with 71 years of age,
Krause veteran Richard Reipke
celebrates his 40-year anniversary at the company.
Richard Reipke
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On his first day at work in January 1969, he would have not believed where the journey at Krause would go: in the last 40 years, Richard Reipke has made a one-of-a-kind and unique career at the Bielefeld-based SME company.
After his start as a service field technician, Reipke quickly worked his way up to head of assembling, head of production, later head of engineering and finally head of technical customer support. From 1995, he started to set up the newspaper market for Krause.
This decision turned out to pay off soon. Reipke was said to meet challenges and to have a sense for new markets, which proved true for the newspaper segment. Together with manroland India, Krause’s distribution partner for India, the first installations were realised already in the early 90s. Today, Krause is the definite market leader in India with over 100 installed systems and is considered as the worldwide technology leader in the newspaper market.
After his official leave in the year 2000, Reipke has been functioning as the sales representative for the Asian Region and it seems impossible to imagine Krause without him. There must be only a few places on this planet where Reipke has not yet been on his numerous business trips. He has probably spent more time in airplanes than some pilots.
Bomb attacks in the hotel, stranded without a passport or visiting customers with gun protection, Richard Reipke can report many interesting things from this time abroad. Luckily, he was never involved into any serious trouble in all these years at Krause. Because of his open minded and friendly character, he never had problems to find his way in foreign places.
Demonstrating discipline and creativeness, Reipke is always up for a joke, but a serious and successful businessman. In times of increasing competition, faster careers and more frequent job changes, Richard Reipke’s career shows a consistency and loyalty to his company, which is especially today very exceptional.
He is still in good health, so that the Krause team and his customers can probably count on the ‘Goldie’ for a long time. Retirement is, as he says, problematic for him, because his wife would not be able to occupy him long enough. All the way, Richard’s contribution to Krause is praiseworthy!
