Ralf Coenen
Leica CEO Jan 2005 - Apr 2005
Change on the Board of Management of Leica Camera AG:
- Hanns-Peter Cohn returns to Vitra AG
- Ralf Coenen to become new Chairman
Ralf Coenen (43), hitherto member of the Board of Management responsible for Engineering, Cooperations and Asian Sales, will become the new Chairman of the Leica Camera AG, Solms, as from January 1, 2005. This decision of the Company’s Supervisory Board, made in its meeting on Thursday, follows the proposal brought forward by Hanns-Peter Cohn (56). After six years on duty as Chairman of the Board of Management, Cohn will leave the Company at his own request to return to Vitra AG, Basle. At this manufacturer of high quality office and home furniture, he has already been active from 1984 until 1998 as one of three managing directors, with marketing and sales as his main field. As from January 1, 2005, Cohn will take on the position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at the Swiss company. Dieter Uckele (55) will stay on Leica Camera AG’s Board of Management, which in the future will consist of two members.
This changeover has been prepared from a long-term perspective in cooperation with the supervising bodies of Leica Camera AG. For a transitional period, Dieter Uckele had been appointed third member of the Board of Management as from April 1, 2003. Simultaneously Ralf Coenen, whose previous responsibilities as a Board member had been Engineering and Logistics, had extended his field of activities, taking on responsibility for Sales in the important Asian market, and had thus prepared himself for his new tasks as Chairman of the Board of Management.
Ralf Coenen, a trained communication broadcast equipment mechanic, a diploma’d physicist and a man with many years of practical experience, is the right person to be at the head of Leica Camera AG. His management knowledge, from his academic training as a Master of Business Administration (MBA), as well as from his activities as a consultant with McKinsey and as Head of the Photo and Film Lenses business division of Zeiss Group, has contributed to his qualification for the chief executive position since he joined Leica Camera in July 2000. Already today, the Company’s organisational structure, with the business divisions Sports Optics, headed by Dr. Ulrich Ehmes, and Photography, headed by Mario Thurnherr, bespeaks Mr. Coenen’s ideas”, said Hanns-Peter Cohn describing his successor designate.
The Company’s major technological cooperations, with the Matsushita Group for digital compact cameras, and with Imacon A/S (meantime merged with Hasselblad Group) for digital supplements to the Leica SLR and rangefinder systems, have been built up under the direction of Ralf Coenen. Nevertheless, Coenen doesn’t see himself as a ‘Chairman with a digital focus’: “At Leica, the centre of all efforts is the picture and the best possible quality of the picture – not its digital or analogue recording. We focus on the sports optics products and the cameras for silver halogenid film, with digital products as supplements to offer our customers broader possibilities of choice.” To spread the ‘active cult’ surrounding Leica photography, Ralf Coenen intends to extend the Leica Academy, already successful in Germany, on an international scale, to continue the intense cooperation with professional photographers and to focus distribution activities more clearly. “A good example is set by our Frankfurt dealer Foto-Hobby Rahn, who assembles under one roof a combination of Leica Shop, Leica Gallery and Leica Academy – a promising sales model starting in mid-October 2004.” Coenen is preparing a reorganisation of sales in important Asian markets.
Leica sports optics with its binoculars, scopes and range measurement devices is characterized by a direct orientation towards the main sales areas, bird watching, nature watching and hunting. Here, innovations immediately result in customer benefits, for instance, the combination of the watching and range measurement functions in a single compact binocular. “We will consistently make use of the opportunities offered by these markets and are currently working on innovations of various kinds”, said Coenen.
Commenting on the situation at the time of taking over his new function, Ralf Coenen says: “Undoubtedly Leica Camera Group is in a phase of great challenges posed by the digital revolution in photography. This revolution is causing great changes, especially at our current distribution partners, but it also making end consumers feel insecure. For me, the process of the change which will finally lead to the dominance of digital products in the mass market cannot be fast enough since the phase of radical change involves risks, for instance, in terms of loss of existing sales intermediaries. However, I’m convinced that Leica has the power, based on its technically uncomprising and emotionally unique products, to lastingly occupy a lucrative niche for analogue products. Our two major shareholders, Hermès International, Paris, and ACM Projektentwicklung, Salzburg, create the necessary environment for the implementation of improvements in distribution and for capital expenditure for new products, consistently and with a long-term orientation.”
In the second quarter of fiscal year 2004/2005 (FY end March 31) sales of Leica Camera Group were below expectations. The previously forecast break-even operating result for fiscal year 2004/2005 is therefore no longer sustained. The reasons for the sales development in the second quarter were the trade’s reluctance to order before the photokina, the delayed introduction of new products, especially in Leica sports optics, as well as selective reductions of inventory at sales partners to prepare future changes in the Company’s distribution structure in Asia and Europe.
The new products presented at the photokina trade fair received positive customer response. Orders on hand at the beginning of the third quarter are above last year’s level. The important Christmas business will be decisive for the degree to which the Company can mitigate the impact on sales and result of the second quarter. - Leica press release October 2004 / No. 51/04
