Rollei Rolls Again

The West German city of Braunschweig owes its reputation to a pair of dissimilar products: smoked liverwurst and Rolleiflex cameras. To the dismay of the 48-year-old family firm of Rollei-Werke, Franke & Heidecke, the cameras have proved the more perishable of the two. Although Rollei's famed twin-lens reflex practically revolutionized photography when it was introduced in 1929, business began to go stale in the late '50s when its patents ran out, cheap imitations rolled in, and Rollei was caught without new developments of its own.

Now Rollei is rolling again. The company has called a halt to its long dependence on the 120-mm. Rolleiflex, priced at $260-to-$450 in the U.S., and is focusing on the growing market for smaller 35-mm. models. Though overall German camera sales tumbled by 7% last year, Rollei's rose by 40% from $9,000,000 to an estimated $12.5 million. So strong is demand that the company looks for sales increases of 25% this year and next--if the factory can handle it.

Out with the Files. Rollei began to get back in the picture in 1963. Then, as head of the family heirs of Co-Founders Paul Franke (who died in 1950) and Reinhold Heidecke (1960), Paul's son Horst Franke, 54, asked for an outsider's assessment of the company. Called in for the job, Dr. Heinrich Peesel, a Hamburg physicist, submitted a frankly "insulting" report that rapped Rollei for feeble R. & D. efforts and outdated production methods. Far from being insulted, the company hired Peesel to put his recommendations into effect. A youthful pragmatist who is now 42, Peesel had no taste for the European tradition of age in the executive suite; he brought in a young management team (average age: 38). Within a year, he saved $750,000 by cropping out 300 employees, many of whom "were just making work for one another."

On his first day in the office, Peesel "threw out all the old files," started modernizing Rollei's gothic production lines, and more than doubled the research budget to a current $875,000 a year. By telescoping Rollei's normal seven-year development period to two years, in 1966 the company was ready with two new cameras, which now account for half its sales. One of the cameras, a 35-mm. model priced at $190 and not much bigger than a pack of king-size cigarettes, has endeared itself to the pros who, as Peesel says, can "carry it even in white tie and tails." Though the new, highly sophisticated SL 66 was designed for professionals, its relatively high cost ($995) has not prevented it from winning big sales among well-heeled amateurs.

Last year Rollei's 1,700 workers turned out 90,000 cameras. And they are constantly working on new products, including half a dozen strobe guns, projectors and camera models to be introduced by June. In fact, about the only old family tradition other than quality that is still honored at Rollei is secrecy about earnings. Peesel says that "the whole camera world would scream if I told what we're making." And it isn't Braunschweiger.

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