From BZ/dpa
He actually wanted to be a painter. But then Claus Hipp turned his parents’ small company into the largest manufacturer of infant formula in Germany – and at the same time became a professor in a completely different discipline.
Many television viewers know Claus Hipp from advertising as a friendly older gentleman with a fringe of white hair who stands in a field and holds up a jar of baby porridge: “That’s what I stand for with my name!” Millions of people must have grown up with his carrot porridge. On Sunday he celebrates his 85th birthday.
“I’m doing well,” said Claus Hipp to the German Press Agency. His two sons now run the group’s business, with annual sales of around one billion euros. The senior is still regularly at the company in Pfaffenhofen, Upper Bavaria, has an office and secretariat there and is still busy, said a company spokesman.
Claus Hipp celebrates his birthday on Sunday with his wife, his five children, his grandchildren – “there are now 15” – and relatives. “The next day I invite the staff in Pfaffenhofen to have lunch together. With over 1,300 employees it will be a bit tight, but comfortable,” he said.
Looking back, what is he particularly proud of?
“To the positive development and successful establishment of organic farming,” he said. “When we started using organically produced raw materials in Hipp baby food in 1956 and I tried to build a network of organic producers, I was ridiculed from all sides. Today it is impossible to imagine baby food without organic food.”
Honors and advertising lies
However, he was not only named “Eco Manager of the Year” by WWF-Germany and the business magazine “Capital”, but also with the “Golden Cream Puff for the Most Brazen Advertising Lie 2012” from the consumer protection organization Foodwatch. The reason was the enormous sugar content of Hipp children’s teas. The company then withdrew these teas from the market.
As a young man he wanted to become a painter and was well on his way as a master student in Munich. To be on the safe side, he also studied law and even graduated with a doctorate. He also earned money as a rider as a stuntman in films. After his father’s early death, he suddenly found himself in charge of the family business. Hipp switched production to organic and went from being an outsider to becoming a trendsetter.
At the same time, the entrepreneur taught as a professor at the art academy in the Georgian capital Tbilisi and taught business administration at the university there. He still flies there for compact courses today, and he continues to be the Georgian honorary consul for Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Thuringia.
He saved the Herrenrast baroque chapel near his family’s farm from decay, is still patron of the Munich and Pfaffenhofen Tafel, a member of the Senate of the Association of Catholic Entrepreneurs and on the board of the Munich Künstlerhaus Foundation and the Swiss-Bavarian Economic and Cultural Promotion Agency. “I don’t play the oboe at the moment, but I paint – as long as time allows,” said Hipp.
And what is he looking forward to in the near future? “To every meeting with my children and grandchildren.”