Podcast „Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“
Episode #23: Anna and René Ruhland
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Podcast Episode 23
Anna and René Ruhland | Myposter: "Startup and family business are not a contradiction"
Managing Directors at Myposter
Listen now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Episode Description
For a company that was only founded in 2011, Myposter has made an enormous climb: The startup, where customers can submit pictures and have them processed into posters or photo wallpapers, now makes 90 million euros in sales a year and has two of its own production sites in Germany. Recently, even the online store and the previous competitor Junique were taken over. "Of course we want to become the market leader," says Anna Ruhland, who runs Myposter together with her husband René. In the podcast "Alles neu…? Aus dem Maschinenraum," the two also talk about how rocky the road to success was. Especially since Myposter was built up without outside financing - a rather unusual step. The couple leaves it open whether they still see themselves as a startup or already as a family business: "Startup and family business are not a contradiction," says Ruhland. "What is clear is that we want to build something sustainable, ideally something that will last several generations." In order to serve customers as accurately as possible, Myposter is heavily tweaking its software and working on an online configurator that should make it possible to map even the most specific imaging requests. "At our core, we are a software company," says René Ruhland. The entrepreneurial couple talks about why they deal openly with psychological problems, why they hardly ever work on weekends, and why a bad memory can sometimes be helpful. In the podcast - with Tobias Rappers, managing director of Maschinenraum and Capital editor Nils Kreimeier.
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Anna and René Ruhland
Anna Ruhland is the managing director of Myposter. In 2013, she decided to join the management of the company that has always accompanied her as René's wife and Marc's sister-in-law. Anna herself comes from an entrepreneurial family and knows life alongside full-blooded entrepreneurs from an early age. In the management of Myposter, Anna Ruhland is the operational motor. She is passionate about data, figures and processes and is responsible for parts of production, finance and marketing at Myposter. In parallel, Anna manages the HR department.
René Ruhland is the founder and managing director of the Myposter Group. Immediately after completing his studies in business administration, he and his brother Marc began importing pictures from China and selling them wholesale in 2006. Quite quickly, this led to the start of their own local production of canvases. From this pure wholesale business, René Ruhland and his brother founded myposter GmbH in 2011 - today one of the leading and independent e-commerce companies for personalized print products.
Today, the Myposter group has around 350 employees and continues to record rapid growth. In addition to myposter, the group also includes JUNIQE, Kartenliebe and ArtPhotoLimited, as well as its own production company Printhouse.
About the Podcast
How can the origin and future of Mittelstand companies be courageously united? What are the challenges facing family businesses and what experiences do they gather in digital transformation? These questions are answered by "Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum", the interview podcast for German Mittelstand*. Once a month, Tobias Rappers, Managing Director of Maschinenraum, and Nils Kreimeier, Senior Editor of the business magazine Capital, talk to thought leaders and makers from the heart of the German economy and focus on the personalities and their motivation.
*The podcast is in German.
For more episodes of „Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“ please click here!
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