A New Focus: Strategic Realignment and the Story Behind It
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To understand REIFF’s last few years, you have to look a little further back. The real strategic realignment did not begin with the sale of individual business units, but with a slowly growing structural tension that had been building for over a decade.
Between 2015 and 2017, REIFF systematically expanded its technical wholesale business beyond Germany. Luxembourg, Belgium, and China became operational footholds. At the same time, the holding company began to broaden its financing structure. The profit participation rights introduced in 2014 were increased several times, and silent partnerships were added. This was an attempt to secure growth and modernization with additional capital, a step many medium-sized companies took during those years.
In 2018 and 2019, complexity and costs continued to rise. The integration of the Roller Group tied up management capacity and made steering the organization more difficult. At the same time, efficiency, speed, and price discipline became increasingly important in the market. Technical wholesale changes more quietly than most people notice, but faster than most can stop. Then came 2020, and with it, a turning point.
Through an initial consolidation, the REIFF Group recorded goodwill of around €34 million, based on the assumption of stable, long-term customer relationships. Calculated against the 2020 consolidated income statement, this goodwill represented more than 30 times a “normalized positive” EBITDA from the group’s annual loss of €2.68 million. From an accounting perspective, this was remarkable, even if economically justifiable. It shows how much confidence REIFF still had in the resilience of its business model at that point. At the same time, it marked a threshold. From that moment on, the group began to visibly slim down. My own comment on this: typical valuations for stable family-owned businesses with broad product portfolios, strong industrial customer bases, and a solid regional footprint usually range between 8x and 10x EBITDA, often slightly lower in Germany and Western Europe. Thirty times EBITDA points to expectations that are difficult to fulfill.
When Alec Reiff officially joined the management board in 2020, it was far more than a formal generational transition. He had spent his entire life within this company. He started on the workshop floor in the tire business, worked his way through different positions in the group, and gained leadership experience at L’Oréal. In an interview with an apprentice, he describes how he grew into the company from childhood, how his grandfather saw him as the successor early on, and how deeply that trust shaped him.
“I was never uncertain,” he says, “but when I returned in 2009, I realized for the first time how big this responsibility really was.”
And he carried that responsibility well under extremely difficult circumstances.
For him, management was never just a title. It was a legacy. Family history, obligation, and pride all at once. And that is exactly what makes the year 2020 so tragic and so human at the same time: he took over leadership in a year when complexity in wholesale exploded, supply chains broke down, digitalization moved too slowly, and pressure to adapt became stronger than at any other point in the company’s history.
In 2021, the sale of R.E.T. GmbH followed. Officially, it was described as the “final step of focusing.” In reality, it was a sign that the group wanted to concentrate its resources and had to do so. All investments now flowed into technical wholesale. The business became more focused, clearer, and more defined. On paper, it looked like a sound strategic move. In reality, however, this realignment was already facing headwinds from a market moving faster than any consolidation could keep up with.
Between the lines, in the goodwill figures and annual reports, one simple truth becomes visible: the realignment was necessary. It did not come too late. The market arrived earlier than expected.
2021: A Difficult Year, Supply Chains, Pandemic, and a Negative Trend
The unusually fast and disruptive pandemic years affected all of us deeply. But courage was the foundation of this company. A kind of courage that would later be needed again, only in a very different form. The year 2021 began with a glimpse of hope. Short-time work ended earlier than planned in February because incoming orders rose faster than expected. The first quarter was even 3.5 percent above plan. Mechanical engineering associations reported strong order growth, and for a brief moment, it seemed as if the pandemic was fading and the world order was stabilizing again. Did you think so too?
For a trading company like REIFF, however, this year turned out to be the exact opposite of relief. The annual reports describe the situation with unusual openness: “The global supply chain situation was the dominant issue.”
Raw materials were missing, transport routes broke down, and prices fluctuated unpredictably. Yet customers still expected full delivery capability. To remain operational, REIFF increased its inventories by €5.3 million. It was a defensive move that cost liquidity and at the same time showed just how much market mechanics had shifted.
At the end of the year, despite all efforts, the company posted a loss of €0.8 million, “mainly due to scheduled goodwill amortization.” Working capital lines remained heavily utilized, with €21.3 million revolving. Looking back, 2021 feels like the moment when the industry still believed the storm would soon pass, while at the same time realizing it had only just begun.
2022–2023: Growth That Misleads and Quiet Shifts in the Background
The year 2022 begins with a number that initially suggests relief. Revenue rises to €191 million, an increase of 14 percent. But behind this seemingly positive figure lies a pattern widely seen in technical wholesale. The reports make clear that much of this growth did not come from higher volume, but from price increases driven by rising procurement costs.
It is growth that does not carry the business. It merely compensates.
Demand remains volatile, the cost base remains high, and financing lines once again have to be extended. What looks like recovery is in reality just a breath between two waves of pressure. Sound familiar?
By 2023, stability finally loses its appearance altogether. The global economy cools down, supply chains remain fragile, energy prices rise, and inflation leaves visible marks on customer purchasing and sales behavior.
The company’s plans projected revenue of €196 million and a moderately positive result. But the balance sheet showed declining total assets, shrinking inventories, and above all, weakening liquidity. Cash reserves fell from €1.3 million to €0.5 million, while inventories were reduced to free up capital.
Half a million euros in liquidity may not look dramatic on paper. But it shows that operations are still functioning while the financial foundation underneath is becoming noticeably thinner.
In a low-margin environment, every disruption becomes visible immediately. Cash is king.
In January 2024, the shareholders made a move that seemed quieter than it actually was: by referencing a hard letter of comfort from the parent company, REIFF Technische Produkte was exempted from disclosure and audit obligations. The promise to “cover all impending losses” signals confidence on one hand, but on the other hand also reveals the need to secure that confidence formally.
Looking back, 2022 and 2023 marked the phase in which a traditional company, despite intense effort, a solid customer base, and visible strategic initiatives, began to feel for the first time that the market had become faster than its established structures could respond.
2024–2025: The Narrow Line Between Hope and Necessity
The year 2024 begins with a plan based on sober realism. The group expects revenue of €176.6 million and a negative result of €1.8 million. This is not a dramatic collapse, but a realistic assessment: the operational core is still strong, but increasingly overshadowed by structural pressure.
The reports mention an “adjusted EBITDA” of around €8 million. This is a figure showing that the core business still works, provided extraordinary expenses are excluded.
At the same time, the annual report contains one simple but highly consequential sentence: the existing working capital line expires at the end of 2024, and its extension is “essential for the continued existence of the group.”Financing had become the Achilles’ heel of a business model built on decades of stability.
As the year progressed, it became increasingly clear how much the tectonic plates of wholesale had shifted. Demand remained inconsistent, competitors reacted faster, manufacturers expanded direct sales channels, and the cost structure could not be adjusted at the same speed the market now demanded.
The organization endured this pressure, carried by employees who knew long before 2024 what it meant to deliver reliably in difficult years. That alone is something to be proud of. But financial flexibility kept shrinking.
The system still worked, but it carried a heavy burden.
And so it happened that the Austrian company Haberkorn entered the REIFF Group on January 1, 2025, with an initial minority stake of 25 percent. For decades, Haberkorn and REIFF had been direct competitors in technical wholesale. Both are large full-range suppliers with similar product portfolios, customers, and services, especially in the industrial mid-market across the DACH region.
In the coming years, this partnership is expected to expand further, with the goal of fully integrating REIFF into the Haberkorn Group.
Will it happen?
In the summer of 2025 came the step that, in calmer times, would probably have seemed unthinkable. At the end of July, REIFF Technische Produkte filed for preliminary insolvency proceedings under self-administration.
This is less a symbol of collapse and more an attempt to regain control during a phase in which the market leaves no time to breathe.
The decision was factual, not dramatic. And it follows a logic many medium-sized trading companies know well: when financing becomes too tight, margins too narrow, and adjustment costs too high, legal restructuring becomes a way to create breathing space.
Four Months That Decided the Future of a Century-Old Company
The REIFF Group is a specialist wholesaler for technical components such as drive belts, seals, adhesives, and hoses. It supplies around 10,000 companies, including 2,500 major industrial customers. The group is heavily dependent on mechanical engineering, an industry suffering from falling order volumes, high energy costs, and uncertainty between 2024 and 2025.
Tim Steinel, Chief Operating Officer of the REIFF Group, described the reasons in an interview with T-Online in September 2025.
He said nothing unusual for those times: “Our customers are building fewer new machines and therefore need fewer of our products.” 2025 was also the year in which the number of corporate insolvencies in Germany reached its highest level in ten years.
From July to November, one of those quiet dramas unfolded at REIFF, the kind that never appears in a balance sheet but determines the fate of an entire company. After the opening of the preliminary insolvency proceedings in July, a race against time began.
A summer in which executives, trustees, banks, and employees all tried at once to stabilize the ship while the storm was already hitting the deck.
Inside the halls, operations continued as usual. But behind closed meeting room doors, there were negotiations, calculations, restructuring plans, discarded ideas, and new approaches. People who had stood for this company for decades were forced to postpone decisions they never wanted to make.
Applicants hesitated. Suppliers demanded guarantees. And everyone knew:
every week mattered. At the beginning of November, the news finally came, bringing both relief and pain at the same time: the sale to ERIKS.
The business was set to be sold in November, subject to antitrust approval. The contract was signed on November 6, 2025.
For years, ERIKS and REIFF had been direct competitors in technical wholesale. Both specialized in industrial supplies, sealing, hose, drive, and MRO products, serving similar customers in mechanical engineering and manufacturing.
This rescue brought major changes within the company. Not all employees could expect a future under the new owner. A restructuring concept was presented to the works council. Affected employees were offered transfers into an employment company, as former CEO Alec Reiff and restructuring expert Holger Leichtle from the law firm GÖRG told the GEA.
REIFF made it through.
Should we celebrate that? No. It is difficult to celebrate simply because the company reached this point. But if history teaches us anything, it is that the alternatives could have been much worse.
The workforce reduction is based on the new owner’s integration concept and aims to eliminate overlapping structures. According to the Reutlinger General-Anzeiger, 160 of the 585 jobs within the REIFF Group are expected to be cut, including 90 at the headquarters in Reutlingen. Central functions will disappear there as a result of the takeover. In addition, the sites in Offenburg, Leipzig, and Chemnitz, employing a combined 70 people, are expected to close. Will this be sustainable for the new owner? That remains to be seen.
It is an orderly transition and an attempt to preserve what still has value, even if not everything can be saved. For the industry, this moment marks a simple realization: even strong companies can begin to shake when speed and complexity evolve faster than traditional structures can adapt.
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The New Wholesale: Why Data-Driven Sales Steering Matters More Than Product Range, Experience, or Brand
The last five years at REIFF were not a story of failure. They were a struggle against a world that became faster than traditional structures could react to.
Teams kept operations running. Executives made decisions under conditions no one would have chosen. And a historically grown company fought against a market mechanism accelerating more and more.
But the numbers show what people alone could not compensate for.
Margins became too narrow. Financing burdens too high. Product portfolios too complex. Customer behavior too dynamic to still manage with intuition or Excel alone.
When a company with 140,000 products, international sourcing, and decades of market position reaches structural limits, that is not an isolated case. It is a signal to the entire industry. In the end, it is about people who built something great over more than a century, and about drawing the right lessons for the future.
Many of the tools that can help today now exist and are far more accessible than they were just a few years ago. Predictive Sales can identify customers at risk. Dynamic pricing models can stabilize margins. Cross-selling algorithms can uncover hidden opportunities. Early warning systems can detect deviations before they become existential. Modern AI systems can do what has become impossible for sales teams today: keep thousands of products, thousands of customers, and millions of patterns in view at the same time.
Anyone who wants to grow sustainably in wholesale must not only understand pricing, cross-selling, and churn prevention. They must master them. Or, to put it more bluntly: improving profitability without considering pricing is like showering without soap. Possible, but not particularly effective.
The conclusion of this entire series is clear to me:
Tradition remains valuable. But without data-based precision, it can become a burden. Today, wholesalers need the same courage, the same clarity, and the same long-term vision as companies that have proven themselves for over a century.
But now they also need real-time data, automation, and AI as an integral part of day-to-day sales management. Not to replace people, but to equip them with tools capable of handling this complexity. That is exactly why Qymatix was developed: as an independent, practical, and field-tested platform for Predictive Sales and AI-supported sales steering.
“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future.” John F. Kennedy
If you are asking yourself what data-driven sales steering in wholesale can look like today, feel free to reach out to us.
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Further Read:
REIFF Technische Produkte GmbH. (2025). Company history. Accessed in December 2025 from
Reiff Group. (2019). YouTube channel
Stuttgart Local Court. (2025). HRA 735135 – REIFF Technische Produkte GmbH – Annual financial statements 2020-2024